Key Stage 3 Curriculum

Our KS3 (years 7-9) curriculum is mapped backwards from the English Literature and English Language GCSE course so that we perfectly equip our boys with the correct skills which enable them to be successful in year 11.  We are extremely proud of our rich, inclusive and engaging curriculum which has been constructed around the needs of our boys.  This means that we begin teaching important skills such as language and structure analysis and writing in year 7 so that they are ready to tackle the demands of their GCSEs in year 10.  Our KS3 curriculum involves studying a diverse range of novels, plays and poems from a range of writers with different voices from a variety of cultural backgrounds as well as non-fiction and writing.  Some of the exciting texts we study include ‘Private Peaceful’, ‘Animal Farm’, and plays such as ‘A View from The Bridge’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’. 

Our texts are chosen to engage, stretch and challenge, both in terms of the themes they explore but also in terms of their rich use of language.  They have been chosen carefully to reflect the world in which we live and so are drawn from the English Literary Canon but also a diverse range of cultures, traditions forms and genres.  Thus, our boys can expect to read Shakespeare and Dickens but also explore spoken word poetry, dystopian fiction and Victorian Gothic.  Developing confident, articulate young people is at the heart of what we do and so there are plenty of opportunities for the boys to express themselves through debate and discussion.  Our demanding KS3 curriculum is constantly being revised and revisited to ensure that we are meeting the needs of both our high prior attainers and those boys who need more support.   

One of our main goals at KS3 is to foster a love of reading and we have implemented a number of strategies designed to engage our boys in reading.  We have a well-stocked library and expert librarian who is keen to support boys with choosing exciting and interesting books. We also aim to develop reading skills for those new to English or with Special Needs. This  includes the use of and a number of reading interventions for those boys who need a little more support.  We work closely with the EAL and SEND teams to ensure all our boys achieve the best possible outcomes.  For those who are more able, we choose challenging texts and support materials: in Year 7, boys in the Grammar Stream Initiative read ‘Lord of the Flies’ for example, whereas in Year 9 they will read supplementary critical materials when studying ‘Hamlet’.

Our intention is that every boy leaving Key Stage 3 will be well-prepared in terms of the foundational knowledge and skills needed to thrive at GCSE. 

KS3 Support Materials & Links

https://schoolreadinglist.co.uk/category/reading-lists-for-ks3-pupils/

AQA GCSE English Literature and GCSE English Language

At KS4 pupils follow a rigorous programme of study that interleaves both Literature and Language teaching and which covers a variety of different texts and genres. Pupils will read plays, novels, poetry and an array of non-fiction writing. We aim to develop our pupils’ understanding of written texts and how to analyse their effectiveness. Pupils also work on their own writing skills to write effectively for both audience and purpose. We assess regularly so both parents and pupils are aware of progress in both Language and Literature. 

In Year 10, students also complete a Speaking and Listening task in which they present a formal speech to an audience.  A sample of these are recorded for assessment by AQA. 

We follow the diagnosis, therapy and testing model to enhance the outcome of the students. Additionally, we facilitate students to work and perfect their weakest areas based on their exam performance. The English Department strives for success, so we offer a range of extra curriculum support and we design meticulous intervention plans to ensure that all students are confident before their exams and they excel in English at GCSE level. 

Assessment 

100% written exams 

• GCSE English Language Paper 1 1hr 45 minutes 
• GCSE English Language Paper 2 1hr 45 minutes 
• GCSE English Literature Paper 1 1hr 45 minutes 
• GCSE English Literature Paper 2 2hrs 15 minutes 
• Speaking and Listening component assessed internally and externally moderated. 

KS4 Support Materials and Links

Online reading and quizzing platforms – homework

https://senecalearning.com/en-GB/

Revision platforms for set texts and exam practice 

• YouTube Mr Bruff
• Physics and Maths Tutor
• BBC Bitesize
• Shmoop
• Spark Notes

Enrichment and Interventions

In addition to the teaching curriculum, we aim to provide a number of additional activities to support learning or challenge our young people to engage with the wider world. These include:

For Y11 - Saturday and holiday revision sessions

For Y10 - The Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge

For Key Stage 3 we offer a range of interventions to support the development of confident readers

For GSI Pupils in KS3 – the GCSE equivalent Project Qualification exploring, researching and presenting ideas related to the English Curriculum. 

