Our English curriculum at Paddington ensures all students will become confident, fluent readers and communicators, with an appreciation of how our language and literature inform, inspire and impact in the world beyond the classroom.
Reading is at the heart of our curriculum with text choices that are carefully sequenced and become progressively more challenging and complex to enable students to become confident, fluent readers. At the core of students’ studies are a diverse range of rich texts which expose students to complex themes, ideas and characters, and help to shape and challenge their own views of the wider world. We believe it is important that all students study these high-quality texts which also address universal ideas, and offer both a ‘mirror’ and a ‘window’ to the world in which we live.
We ensure that every student has a secure foundational knowledge of the English language, including a secure understanding of grammar and its importance in writing. We know the importance of students being able to write fluently and in a variety of contexts, and writing lessons focus on explicitly teaching and rehearsing the knowledge and skills required to do so confidently. We encourage discussion and debate around issues, and give students the tools to form an informed personal response. Modelling underpins every lesson in order to teach students how to communicate confidently and fluently when speaking and writing independently.
It is crucial that our students develop an appreciation of how our language and literature inform, inspire and impact in the wider world. Therefore, through our chosen texts, we expose all students to a wide range of forms, purposes and eras. Each text choice allows the opportunity for rich discussions around language, and its importance and purpose within both literature and the wider world. We explicitly teach vocabulary and grammar to develop students’ confidence with using and applying language in different contexts both inside and outside of the classroom, and our students are encouraged to question writers’ views and opinions, as well as their own, to better understand the world around them.
Key Stage 3 overview
Year 7 is grounded in the exploration of character and the conventions of writing. This builds on students’ knowledge and understanding of the subject from primary school, and consolidates key concepts and skills needed for Year 8 and beyond. We then build on characterisation in Year 8 when students consider in greater detail the writer behind the texts and their authorial intention, as well as the writer's conscious use of language and structure to create meaning. Year 9 consolidates students’ prior learning from Year 7 and Year 8 and moves to focus on critiquing and interpreting texts; analysing them in detail and constructing written essays which explore and analyse layers of meaning within texts, across different genres and time periods.
Year 7
Students in Year 7 begin by exploring the history of storytelling, from the myths of the ancient Greeks to the heroic legends of Beowulf and Sir Gawain. They learn the basics of good English writing; for example, how to identify the main clause in a sentence, how to use quotations correctly, and how to confidently plan and paragraph their work. After this, students move on in the chronology of English literature, studying Shakespeare’s The Tempest and learning how stagecraft can tell us about characters’ relative statuses and motivations. Finally, Year 7 are introduced to non-fiction writing and rhetoric, which leads into a study of Orwell’s Animal Farm. Throughout Year 7 the focus is on writing beautiful, grammatically accurate sentences, and creative writing is taught throughout to support their studies.
Year 8
At the beginning of Year 8, students learn about the sonnet form in Elizabethan England to prepare them for their study of Romeo and Juliet, which deepens their understanding of stagecraft. They learn how to craft an essay about a character across a text and how to include contextual ideas about tragedy. Next, students move on to texts set in London during the Victorian era - Pygmalion and Oliver Twist - building their vocabulary about class disparities and the marginalisation of the poor. Finally, students move to the modern era, understanding the structural and linguistic choices made by writers of the modern short story.
Year 9
Students begin Year 9 by studying the Gothic genre, including Jekyll and Hyde and a selection of poetry, deepening their understanding of motifs and patterns across texts, as well as revisiting their learning about Victorian literature. They learn how to form a coherent and convincing argument, and write essays with a clear thread throughout. Next, students explore literature from World War One, including non-fiction, poetry, and a play (Journey’s End) to develop their critical view of how texts interact with the time periods in which they are written. Finally, students learn about the history of rhetoric and how it is used in fiction and non-fiction texts through their study of a selection of speeches and articles.
Year 10
In Year 10, students read the two studied plays (Macbeth and An Inspector Calls) and 19th century text (A Christmas Carol), focusing on securing their knowledge of characters, themes and authorial intention. Power and Conflict themed anthology poetry is embedded across the year through one lesson per fortnight. Students continue to develop their close reading through their study of an anthology of fiction extracts, which supports their understanding of fiction texts, and enables them to be able to comment on the impact of language and structure within these. This includes close reading, skimming and scanning, inference, language and structure analysis, evaluation, and planning. Students also develop their knowledge and understanding of grammar from Key Stage 3 by writing and editing a descriptive narrative piece, focusing on the structure, imagery and vocabulary choices that writers make.
Year 11
In Year 11, students consolidate their knowledge of their studied texts and study them in more depth, evaluating the different interpretations and contexts of texts in more detail, as well as the author’s craft and stagecraft. Students also hone their skills of language analysis, synthesis and comparison through their study of non-fiction extracts from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as how to plan, write and edit an impactful and convincing piece of non-fiction writing, targeted to a specific audience and purpose. Students explore Unseen Poetry in more depth at this point, as they have a secure knowledge base from Year 9 and Year 10 to be able to approach this with confidence, as well as the skills and knowledge necessary to effectively analyse and evaluate unseen poems, and offer interesting and insightful interpretations. This further supports our students in being able to write critically and to draw our perceptive ideas and viewpoints within their studies texts, giving them a strong foundation for further study at Key Stage 5.
Key Stage 5
Students begin their study of English Literature with two drama texts: A Streetcar Named Desire and Othello. These texts build upon their knowledge of stagecraft from Key Stage 4, and begin to introduce them to critical interpretations of texts. The focus then moves to further developing the skills of comparison of two different writers’ crafts through the study of two prose texts and comparing modern poetry, as well as how to form and develop a conceptual argument and layered, more nuanced interpretations of texts. In Year 13, students explore the Romantic poetry of Keats and the surrounding context in depth, exploring the significance of this poetry today. They also complete an independent NEA, writing about two prose texts that they have studied in their own time, and developing their ability to take ownership of their work, to manage their time, research and explore critical interpretations, and effectively draft and redraft a piece, which supports in setting them up for success at degree level.