The Key Stage 3 English curriculum at William Ellis School

An outline of our central schemes of work follows. The department updates and adapts these units every year and the drama units, such as Hamlet and Othello, sometimes extend beyond a single half-term block. Each separate scheme of work is described in more detail on cover sheets given to students. These cover sheets also outline the key pieces of work to be completed and outline the assessment criteria used to track student progress (in part via a ‘midway’ task) and to make judgements of students’ work at the end of each unit.

The units combine to give students experience of working towards attainment targets for their year group that are described in terms of ‘age expected’ levels. A description of these attainment targets is included at the end of each year group outline.

Our core curriculum offer is as follows:

Year 7

Autumn term:
The class novel: Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman

Ekphrastic poetry: exploring poems inspired by works of art

Spring term:
Autobiography: ‘Writing our Lives’, including reading autobiographical writing by a diverse range of voices across three centuries

Drama unit: Hamlet: ‘The play’s the thing’

Summer term:
Classical journeys: ancient myths and legends

 

Attainment targets for students working at an ‘age-expected’ level:

By the end of Year 7 a student working at the age-expected level should be able to:

read a wide range of texts and identify how a writer establishes characters and themes and what the writer might intend; make inferences that are supported by evidence in a text and be able to express this understanding clearly in sustained writing, using key terminology when and where appropriate.

write imaginatively for a wide range of audiences and purposes that draws on and reflects his reading experience; learn strategies to organise his own writing (at sentence, paragraph and whole text level); use a wide range of vocabulary and accurate sentence punctuation and spelling.
 

listen with discrimination, showing attention to detail and willingness to accept, develop and challenge different points of view; speak for a range of purposes, using the appropriate language for the context; discuss ideas in ways that strengthen reading and writing skills.

Key terms linked to the Year 7 English units in order of the units:

 

 

Year 8

Autumn term:
The class novel: Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

Modern poetry: diverse voices (on the theme of growing up and change)

Spring term:
Short stories: ‘Colliding worlds’ – reading a collection of short stories and writing stories

Non-fiction: ‘Personal perspectives through time’: including voices from children writing in World War 2 and individuals’ writing linked to discoveries, space exploration and activism

Summer term:

Drama unit: an Oxford Playscripts adaptation of Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, followed by Milton’s Lucifer: telling the story of the rebel angel’s banishment from heaven using the illustrations of Doré

Speeches and other persuasive texts: powerful voices from the past and present

Key terms linked to the Year 8 English units in order of the units:
 

 

Attainment targets for students working at an ‘age-expected’ level:

By the end of Year 8 a student working at the age-expected level should be able to:

read a wide range of texts and explore (sometimes compare) how a writer establishes characters and themes and the historical, social, and cultural context behind this, and discuss what the writer might intend; make precise inferences that are supported by well selected evidence of linguistic and structural choices made, and be able to express this understanding clearly in sustained analytical and creative writing, using key terminology when and where appropriate.
 

write imaginatively and coherently for an increasingly wide range of audiences and purposes that draws on and reflects his reading experience; use a range of strategies to organise his own writing (sentence, paragraph and whole text level); use an increasingly wide range of vocabulary and accurate sentence punctuation and spelling.
 

listen with discrimination, showing attention to detail and willingness to accept, develop and challenge different points of view sensitively, sometimes with reference to specific contexts; speak for a range of purposes, using the appropriate language for the context; discuss challenging ideas in ways that strengthen reading and writing skills.

 

Year 9

Autumn term:
The class novel: Animal Farm by George Orwell
Identity poetry: diverse contemporary poetry, including work by contemporary performance  poets and the work of 21^st century poets including Kei Miller, Imtiaz Dharker, Caleb Femi, Kayo Chingonyi and Sophie Herxheimer.

Spring term:
Drama unit: Shakespeare’s Othello on stage and in film:  focusing on the RSC version directed by Iqbal Khan and the film adaptation directed by Laurence Fishburne

Writing unit: ‘Journeys’ – reading and writing from across fiction and non-fiction genres, leading to the end of Key Stage 3 English exam

Summer term:

Wider reading unit: reading Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan as a bridge to KS4

Key terms linked to the Year 9 English units in order of the units:
 

 

Attainment targets for students working at an ‘age-expected’ level:

By the end of Year 9 a student working at the age-expected level should be able to:

read a wide range of texts, sometimes comparatively, and examine how a writer establishes characters and themes and the historical, social, and cultural context behind texts, and discuss what the writer might intend; make precise and thoughtful inferences that are supported by well selected evidence of linguistic and structural choices made, and be able to express this understanding confidently and clearly in sustained analytical, evaluative and creative writing, using key terminology when and where appropriate.
 

write coherently, imaginatively and confidently, sometimes in essay form, for an increasingly wide range of audiences and purposes that draws on and reflects his reading experience; confidently use a wide range of strategies to organise his own writing (sentence, paragraph and whole text level); use an increasingly ambitious range of vocabulary and accurate sentence punctuation and spelling.

listen with discrimination, showing attention to detail and willingness to accept, develop and challenge different points of view sensitively, with references to specific contexts; speak for a range of purposes, including evaluatively, using the appropriate language for the context; discuss complex ideas in ways that strengthen reading and writing skills.

 

How can you help your son?

One of the most important things you can do is ensure your son has a rich and varied reading life, including fiction primarily, but also other sorts of texts. Talk to him whenever you can about his reading, and yours, take him to a local library to enrol for a reader’s ticket, and make time for library visits. Where you can, please take time to discuss issues with him too, for example current affairs, news stories, cultural events. Aim to make use of London’s free museums and galleries. The V&A museum or the Museum of London are brilliant places to enjoy and to find out about times past and social change, all topics that enrich our reading of English literature and non-fiction. On a more day-to-day basis, please still monitor private reading at home, or ask your son to read aloud if such practice has been recommended by his teacher or if you know it will help boost his confidence. Too often, such practices end too early. Please do aim to help your son make sensible (and limited) use of computers and games where they are not helpful to his work. Invaluable, too, is building in time to look through his exercise book with him, encouraging him to improve work or act on teacher feedback, or check and correct spellings (which you could help him to learn).