Future careers/university courses

Lawyer, Manager, Business, Translator, Journalist, Marketing, Public Relations, Retail, Hospitality, Tourism, Politics, Personnel 

Social, Moral, Social, Cultural (SMSC) and British Values 

Within English, British values are promoted and explored in a variety of ways. The study of non-fiction texts provides students and teachers with the opportunity to address topical issues and consider different social, political, religious and cultural attitudes and contexts. The department ethos is always to respect the views of individuals and provide a learning environment in which students feel able to express themselves freely yet respectfully.  

The study of literature goes hand-in-hand with exploration of different people, places and social groups and as such, promotes understanding and tolerance. Being able to empathise with others and examine situations and settings outside our individual experience is an explicitly taught skill.  

In addition to curriculum content, the methods employed in English lessons encourage tolerance and respect. Students are expected to listen to and respect each other during group discussions and debate, and to work co-operatively in pursuit of common goals. 

Set texts 

• Othello – William Shakespeare  
• Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams 
• Frankenstein Mary Shelley  
• The Handmaid’s tale  
• Poems of the Decade – Various 
• Selected poems of Christina Rossetti  

NEA (two of): 

• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Tennessee Williams  
• The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 
• The Color Purple – Alice Walker  
• Death of a Salesman  - Arthur Miller  

Dystopian Novels 

• 1984 – George Orwell 
• The Road – Cormac McCarthy 
• Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler 
• Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 
• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury 
• Day of the Triffids / The Chrysalids – John Wyndham 
• Children of Men – PD James 
• The Power – Naomi Alderman 
• A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess 
• The Time Machine – HG Wells 
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip Dick 
• Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban 
• Station Eleven – Emily St John Mandel 

Victorian Classics: 

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: A classic coming-of-age story with elements of romance, gothic and social commentary.  
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: A novel exploring themes of ambition, social class, and redemption, with a memorable cast of characters.  
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: A passionate and dark love story set on the Yorkshire moors, known for its intense characters and atmosphere.  
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: A philosophical novel exploring themes of beauty, morality, and the corrupting influence of vanity.  
• Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray: A satire of English society during the Napoleonic Wars, focusing on the lives and ambitions of several characters, particularly Becky Sharp.  
• Middlemarch by George Eliot: A complex and richly detailed novel exploring the lives and relationships of various characters in a provincial town, with a focus on social and intellectual life.  
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: A suspenseful mystery novel with elements of sensation fiction, featuring intricate plot twists and memorable characters.  
• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell: Explores the social and economic tensions between the industrial north and the agricultural south of England.  
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: A novella delving into the duality of human nature and the conflict between good and evil.  
• Dracula by Bram Stoker: A gothic horror novel that introduced the iconic vampire character and explores themes of good versus evil and the unknown.  
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy: A tragic novel about a young woman's struggle against social constraints and moral judgment.  
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë: A powerful novel exploring themes of domestic abuse and female independence.  
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: Imaginative and whimsical fantasy novels that have captivated readers for generations.  
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens: A complex novel exploring social issues, poverty, and injustice in Victorian England.  
• Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens: A social novel critiquing institutions and societal structures, with a focus on themes of imprisonment and freedom.  
• Silas Marner by George Eliot: A novel about a weaver's redemption and spiritual awakening.  
• Daniel Deronda by George Eliot: Explores themes of Jewish identity and social responsibility.  
• Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon: A sensation novel known for its suspenseful plot and exploration of female transgression.  
• Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: A controversial novel that explores themes of social class, education, and marriage.  
• The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot: A novel about a woman's struggle to find fulfillment in a patriarchal society.  
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens: A social novel exploring themes of wealth, class, and inheritance, with a complex plot and memorable characters.  

