The English Faculty is made up of 7 teachers covering a range of specialisms. We have four Literature specialists, one Language specialist and two Drama specialists.
The Department is led by Joseph O’Malley, who has taught at Wilnecote for two years and specialises in English Literature. His passions lie in Gothic Horror and Postcolonial Literature. He is supported by Curriculum Aspect Leader Kate Dellicott, a Drama specialist who has been teaching at Wilnecote for six years. Claire Bradshaw is our other Drama specialist and has also been teaching at Wilnecote for six years. She has a passion for Shakespeare and Media Studies. Our English Language Specialist, Pumm Dehele, is in her fourth year of teaching at Wilnecote. TeachFirst trainee Ellen Butler adds further Literature specialism to the department, with a particular passion for Romantic Poetry, the work of William Blake and Shakespeare. NQT and Literature specialist Emma Francis is a recent addition to our department. Deputy Headteacher and English Literature specialist Mark Thorogood rounds out the department.
Vision for English at The Wilnecote School
Curriculum Intent:
1. Foster a love of reading, and develop the habit of reading regularly and often for both pleasure and information.
2. Build an appreciation for a wide range of texts and forms of Literature from our heritage, as well as seminal world Literature texts, allowing them to understand the reach of English as a subject across time and place.
3. Promote opportunities for pupils to interact with and question the world around them in a critical manner, giving them the chance to develop spiritual, moral, social and cultural identities and become active participants in society.
4. Encourage the acquisition – and use of – a wide range of vocabulary, grammatical rules and linguistic conventions to allow them to articulate their thoughts and experiences confidently.
5. Develop pupils’ discursive skills and encourage an imaginative mind-set to allow pupils to engage with the world around them both critically and creatively.
6. Encourage pupils to question information that they are given and understand the power of language to create effect in an audience, how bias and personal viewpoints may change the use of language and to allow pupils to both use and deconstruct rhetorical devices.
7. Provide chances for pupils to use discussion to learn, having their thoughts and preconceptions challenged and giving them the opportunity to elaborate and adapt their language to allow for clear explanation of their ideas.
8. Enable pupils to draw links between the subject and their daily lives, promoting the relevance of English as a skill set. The curriculum has been designed with these cores aims in mind. The starting point was the National Curriculum and AQA schemes but several key
factors influenced the choice within this:
1. The desire to balance the range and depth of skills studied –The English National Curriculum covers a wide range of topics. To cover all of these within Key Stage 3 as unique and individual skills would require more time than we have available, so the interconnectivity of skill sets and subject matters is promoted to allow for pupils to understand one topic and the numerous ways that the skills within it might be applicable to their learning and lives in general.
2. The desire to promote a broader understanding of the world around them through critical thinking – The National Curriculum for English focuses on the skills that are to be developed within English, but it is a firm belief within the department that pupils should be encouraged to “develop culturally, emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually” through the selection of texts and subject matter designed to expand their horizons and challenge the way that they view the world. The aim of this is to allow pupils to formulate their own views and beliefs, and use the skills they have been developing to justify and defend their views.
3. Building on Key Stage 2 – Key Stage 2 focuses on encouraging a fluency in both reading and written expression with age-appropriate and suitably challenging texts. We aim to continue this with a push on understanding increasingly complex texts and the factors that inspired them to encourage broader reading of both fiction and non-fiction texts through cross-curricular links with other subjects.
4. Providing “stepping stones” to Key Stage 4 content – The AQA specification outlines a set of Assessment Objectives that pupils must meet in their examinations. Our Key Stage 3 curriculum is designed to provide insights into the skills and depth of study required through wider reading, the understanding of how the world around us affects the texts we read and vice versa. Pupils’ understanding of conventions of literary genre and form, as well as the difficulty and complexity of texts studied increase year upon year so that pupils are fully prepared to explore the GCSE texts in the required detail, without having to specifically cover the texts in Key Stage 3.
5. Balancing the different disciplines – the study of English Language and Literature are intertwined with each other, both containing transferrable skills. The links between Literature and Language are planned within our topics so that pupils are regularly exposed to a combination of fiction and non-fiction texts, and are engaged in a mixture of creative, analytical and discussion tasks (and dramatic ones, where appropriate) within units. This is to promote the connectivity and provide a broad coverage of these skills within the curriculum.
As a department, we are currently finalising the last of our KS3 schemes. We are also revisiting and refining assessments to ensure that knowledge and skills build effectively as planned.