English
Back to Subjects MenuWhat is the Intent of the English Curriculum?
In English, our curriculum is balanced between the knowledge and skills needed for students to be successful both at The Marsh Academy as well as in their futures.
We are an experienced and passionate team of teachers, who bring our own subject knowledge and enthusiasm for English to inspire students. We intend to develop our students into independent and confident young people who will be prepared for GCSE, A Level along with further challenges outside of a school setting.
We are confident that our curriculum is both challenging and coherent, crafted by subject experts to ensure that all pupils achieve broad and deep subject expertise. We also strive to empower our students by providing them with the skills required to critically analyse and evaluate to make informed judgements. As well as this, we encourage students to be creative and to develop their ability to craft extended writing pieces as well as to continue to develop the skills required to read independently.
Across the key stages, students in English explore and study a breadth of literature and non-fiction texts which span different eras and cultures, written by authors from diverse backgrounds and contexts. We also understand the necessity to advance student’s cultural capital, as well as sparking their passions for a love of literature; we aim to inspire a love of reading that reaches far beyond the classroom. We endeavour to do this by ensuring our curriculum exposes students to a range of texts including poetry, prose, and non-fiction. Furthermore, we continually encourage students to improve their oracy skills and practice their ability to speak at length independently.
RATIONALE
Throughout their Marsh Academy journey, students will read a variety of texts allowing them for formulate a stronger understanding of a text’s contextual factors (Greek tragedies, Elizabethan Victorian and contemporary), narrative, purpose as well as making connections between the text and the author. They will explore how attitudes and ideas have changed over time and how this can shape the meaning within a text. Another key aim is to create and develop confident and eager readers which will play a crucial part in their academic successes. Therefore, we aim to expose students to a wide range of texts and encourage reading for pleasure. During this process, students will be exposed to new vocabulary, allowing them to become even better readers. Each lesson will focus on strongly correlated vocabulary, again, allowing them to access challenging literary heritage texts and how explore how it is used to aid meaning. Each unit has a clear purpose that is mapped to feed through each key stage, through to GCSE success.
Students will have the opportunity to explore their imagination, creativity and originally whilst studying grammar, and in particular, their writing skills. They will not only explore various devices; they will also learn how to convey their ideas accurately using extensive vocabulary, grammar and punctuation. They will have a deeper understanding of various text forms and begin to compose multi-faceted narratives; allowing them to use these skills to succeed in all subjects as well as their GCSEs. By the end of each key stage, students should be able to write about texts and ideas accurately; using revisited knowledge continually so that it remains within their long-term memory. An example of this is the re-cap element of each lesson which revisits a term or concept from the lesson before, enabling students to continue revising information. The way this is achieved is ensuring that knowledge is cumulative to ensure students know more and remember more. Each strand within a unit will build on what has been taught previously and students will revise key elements continually; this will allow the knowledge to increase and remain.
The AQA specification is delivered throughout key stage four whilst students’ study both Language and Literature, with the intention of providing the content which will give students the confidence, skills, knowledge and understanding that they will require in their future lives, whether it be the world of work or further education, as an in-depth culture awareness of the world they live in.
KS3 (Year 8)KS4 (Years 10 - 11) English Literature
