Since the beginning of time, the written word has the power to circulate powerful ideas, preserve cultures and influence the values that we hold dear. Thus, our curriculum is designed to close and surpass any vocabulary gaps that may stop our students from being able to think critically and express their thoughts with clarity through writing, reading and spoken forms of expression. Through the implementation of our guided reading and disciplinary literacy programme, we aim to enhance student’s ability to access the national curriculum, further education or the world of work.

Our curriculum introduces students to diverse fiction and non-fiction texts, creating opportunities for our students to explore their own identity, develop a positive sense of self and engage respectfully with opinions that may challenge their own social, moral and spiritual experiences.

Students are guided to consider how writers use a range of literary and structural devices to create layers of meaning and explore how intricate contextual factors deepen their understanding of poetry, prose and plays that they analyse. Our curriculum explicitly builds cross-curricular links with the humanities, edifying the cultural capital over students, ensuring equality amongst their contemporaries and demonstrates how influential archaic texts continue to inspire the creation of literature throughout the ages.

Our curriculum is designed through the concepts we have identified as underpinning the discipline of English.  These concepts with the exception of critical theory are introduced in Year 7 and students understanding of them develop as they progress through the curriculum. Critical theory is introduced at KS4 once they have developed their own knowledge of the literary texts. For example, in English Literature the concept of social and historical context and its impact on authorial intent is introduce in Year 7. By the end of Key stage 3, students can confidently discuss the impact of social and historical content not only on authorial intent but also reader response in a nuanced way. At KS4, students begin to connect social and historical content to very specific examples in the texts and can evaluate the likelihood of different interpretations of the text given the context in which they were written and received. In English Language, students are able to comment simply on the writer’s choice of language devices/techniques in Year 7. By the end of Year 9 they are able to analyse the impact of those choices on reader response, and by the end of Year 11 they can evaluate how successfully the writer has communicated their message.

We have selected texts at KS3 to cover the requirements of the National Curriculum (two Shakespeare plays – one tragedy, one comedy; seminal world literature; and two pre-1914 texts) and give students a broad and rich experience of texts. The texts we have selected allow us to introduce concepts and context (such as the genres of tragedy and the Gothic) that will be built on in KS4.

Reading and writing skills are interleaved at KS3 to enable students to transfer new content to their long-term memory by connecting it to prior learning. Our KS4 curriculum allows all content to be covered in Year 10, meaning that Year 11 allows students to develop a deeper critical understanding of the texts and the time to develop the skills of academic essay writing. Lessons make explicit links between previous content and skills and current learning, allowing students to understand their learning journey. We explicitly teach Direct Vocabulary that arises organically from the texts we are interrogating. We also subscribe to Lexia to improve students’ reading ages. Each learning sequence builds to an extended piece of writing that consolidates knowledge and allows students to articulate independent thought.