English: Key Stage 3

Year 7 Scheme of Work Summary

7

What Pupils Will Learn

Skills That are Built On

Prejudice in Literature

Students in this unit begin to explore the theme of prejudice in the novel Stone Cold, exploring the treatment of others in society. They will build on English lessons from KS2, reading a full novel as a class and engaging with the full plot. This will be the first exploration of the theme of prejudice which will be repeated in different class novels across KS3 and their GCSE studies. Students will explore the themes of homelessness, isolation, friendship and growing up in detail. Students will begin to trace these themes across the novel, looking at a range of extracts that present the theme.

During this unit, students will be introduced to the world of literature and analytical writing. They will build on comprehension skills acquired at primary school and use a text to gain their own interpretation. Students will look at themes across a novel and be able to make inferences about their presentation. Students will begin to consider the importance of narrative perspective and experimenting with this in their own writing. This scheme will lay the foundation for further literature studies and exploring themes and characters across a range of literature texts.

Power in Literature

Students will study key scenes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth alongside poems that present the theme of power. They will be taught key contextual factors that influenced writing; the different features of play vs prose vs verse writing and explore some of the complexities behind Shakespeare’s language. Students will be able to explore the presentation of power across Macbeth and the poems, analysing and comparing how these representations are created.  Students will explore the characters of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, and Macduff alongside a selection of nature poems.

Students will build on from their literature learning of the first unit and begin to explore the theme of power, particularly through symbolism. Students will start looking at Shakespeare’s tragedy writing which will continue throughout their study of Shakespeare. In their study of Shakespeare, students will focus primarily on character, and character development across a text and exploring the writer’s intentions with any character changes. They will also begin to explore different poems linked to the theme of poems and the poetic features used in these. This is the first opportunity for students to explore the presentation of gender within a Literature text. Students will begin to explore the importance of context on an audience’s understanding of a text.

Celebrating Cultures

Students will be emerged in different cultures whilst they explore extracts from stories written from different countries and learn about significant and inspirational figures from across the world whilst using these as stimulus for their own writing. Students will use images, scenarios, and the world around them as inspiration for their own descriptive creative writing, thinking about how they can use language effectively. Students will also develop their non-fiction writing, exploring how they use rhetoric language to persuade an audience.

Students will build on the creative writing skills they will have attained at primary school. Students will focus descriptive writing and using vocabulary to heighten the reader’s experience alongside non-fiction speeches and specifically the language they can use to persuade. They will develop their spelling, punctuation, and grammar to enhance their writing which will be skills they utilise throughout their schooling.

Year 8 Scheme of Work Summary

8

What Pupils Will Learn

Skills That are Built On

Gothic Literature

Students will begin to look at the gothic genre in this exploration of The Woman in Black and zoom in on how writer’s create tension and fear in their gothic writing. They will build on their theme analysis from Stone Cold and analyse in more detail the writer’s choices. Within this scheme students will look at structural changes within a text and begin to analyse these choices within their written responses. Students will use their analysis of The Woman In Black to develop their own fiction witing, with a focus on narrative skills Students will focus predominantly on how to structure a narrative effectively to engage their reader whilst implementing the typical features of the gothic genre. Students will explore how to embed features to create tension and suspense.

Students will continue to develop their inference skills in this scheme that they established in year 7. They will now further develop their ability to analyse to writer’s choices and to consider why these choices might have been made and the writer’s intentions. In this scheme students will begin to look at the whole novel and selecting key points, moving away from focusing on extracts. Students will continue to develop their creative writing skills. Students will focus primarily on a narrative style of writing and the structural features they can embed into their narrative writing to maintain a clear sense of direction. Students will be introduced to new genres of writing that they have not yet explored and develop their understanding of different genres of writing and features typical of these and how they can use these in their own writing. They will continue to develop their vocabulary

Love and Identity

Students will study key scenes from Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night. They will continue to explore the importance of context in understanding ideas presented within the literary text. Students will approach the play with a more thematic approach and look at different events that contribute to themes within the play, particularly focused on gender and love. Alongside this, Students will study poems linked by the theme of identity. They will continue to develop their analysis of poems ensuring there is a focus on poetic devices, and they will begin to explore the forms of poetry and the impact this could have. Students will begin to compare the presentation of identity and love in this scheme and look at effective ways of comparing the ideas presented in two different texts.

