Curriculum Intent
English at Telford Park School gives every pupil a voice. Our aim is that pupils leave us able to read a demanding text, to write with control for a reader who matters, and to say what they think clearly enough to be believed.
We want pupils to meet books they would never have picked up on their own, from Greek myths in Year 7 to Dickens, Orwell and Shakespeare later on. New learning is taught in small steps, and every lesson begins by checking the knowledge pupils need, so that gaps are closed before anything new is added. Extended writing appears in every unit, because writing is how a reader proves they have understood. This is deliberate: working memory is small, so we introduce a few new ideas at a time and return to them again and again until they are held in long-term memory.
Nothing in English is taught on its own. The myths of Year 7, the detective fiction and war poetry of Year 8 and the Gothic and Animal Farm of Year 9 all build the same habits: read closely, notice the choices a writer has made, and say so in writing. Those habits carry pupils into GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature, where they study Macbeth, A Christmas Carol, An Inspector Calls and the Power and Conflict poetry anthology. They are the habits that let a young person argue a case and be understood, long after they leave us. Pupils meet the words of a text, such as Gothic, tyranny and allegory, and use them in writing of their own before they are asked to judge the book. Alex Quigley argues that nobody thinks clearly in language they do not yet own, so the vocabulary is taught before the judgement is asked for.