English

The faculty

Staff

The English team is a forward-thinking collaborative department which always finds itself at the forefront of school developments in terms of innovations in teaching and learning. The team currently comprises ten highly committed, well qualified teachers. The current members of the team are:

Subject Intent 
To Know Well: The English faculty aspires to cultivate a vibrant intellectual community that nurtures critical thinking, creativity, and effective communication. We aim to inspire a deep appreciation for the richness of language, literature, and diverse cultural perspectives by ensuring that we read literature of quality, relevance and accessibility.  
To Think Well: By using the National Curriculum as our foundation, we have a coherent English curriculum consisting of innovative teaching, inclusive dialogue, and interdisciplinary collaboration. We strive to empower students to explore the power of words in shaping society and human experience –providing scope for discussion, debate and critique in an environment where opinion is welcome and valued. 
To Communicate Well: Our ambition is to equip students with the analytical and expressive skills needed for academic and professional success, fostering lifelong learning and a commitment to social responsibility in an increasingly globalised world. 

Students As Learners 
Every student makes progress because their teachers understand their circumstance and need and tailor learning to their prior knowledge. We provide a variety of opportunities to demonstrate their expertise and mastery of topics and skills in a safe and inclusive environment; we ensure that the skills achieved during any learning need to be revisited and interleaved to ensure deeper learning; we create learning loops and use retrieval practice and ‘Do Now’ activities to ensure that skills learnt are reviewed and embedded into schemes of learning and applied elsewhere when needed. 

Teachers As Learners 
As English teachers, we are adaptive and dynamic, constantly learning about our students and our subject. As lifelong learners, we are passionate, innovative, and inspirational; we model to our students what it is like to be intellectually curious, to ask questions, to challenge and to investigate. We appreciate the value of all teaching methods from technological to classroom: board work, questioning techniques, mini whiteboards, as will clear pace and structure to ensure routines, boundaries and goals. But above all, we aim to share our love of the subject of English in all its different forms: a love of words, reading, creativity and an appreciation of the power of the written and spoken word to persuade, inform, entertain and to evoke emotion. 

Through the teaching of English, we ensure students leave KJS with the ability to:

• Be confident, competent, and passionate communicators  
• Enjoy the challenges offered in the English curriculum and be confident in the study of all aspects of English, irrespective of prior attainment  
• Write successfully in a variety of forms and for a variety of purposes, choosing language for impact and effect  
• Write with grammatical and technical accuracy in all written work  
• Enjoy reading for pleasure across a range of genres and text types and to appreciate how excellent Literature has the power to inspire and change their world view  
• Think critically and analytically about the texts they encounter and thus encourage in them a process of enquiry and an eagerness to ask ‘Big Questions’ as they develop their Golden Knowledge in a specified area.
• Read critically and recognise and evaluate the significance of key linguistic techniques. 
 

Accommodation and Resources

There are seven dedicated, well-resourced English teaching rooms. Five are on one corridor and the other two are on the floor above. All English teaching rooms are furnished with Interactive Whiteboards which are fully utilised in delivering the excellent resources prepared in-house to ensure that the demands of the curriculum are met to a high standard in every aspect. 

During the last year the department has benefited from a range of new resources. These including an ever-growing wealth of literature that promotes academic excellence as well as reading for pleasure. The department is fully equipped with interactive whiteboards, mini whiteboards and visualisers ensuring that schemes of learning and classroom practice is fully interactive and engaging.  

The ethos of the English department is very much one centred on high expectations and mutual support. The department has operated a system of regular voluntary team briefings which have proved successful and popular because they contribute to the smooth running of the department and result in high quality outcomes which makes the day-to-day work of individual teachers easier. These outcomes include shared resourcing to which all team members contribute. 

Time Allocation

The school operates a 25-period two weekly timetable, with five 60-minute lessons per day.
Currently, in Years 7-9, students have seven lessons per fortnight, in Year 10 and 11, students have nine lessons per fortnight.

Schemes of Work

In Years 7-9, students are taught for seven periods over a two-week period. Schemes of Learning are designed to ensure that students have access to as wide a range of texts as possible in each year; each block of work focusing on a different text type and/or genre. The programme of study for each year group is carefully designed to ensure that all Assessment Focuses are progressively and effectively delivered. A comprehensive common assessment programme has been incorporated into the structure to ensure that students’ progress is accurately measured, and appropriate action is taken where there is underperformance identified through in-house standardisation and moderation procedures. In each year students complete a variety of Reading, Writing and Speaking and Listening activities, which build towards the teacher’s assessment of their performance at the end of the year. 

In Year 10 and 11, students are taught for nine periods over a two-week period. All students follow the AQA GCSE syllabus in both English Language and English Literature. 

Extra-Curricular Activities

The team aims to complement the students’ curriculum experience by offering opportunities to take part in extra-curricular activities. These include providing space and opportunities for homework participation for those pupils who would rather do this in school, additional workshop-based Period 6 revision for Year 11 to support achievement in line with, or beyond their grade ambitions. We are also building links with different performance groups to come in a perform curriculum texts, as well as engaging with whole school trip opportunities to provide and English to engage with where possible.  

The curriculum

Curriculum Intent

The English specific Curriculum Intent can be found here:

• English Intent

Assessment Guidance

The English approach to Assessment can be found here:

• English Assessment

Learning Journey

The English Curriculum Sequences can be found here:

• English Curriculum

Golden Knowledge Organisers

The school defines 'Golden Knowledge' as being the most important content to Remember and Understand, as it represents the main building blocks of the curriculum. 

The English 'Golden Knowledge' for each year group can be found here:

• Year 7 & 8
• Year 9 Much Ado About Nothing
• Year 9 Of Mice and Men
• Year 9 The Crucible
• Year 10-11 Language Grammar
• Year 10-11 Language Paper 1
• Year 10-11 Language Paper 2
• Year 10-11 Language Grade 7
• Year 10-11 Literature A Christmas Carol
• Year 10-11 Literature An Inspector Calls
• Year 10-11 Literature Romeo and Juliet
• Year 10-11 Literature Power and Conflict Poetry

Year on a page

The summary of each Year Group's curriculum can be found here:

• Years 7-11

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