ENGLISH - Year 7 FACULTY TEAM Contact: s.hancox@johnbright.uk Head of Faculty: Sally Hancox Topic title and unit. Year 7 curriculum/what LAND - Conflict Poetry Novel: Private Peaceful Autumn War Poetry Skills:learning to craft your writing. Students will be taught how to set-up their argument in an essay. Class Reader: Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo Home learning: Students will work on a project in which they research the lives of young men in the locality who fought in the war. They will choose from a range of tasks to create a soldier profile. - students will produce a piece of emotive writing about life in the trenches. - students will analyse how a writer s attitude is presented in a war poem. - students will be given a question based on an extract from the novel Read their drafts and consider how engaged you are. Have they made basic errors in their writing? Support them with their research. Is there anyone in your family history who fought in the First World War? Buy a Morpurgo book for their stocking this Christmas. E.g. War Horse (WW1), An Eagle in the Snow (WW2) AIR Birds Spring Students will be learning about the wildlife in their local area. They will then deliver an individual presentation. Oracy - Individual presentation and group discussions Conduct the RSPB Garden Bird Watch in January. A Midsummer Night s Dream A Midsummer Night s Dream After acting out a summary of the whole play, students will analyse a key scene and explore one character. They will work in groups to hotseat the character and develop their own interpretations of the scene. Students will also be looking at Shakespeare s use of language. Ask students to teach you about the birds they see in your local area. Listen to students delivering their presentations. Ask questions to help them explore ideas.
SEA Safety Survival Summer A Non-fiction reading. Students will learn about leadership through studying Shackleton s Endurance expedition. Year 7 Exam - Students will be examined on their reading and writing skills. The exam will be done in the hall under exam conditions. Students will take on the role of an expedition member and will write letters and diaries. (This will build on the recount skills taught earlier in the year.) B Students will be learning about plastic pollution in the sea and will be writing to persuade a target audience to reduce plastic use. Work with students to look at ways of reducing plastic at home.
ENGLISH - Year 8 FACULTY TEAM Contact: shancox@johnbright.uk Head of Faculty: Sally Hancox Topic title and unit. Year 8 curriculum/what Where We Live Autumn Students will be exploring a range of texts on Llandudno, Conwy, north Wales and Wales. They will cover a range of topics from adventure, history, landscape and tourism. What We Read Spring Students will be reading a novel chosen by their teacher. As they read, they will be analysing the writer s techniques and applying them to their own writing. There will be a focus on sentence structures. They will have to respond to a text answering the question: Explain what there is to do in according to writer s name. An essay. Explain what makes where we live special. The teacher will stop reading at a key point in the novel and the students will have to write the next extract in the style of the writer.. Encourage students to take pictures on their phones of places you visit that they could use for their homework. Talk to students about places that are special to your family and why. Collect tourist brochures and leaflets and read together. Help them to identify the difference between facts and opinions. Ask regular questions about how they are progressing with their homework project. Ask questions about the novel. Encourage your son/daughter to have a novel that they are reading independently at home. Read together. Take them to the town library to choose a book/explore titles by the same author they are reading class.
How we Communicate Summer Students will be learning how to deliver an individual presentation. They will focus on delivery, body language, how to sound confident and how to use cue cards. A 4 minute presentation to the class Listen to presentations. Encourage students to practise and ask them probing/difficult questions. Year 7 Exam - Students will be examined on their reading and writing skills. The exam will be done in the hall under exam conditions.
ENGLISH - Year 9 FACULTY TEAM Contact: shancox@johnbright.uk Head of Faculty: Sally Hancox Topic title and unit. Year 9 curriculum/what Teenagers - Poetry Autumn 1 Literature: Students will begin by exploring the theme and working with the poet, Martin Daws, to write their own poem. This process will then help them to analyse poems and build sufficient confidence to write a comparison of two poems. Students will be taught how to discuss effectively in groups. They will understand how speaking and listening is assessed at GCSE. This will be linked to a written assessment. Write about both poems and their effect on you. An essay. Explain the challenges that teenagers face today. Encourage students to share their ideas with you - you may mutually agree on some key ideas to do with teenagers that they could use in their poem! Have you got a favourite poem? Perhaps one you remember studying at school? Discussion with students will help them prioritise their ideas for their essay. Help students by proofreading their work. Autumn 2 Parents and children Poetry comparison Autumn 2 Homework Becoming a Better You Students are being set weekly challenges to complete and record Shakespeare Spring Literature: Students will be reading a Shakespeare play (different from the one they will study for GCSE ) and learning how to analyse language/themes/characters. Students will have a range of challenging texts on the subject of Shakespeare. They will be taught how to access these texts using GCSE style questions. Students will have an essay question based on a key them in their play. (This question will mirror the style used for the GCSE controlled assessment.) Look for versions of the play on Netflix/Youtube or even live, locally! Students will have a homework project that explores the relevance of Shakespeare today. Ask students to teach you the GCSE questions.
