English

Purpose of Study

We believe life is about connection.  At Oasis Silvertown, we give our young people strong connections to history, to literature and to each other through the study of English literature and language at all levels and ages.

-        Ensuring every student can communicate effectively.

We believe that all young people deserve the right to be excellent communicators because only with good communication can we embed ourselves in our families and communities.  In the English department, we strive to empower our young people to be able to tell their friends and family what they think, feel and believe eloquently.  They will also feel confident in expressing their opinions to their colleagues in the future at work and business.  Furthermore, we strive to enable our young people to be astute and careful listeners and readers, to have a true interest in other people’s ideas, feelings and thoughts: we see this as true communication. 

-         Igniting passion for literature, culture and social history; sparking and blazing imagination.

Our second core purpose is for our young people to have a life-long love of literature and the culture of our world.  We study books so students will enjoy them, and so they love reading and literature, however, we also read rich literature to gain cultural capital and develop a true interest in the world around us.  For this reason we believe a love of the subject of English is integral to be an invested and active citizen of the world.

Aims

We believe students have a fire inside them, a passion and vigour for life that literature and creative writing can liberate.  Our aims are for students to:

·        Develop a love of reading a wide range of books, novels, plays, articles and poems and to spread this passion through their friends, community and future colleagues.  We believe that doing this will make their lives far more enriched and enjoyable for now and for the future, supporting their life-long health and wellbeing.

·        Achieve a sound understanding of all types of culture, such as: music, art, food, and politics by reading about it in fiction and non-fiction texts and learning about it through our contextual teaching.

·        Gain a deep understanding of social history by studying texts ranging from Shakespeare, through the Victorian era, up to the 20 and 21^st Century.

·        By analysing texts imaginatively and deeply with their English teacher, students can reclaim the wonder of their childish imagination, developing them into innovative creators, engaging storytellers and sophisticated analysts of the future.

·        Enjoy the lifelong enrichment of creating their own poems, stories, speeches, letters and articles.

·        Be highly literate. They can punctuate, spell and structure sentences, paragraphs and whole texts accurately and effectively and to use this accomplished literacy to be more successful in all subject areas.

·        Be able to speak to a group or audience eloquently and confidently.

·        Become critical thinkers who read and listen thoughtfully and can use writing and note taking to organise their thoughts to form an opinion.

English Curriculum Overview

·         All year 7 students have 5 hours of English a week.  1 of these is a grammar and writing lesson and 1 is a guided reading for pleasure lesson.

·         Year 8s have 4 hours of English a week; 1 of these is an advanced grammar and writing unit, building on their learning from year 7.

	Autumn Term	Spring 1	Summer 1                           Summer 2
7	Oliver Twist (Dickens)	A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare)	Modern Poetry	The Daydreamer (McEwan)
8	Sherlock Holmes (Conan-Doyle)	The Tempest (Shakespeare)	Animal Farm (Orwell)
9	Macbeth (Shakespeare)	An Inspector Calls (Priestley)	AQA Poetry Anthology (power and conflict theme)
10	Jekyll and Hyde (Stevenson)	GCSE Literature Revision	Creative Writing
11	GCSE language study and literature Revision interleaved	GCSE language study and literature Revision interleaved	Revision

 

	Shakespeare texts – building to Macbeth
	Victorian Novel – Building to Jekyll and Hyde
	Poetry – building to “power and conflict” poetry
	Modern text – building to An Inspector Calls