Students will continue to explore Shakespeare’s canon, this time moving into comedy writing and features typically found in the plays of this genre. Students will develop the thematic analysis and trace how these are developed by a writer. Students will focus in more detail on the importance of context on someone’s understanding and develop their understanding of universal themes in a literature text. This unit continues to build on poetry work with a changed focus from power to identity. Students again will be tasked with analysing the language, form and structure of identity poems and the effect these features have on their understanding of the poem. Students will begin to explore comparison in this scheme of work and rather than looking at the poems in isolation, will be required to compare poems and compare themes across poems and the play.

The Detective Genre

Students will look at Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of Four, during this unit and use these to further fine-tune their evaluative and critical writing. Students will explore how themes and characters are presented in and will continue to form their own opinions on the presentation of these ideas in shorter extracts within the stories. Students will continue to use the text as a stimulus for their own creative writing, fiction and non-fiction.

Students will use older texts to continue explore evaluative and critical writing. They will continue to create their own interpretations of the text and explore how a full range of methods support their understanding and the writer’s intentions. Students will need to use the skills they have learnt about in Celebrating Cultures, this time using longer extracts as a focus to their responses. By exploring older stories, students will begin interaction with older language that will prepare them for their 19^th century novel study in year 10.

Year 9 Scheme of Work Summary

9

What Pupils Will Learn

Skills That are Built On

Dystopian Literature

Students will explore the dystopian genre in this module both to enhance their critical analysis and inspire their own fiction creative writing. Whilst exploring the dystopian genre, students will unpick extracts focusing on the writer’s intentions and how they fulfil the requirements of the genre. In their own writing, students will experiment with the language and atmosphere presented in this genre and how they can use this in their own writing. Students will continue to explore creative devices that will enhance their writing that have been built on in their previous creative writing work. Students will look in detail at features of scenario writing and how they can use their descriptive and narrative approaches in this style of writing. 

Students will continue to develop their understanding of different genres and this will be their first introduction to the dystopian genre. They will continue to develop their creative writing, now focusing on a different genre of writing and how the different methods will support the conventions on this genre. Students will be introduced in more detail to scenario writing and be required to ‘describe a time’ or ‘write a story about a time’. Students will be exposed to extracts of writing, similarly to previous creative writing modules they will need to explore how other writers have used different methods and how they can replicate this in their own writing. 

Voices in Literature`

Students will explore the verse novel Black Flamingo and use this to enhance their critical writing. They will continue their understanding of gender and identity previously analysed in a range of schemes and explore a modern presentation of gender and sexuality. This will also offer them an alternative perspective of race and modern issues linked to this theme.  Whilst exploring these different themes, students will also look at developing and communicating their own viewpoint in non-fiction writing. Students will look at a range of forms of non-fiction writing and explore the differences between these forms of writing. They will also explore debate in the topic and how to campaign their ideas in this form.

Students will be introduced to narrative writing structured as verse and will use this to explore in more detail the importance of structure. They will continue to look at their evaluative writing and forming critical interpretations of novels. Students will develop the detail of their critical, focusing on how they can unpick and analyse the methods used by writers within the text. Students will continue to develop their non-

fiction writing and writing for a purpose. They will look at the importance of audience and how they can engage an audience in spoken language. These skills will prepare them for the forms of writing in their GCSE non-fiction paper and being able to adapt writing to match the task.

Romeo and Juliet  

This will be the students first engagement with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet which they will revisit in year 10 as a GCSE text. Students will explore the play both thematically and tracing the character development across the plot point, looking at key scenes in detail. Students will explore Romeo, Juliet, Lord Capulet, The Nurse, and Friar Lawrence in more detail and trace these characters across the play.

Students will explore in more detail character development across a play and consider how the themes in a play link to an understanding of their character. They will receive an extract-based question and be required to discuss this alongside the rest of the play to best show their understanding of the character. Students in this module will be required to discuss language, form and structure and how this contributes to their understanding and bring all of this method analysis together in their response. They will continue to explore context and universal ideas and think about how this links to their interpretation of the characters in the text.

Unseen Poetry

Unseen Poetry

This will be the start of GCSE studies for the students who will look at AQA Unseen Poetry. Students will look at a full range of themes across a range of styles of poems and need to develop their independence in creating and explain their interpretation of the poems. Students will look at comparing methods used in two unseen poems.

Students will use the work they have completed in previous poetry exploration to be able to independently analyse and discuss poems. There will be no linked theme to the texts and students will be required to access a range of different poems. Students will develop their analysis of language, form and structure and writing about these together in an extended report. Students will be required to look at their comparative skills again, this time comparing methods across two unseen poems.