Speaking and Listening - Group discussion Summer Students will learn the skills for the GCSE controlled assessment task. (10% of the final grade for English Language) They will analyse several examples of group discussion and understand what the success criteria looks and sounds like. Year 9 Exam - Students will be examined on their reading and writing skills. The exam will be done in the hall under exam conditions. Discuss issues around the meal table. Look at current affairs and try to get a debate going! Some programmes are useful too e.g. The Apprentice
ENGLISH - Year 10 Topic title and unit. Year 10 curriculum/what Poetry Autumn Literature: Students will build on poetry analysis skills learnt in Year 9. They will understand how to analyse and compare poems. This will then lead into a controlled assessment where poems are compared by theme. Students will gain an overview of the GCSE course. This will be applied by working through a series of exam questions with their teacher. Understanding will also be gained of the importance of writing accuracy and grammar which is worth 50% of the final grade. Write about both poems and their effect on you. Poetry Controlled Assessment How to plan effectively to either: Narrate Explain The drafting process Read the poems with your son/daughter. Get them to teach you about the subject matter, themes and ways in which the poet has written the poem. Students cannot draft this CA with the teacher but they should practise writing their own draft at home. Look through work from all subjects. Does your son/daughter make the same grammatical errors? Help them to identify these and consistently expect high standards when reading their work. What errors can you spot when out and about. Talk about these e.g. incorrect use of apostrophes on shop signs. Shakespeare Spring Literature: Students will be reading Romeo and Juliet and studying the theme of parent/child relationships : Shakespeare controlled assessment (this will complete the two controlled assessments they have to do for Literature.) You could discuss with your son/daughter the relevance of Shakespeare today. What have they learnt about parent/child relationships from the play? Students will be repairing their mock exam and learning skills for the Unit 3 exam. Keep a continued focus on writing accuracy. Remember, this makes up 50% of the final grade for English Language.
Speaking and Listening Summer Students will be learning how to deliver confident individual presentations to their peers. GCSE Controlled Assessment (10% of final grade) Listen to their presentations. Ask probing questions. Discuss times when you may have had to speak to an audience. Discuss why this is such an important life skill. Watch the Dragon s Den together. Analyse presentations. ENGLISH - Year 11 Topic title and unit. Year 11 curriculum/what GCSE Literature Unit 2 Autumn Literature: An Inspector Calls - J.B.Priestley (play) Essay on the play Get the York Revision guides. Discuss society in Britain pre and post World War 1 and World War 2. Changes to the lives of women in particular. Get your son/daughter to teach you what they are learning in class (even if you already know it!) GCSE Language Unit 2 Students will be reflecting on what they learnt in Year 10 and carrying out focused repair of question types that they need to improve. Write an essay explaining why money is important to teenagers. Look through work from all subjects. Does your son/daughter make the same grammatical errors? Help them to identify these and consistently expect high standards when reading their work. What errors can you spot when out and about. Talk about these e.g. incorrect use of apostrophes on shop signs.
Oracy Unit 1 Unit 2 Spring Students have completed the Literature course and will be revising this next term. Students will be taught how to deliver an individual presentation on a subject they can choose from the following topics provided by the exam board: Oracy: Individual presentation (delivered in class) Support students with their preparations. Get them to deliver their presentation to you - encourage them to practise a lot! Ask questions based on their presentation. Wales Leisure Science and Technology World of Work Citizenship Students will also spend time in lessons focusing on the skills that they are weak in (based on their November mock exam.) Ask to see their forensic booklets. Get them to teach you the successful ways to answer questions. Ask them what errors they commonly make in their writing. Look out for these in their other subject books. Demand excellence in writing quality - remove distractions!