English
Our curriculum seeks to produce independently minded, articulate, and well-informed students who are ready for the challenges of the modern world. Building on the foundations of timeless classics, the same type of texts which inspired our most famous student of the 20th Century, Joan Littlewood, we seek to find answers to the questions of today in the poetry, drama, and prose of the past, as well as celebrating the diversity of our multicultural school. By engaging with the universal truths found in writers such as Shakespeare, Brontë and Keats, we endeavour to widen and deepen their cultural capital and connect it to the texts and topics of today.
Through raising their skills in reading, writing and oracy we seek to empower them with the means of communicating the answers they have discovered with a confident, clear and personal voice.
One example of this can be found in our teaching of challenging novels at Key Stage 3. In Year 7, we study ‘A Christmas Carol’, allowing students to follow and track the transformation of Scrooge, as well as introducing them to the more demanding language and syntax of a Victorian text. This is developed in Year 8, where we study ‘Jamaica Inn’ and consider how Mary Yellan is presented as an unconventional woman of her time and analyse how Du Maurier created tension in the novel. Finally, in Year 9, we read another 19th century novel from local author Charles Dickens – ‘Oliver Twist’ and focus on Dickens’ ability to use descriptive language to evoke setting and character. We also promote independence of thought and metacognition through our long-standing series of Let’s Think in English lessons developed with our long-term partner King’s College, London.
Journeying onwards, we develop the pupils’ analytical and creative skills through the teaching of the GCSE Literature and Language content to all. We begin with a modern fable ‘Lord of the Flies,’ allowing students to engage with Britain’s complex post-war legacy; ideas about power and leadership and to have philosophical debates surrounding human nature. This is further developed through our study of ‘Macbeth’ which serves to embed students’ knowledge of Shakespearean tragedy developed at KS3 and to prepare for Aspects of Tragedy at A’ level. With these texts we foster their independent learning skills, developing their skills of inference and analysis to help unlock the questions; this prepares students for the challenge of tackling ‘Jane Eyre’ in Year 11, which builds on their knowledge of the rise of the heroine within English Literature and allows students to explore contemporary issues through the lenses of Feminism and Postcolonialism. Finally, we prepare for the Language paper through explicit teaching of reading and writing skills, developed initially through their studies at KS3, then built upon in the KS4 curriculum. We also introduce students to a wide range of fiction and non-fiction texts throughout their curriculum, to prepare them for the unseen element of these papers and the challenges of life in a diverse city.
At A’ Level we seek to complement their study of Shakespearean tragedy with ‘Othello,’ a text which allows them to explore very local issues of race and violence through the prism of a traditional tragedy, as well as studying aspects of tragedy in Keats and Miller. We foster their independent learning skills by setting them a unit on independence and theory in which they must choose a text to analyse of their own choice through a critical lens We have deliberately chosen a text in Year 13 in which a teenage girl struggling with her school/life balance becomes the protagonist in a 21st Century postmodern novel for our Elements of Crime paper.
Those students who have stayed with us on our learning journey will therefore be able to see how Mary Yellan and Beatrice at Key Stage 3, have become Jane Eyre and Lady Macbeth at GCSE level before finally metamorphosing into Desdemona and Reggie Chase at A’ Level.