The English Faculty encompasses students’ study of both English and Modern Foreign Languages.
Please see overview of English Curriculum Plan and Intent for KS3 and KS4 here
Reading and writing are complex and creative processes that require the integration of many spheres of knowledge. Our ambitious Key Stage Three English curriculum has been designed to develop deep readers and thinkers who are able to express their ideas from a foundation of secure knowledge.
The attainment of secure, flexible knowledge is a continuous process of connecting previous knowledge to new knowledge and skills. As such, each year in the KS3 curriculum contains explicit links to learning from previous schemes of learning and previous years of study and has been developed around these central concepts:
Success at GCSE begins in Year 7. Our KS3 curriculum is designed to prepare students gradually and steadily for the demands of the GCSE curriculum in Y10 and Y11.
Students need rich, varied, and challenging texts as a vehicle for developing and embedding critical thinking, reading, and writing skills
Vocabulary, critical thinking, reading, and writing skills should be explicitly taught, modelled, and practised to mastery
Our English curriculum at Key Stage Four is designed to enable students to reach their full potential on their GCSE Exams by building upon the foundation of their learning at KS3 and preparing them to meet the demands of their exams. The course is comprised of two GCSES, which are assessed through a spoken language component and four written exams that require students to write in different forms for a variety of purposes.
In Year 10, students are taught all the literature content and introduced to the English Language exams. In Year 11, students deepen and develop their knowledge through weekly revision cycles and an increased focus on exam technique, essay structures, and extended writing practise. As in KS3, we believe that exam writing should be explicitly taught, modelled, and practised to mastery. We conduct regular assessments to ensure that students are receiving frequent feedback to fully prepare them for their exams.
Our curriculum provides students with opportunities to engage in conversations discuss and give their opinions about a wide range of issues such as the environment and global issues through their curriculum journey. Students will gain an understanding of, and the skills to manipulate, the language, based on a sound foundation of core grammar and vocabulary.
At KS3, students gain essential skills to communicate with others in a foreign language. They learn the fundamental elements of the language and can explore diverse topics and key grammatical structures through a curriculum that provides the foundations of language early on and then builds both in complexity and range of vocabulary. We interleave and revisit key grammar points and language structures so that students are able to apply the structures they learn to a range of different topics and contexts with increasing complexity.
The Key Stage 3 content has been carefully selected to provide an introduction to and a basis for the themes and grammar knowledge required for further study. With the emphasis on the grammar and language structures, the plan provides opportunities for interleaving and revisiting previous topics in greater depth. The focus has shifted from vocabulary to proficiency and depth of understanding of the language itself. Regular interleaving encourages automatisation of the language, promoting resilience and self-confidence.
We wish to inspire our students to have a curiosity and fascination in discovering the world and its people, deepening their understanding of different cultures and societies. We aim to develop a student’s understanding of the ways in which languages are interconnected and how languages play a part in our daily lives. Students are encouraged to support and respect each other, especially when speaking in the target language.
The curriculum is challenging, and students have regular opportunities to extend their skillset further through access to extension tasks and complex materials such as authentic resources and listening to native speakers. The curriculum continuously develops written, spoken and listening skills which are highly transferrable skills for all careers and other subjects. Students also have opportunities to develop their grammatical knowledge, broaden their vocabulary and deepen their cultural knowledge and understanding.
Year 7
By the end of year 7 they will be able to:
To do this they will cover the following topics:
Year 8
By the end of year 8 they will be built on their prior knowledge and learn how to:
To do this they will cover the following topics:
Year 9
By the end of year 9 they will build on their prior knowledge and learn how to:
To do this they will study the following topics:
We want all French GCSE students to be well equipped to cope with the demands of the GCSE exam. To support students with their learning and prepare them for their exams we teach across four skills: reading, listening, writing and speaking. The KS4 Curriculum is designed to review and extend on students’ knowledge from KS3 and build on this. To do this the curriculum is designed to:
The topics that they will study are:
Theme 1 Identity and culture – Qui suis-je ?
Topic 1 : Me, my family and friends
Topic 2: Technology in everyday life
Topic 3: Free-time activities
Topic 4: Customs and festivals in French-speaking countries
Theme 2: Local, national, international & global areas of interest
Topic 1: Home, town, neighbourhood & region
Topic 2: Social issues
Topic 3: Global issues
Topic 4: Travel and Tourism
Theme 3: Current and future study and employment
Topic 1: My studies
Topic 2: Life at school / college
Topic 3: Education post -16
Topic 4: Jobs, career choices and ambitions.
How will I be assessed?
Over the course of an academic year students will complete a number of formal assessments, these will be used to assess where students are in their learning journey and will prepare them for their exam. The GCSE exam is broken down into four components and each areas tests a different skill.
Paper 1: Listening
Paper 2: Speaking
Paper 3: Reading
Paper 4: Writing