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.
Over the terms falling in 2020/21 the department has modified plans to cope with the changing circumstances over periods of learning from home, but our core curriculum offer, as experienced in school, 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
Summer term:
Classical journeys: an exploration of myths and legends and a walk through Dante’s Inferno
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.
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 (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.
Year 8
Autumn term:
The class novel: Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve or A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Modern poetry on the theme of life and change and growing up
Spring term:
Non-fiction: ‘Our Lives Now’: including voices from children writing in World War 2 and ‘writers writing for change’ in a range of genres
Drama unit: an Oxford Playscripts adaptation of Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
Summer term:
Short stories: a collection loosely based on the theme of ‘Turning-points and Consequences’
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.
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
Modern poetry on the theme of identity, including work by contemporary performance poets and the work of 21st century authors including Kei Miller and Imtiaz Dharker
Spring term:
Drama unit: Othello
Non-fiction unit: ‘Journeys’ – reading and writing from across fiction and non-fiction genres
Summer term:
Modern drama: reading An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley as a bridge to KS4
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 analyse 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.
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 far 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).