Modern Prose  

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Purple Hibiscus / Americanah 
• Adavind Adiga: The White Tiger 
• Monica Ali: Brick Lane 
• Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake 
• Tara Westover: Educated (memoir) 
• Anthony Doerr: All the Light We Cannot See 
• Andrea Levy: Small Island 
• Marcus Zusak: The Book Thief 
• Rose Tremain: The Road Home 
• Colm Toibin: Brooklyn 
• Joanna Quin: The Whalebone Theatre 
• Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart 
• Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin / Alias Grace / The Testaments  
• Angela Carter: The Bloody Chamber (short stories) / Nights at the Circus 
• Daphne Du Maurier: Rebecca 
• Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong / Charlotte Gray 
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera 
• Graham Greene: Brighton Rock 
• Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go 
• James Joyce: Dubliners (short stories) 
• Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird 
• Ian McEwan: Atonement 
• Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon / Beloved  
• Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things 
• Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar 
• Annie Proulx: The Shipping News 
• Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea (prequel to Jane Eyre) 
• John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath 
• Jeanette Winterson: Oranges are not the only Fruit 
• Zadie Smith: White Teeth 
• Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway 
• Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory 
• A.S. Byatt: Possession  
• J.M. Coetzee: Disgrace 
• Louis de Bernieres: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin 
• E.M. Forster: Howards End ,A Room with a View ,Where Angels Fear to Tread ,Maurice ,The Longest Journey, A Passage to India 
• L. P. Hartley: The Go-Between 
• Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms ,For Whom the Bell Tolls 
• Khaled Husseini: The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns 
• Kazuo Ishiguro:Remains of the Day ,Never Let Me Go 
• D.H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers ,The Rainbow ,Women in Love  
• Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall, Bringing Up the Bodies, The Mirror and the Light 
• Haruki Murakami: IQ84; Norwegian Wood 
• Toni Morrison: Song of Solomon ,Beloved 
• Jean Rhys: Voyage in the Dark , Wide Sargasso Sea 
• Donna Tartt: The Secret History 
• Jeanette Winterson: Oranges are not the only fruit 
• Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse , Mrs Dalloway , Orlando , Road to Wigan Pier 
• Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things 
• Salman Rushdie: Midnight’s Children, Shame ,The Satanic Verses 
• J. D. Salinger: Catcher in the Rye 
• John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath , East of Eden, Of Mice and Men 
• Patrick Suskind: Perfume 

Non-Fiction 

• Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 
• Bill Bryson: The Lost Continent / Notes from a Small Island 
• Alan Bennett: Writing Home 
• Truman Capote: In Cold Blood 
• Jenny Diski: Skating to Antarctica 
• Anna Funder: Stasiland 
• Alexander Masters: Stuart: A Life Backwards 
• Helen Macdonald: H is for Hawk 
• Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom 
• Solomon Northrop: Twelve Years a Slave 
• Jeannette Winterson: Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? 
• Xinran: What the Chinese Don’t Eat 

Poets: 

• Early: Beowulf, Caedmon’s Hymn, Dream of the Rood 
• Medieval Lyrics: Sir Orfeo Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman ;Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales (Wife of Bath, Merchant, Pardoner, Reeve, Miller, Knight, Nun’s Priest) 
• Elizabethan: Wyatt; Spenser; Sidney; Shakespeare; Jonson 
• Metaphysical: Donne; Herbert; Vaughan; Marvell 
• Restoration: Milton 
• Augustan: Butler; Dryden; Pope; Swift; Rochester 
• C18: Gray; Cowper; Crabbe; Burns; Goldsmith 
• Romantic: Blake; Clare; Wordsworth; Coleridge; Byron; Keats; Shelley 
• Victorian: Tennyson; Browning; Barrett-Browning; Arnold; Rossetti; Southey; Arnold; Emily Dickinson  
• Fin-de-siecle: Wilde; Swinburne; Symons;  
• Early C20: Blunden; Lawrence; Graves; de la Mare 
• War Poets: Brooke; Owen; Rosenberg; Sassoon 
• Modernist and Modern Armitage; Auden; Betjeman; Causley; Cope; cummings; Davies; Duffy; Eliot; Fanthorpe; Fenton; Frost; Gunn; Hardy; Harrison; Heaney; Henri; Hughes; Jennings; Larkin; Lochhead; Macneice; McGough; Mitchell; Motion; Patten; Plath; Raine – Kathleen and Craig; Sitwell; Smith Spender; Thomas – RS and Dylan; Walcott; Yeats; Zephaniah; Button Poetry on-line; Evan Boland; Kae Tempest: