English (Y7-13)

Our Curriculum Intent in English:

• Broad and Balanced: our curriculum ensures a broad and balanced study of English language and literature, incorporating a range of genres, historical periods, and cultural perspectives. It aims to foster a lifelong love for reading, writing, and critical thinking.
• Skills Development: we intend to equip students with a wide range of language and literary skills, including effective communication, analytical thinking and writing, creative expression, and the ability to engage with diverse texts from throughout the ages.
• Cultural Awareness: our curriculum promotes cultural understanding and inclusivity by exploring a variety of texts and perspectives, reflecting the rich diversity of our world.
• Personal Growth: we recognise the importance of English in developing students’ personal growth, nurturing their empathy, emotional intelligence, resilience, and fostering their ability to engage with complex, diverse and intellectual thinking.
• Catholic Social Teaching at the heart of what we do: Catholic social teachings, including solidarity, working for the common good, human dignity and respect are built in to everything that we do in English.

The way we implement our vision in English:

• High-Quality Texts: we carefully select high-quality literary and non-literary texts that engage and challenge students at every level, encouraging critical thinking, empathy, and personal reflection.
• Skills Progression: our curriculum ensures a clear progression of skills and knowledge throughout KS3 and KS4, building upon prior learning and preparing students for the demands of higher education or employment. Each scheme of learning has a core skill, as well as a sentence mastery structure that builds throughout the time at Painsley.
• Adaptive teaching: we employ a range of pedagogical strategies, teaching resources, and activities to cater to the diverse needs and abilities of our students, ensuring all individuals are supported and challenged appropriately.
• Literacy Development: we embed literacy skills across the curriculum, reinforcing reading comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, accurate writing, and spoken communication skills, empowering students to become confident and articulate individuals.

The impact of what we do:

• Attainment: our curriculum aims to raise academic attainment and achievement across all levels, enabling students to achieve their full potential in English language and literature.
• Progress and Aspirations: we measure and monitor individual progress to ensure students are making consistent strides in their learning journey with regular and rigorous assessment, both formatively in lessons and summatively at points throughout the year. We actively promote high aspirations, encouraging pupils to pursue further study or careers related to English as well as ensuring that pupils are well equipped for terminal examinations in KS4 and 5.
• Love for Literature: our curriculum seeks to ignite a passion for literature, creating lifelong readers and engendering a genuine appreciation for the power of storytelling and the beauty of language.
• Transferable Skills: we equip our pupils with transferable skills that extend beyond the English classroom, such as critical analysis, persuasive writing, effective communication, and creative problem-solving, preparing them for success in higher education and the world of work. Pupils have the opportunities to write in a variety of ways and genres, mirroring the vital nature of the subject in the 21st century world.

Our English curriculum:

In Year 7, pupils will study:

• Travel Writing: pupils will study the genre of travel writing, inclusive of the study of Painsley alumni, Levison Wood and his journeys around the world. Pupils will hone skills of punctuation and sentence construction when developing their own travel writing.
• Romeo and Juliet: pupils will study Shakespeare’s classic tragedy and will be introduced to the world of Shakespearean England and theatre, as well as the story of feuding families in Verona.
• ‘The Pearl’ by John Steinbeck: pupils will study the evocative tale of the pearl diver, Kino, and his family set in La Paz, Mexico in Steinbeck’s acclaimed twentieth century novella.
• Short Stories from other cultures: pupils will become accustomed to the narrative structure of short stories by studying a range of 20th and 21st century short stories written by authors from around the globe.
• War Poetry: from Wilfred Owen’s poems of trench warfare, to war in the 21st century, pupils are introduced to the poetic form when studying war poetry.