English

Intent

Our English curriculum is designed to inspire a love of literature and language while fostering critical thinking, empathy, and effective communication. By exploring the theme of power across a carefully curated selection of texts, students engage with diverse perspectives, develop cultural awareness, and build a deeper understanding of human nature. The curriculum is intentionally spiral in its design, revisiting key ideas and skills at increasing levels of complexity as students progress through their academic journey.

The spiral curriculum underpins our approach to teaching English, ensuring that core skills and concepts are revisited and reinforced over time. This structure allows students to deepen their understanding of literary analysis, critical evaluation, and academic writing as they encounter progressively challenging texts. By revisiting the theme of power in various contexts—historical, cultural, and personal—students gain a multifaceted perspective and refine their ability to analyse and articulate complex ideas.

Theme of Power Across Selected Texts

The theme of power serves as a lens through which students examine the dynamics of society and the world around them. Texts are carefully chosen to reflect diverse genres, historical periods, and cultural backgrounds, offering students a comprehensive exploration of power’s manifestations and consequences.

Curriculum Outcomes

By engaging with the theme of power through a spiral curriculum, students will:

  • Develop a nuanced understanding of how power shapes human experiences and societal structures.
  • Gain critical skills to analyse and critique texts across genres and contexts.
  • Build confidence in articulating their insights through spoken and written expression.
  • Cultivate empathy and global awareness by connecting literary themes to real-world issues.

Our dynamic and interconnected curriculum ensures that students leave with a robust understanding of literature, language, and their relevance in shaping the world around them.

The Curriculum

Key Stage 3

At Key Stage 3, the department follows the strands and standards of the new National Curriculum; embedded within this is a strong focus on reading and the development of a broad and sophisticated vocabulary.  The curriculum includes the study of a range of high-quality texts that help students develop their familiarity with and understanding of the development of the literary canon. Studying a range of challenging texts, from the macabre world of the Gothic novel, to the distorted societies of dystopia, pupils are encouraged to explore how writers create meaning and to harness these techniques to become critical thinkers and develop their own individual voices. Lessons and units of study are knowledge and vocabulary rich so that pupils build the skills they need to ‘articulate like scholars’.

KS3 Homework:

We utilise Sparx Reader at KS3, establishing reading as a central part of a students’ regular routine at SSPP. At KS3, reading homework is set weekly, and monitored closely to ensure that students build consistent reading habits.

Key Stage 4

Our students follow the AQA programme of study at GCSE.  They undertake two GCSEs: GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature.
All assessments are linear with a programme of study over two years, which culminates in exams at the end of Year 11.  Students explore a range of challenging fiction and non-fiction texts, including Shakespeare’s Macbeth,  Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, as well as a range of thematically linked poetry from 1789 to the present day.
Our KS4 text selections reflect the foundation of our KS3 curriculum. The thematic focus on the abuse of power holds central focus in our KS3 curriculum, and this is naturally continued through students’ KS4 study, due to the central place it also has in our selected GCSE texts.

KS4 Homework:

Sparx Reader continues to hold an important place as part of our homework strategy at KS4. At KS4, students are assigned ‘set-text reading’, which allows them the opportunity to re-visit key literature texts in full, ensuring that their grasp of key content remains strong. Homework reading assignments are carefully spaced, as we are aware of the benefits that the spaced retrieval approach has on knowledge retention.

Curriculum Maps

English Curriculum Map 2024-25

Staff

Mr A Canham – Subject Leader

Mrs E Tomlinson

Mr K Stevens

Miss E Taylor

Ms A Pickup

Mrs C Hewerdine