English

1. Overall subject intent

English provides a reading-rich and carefully sequenced, knowledge-rich curriculum allowing students a window to the world beyond their immediate environment. It simultaneously offers a chance to reflect on their own lives, as well as the experiences and lives of others.  We encourage students to develop their literacy skills enabling them to maximise their potential and to have a profound understanding of the beauty of communication, whether spoken or written, as part of the human experience.

2. Are there annual events that take place within the subject or do you do something different that makes your subject stand out?

In English, we strive to give students experiences outside of their day-to-day lives and have hosted author visits with our primary and Key Stage 3 students, organised theatre trips to the Theatre Royal and had theatre groups travel to our school to perform Shakespeare’s Macbeth. We also promote World Book Day each year and share our love of reading with our students.

3. Special in-school facilities (labs, library with librarian, instruments, design/tech equipment etc)

In school, we have a well-stocked library with its own dedicated librarian who supports our students to choose texts and is always happy to discuss the books that our students select and which is open both during lesson time and throughout break and lunch. Alongside this, we also have a subscription to the Schools Library Service, allowing our students to request texts which we aren’t in our current catalogue. 

4. Any careers and stakeholder involvement in curriculum planning and delivery e.g. visits from authors, to universities, from industry, community projects (identify the year group if applicable)

Each year we host visits from local authors, including one of the authors in our year 5 curriculum. We have also hosted detectives from Northumbria Police as part of our unit on detective fiction and have attended conferences linked to our key stage 5 curriculum at local universities.

5. Extracurricular activities linked to the subject offered both at lunchtime and after school, this could also include regular residential trips/field work.

Within English, we currently run creative writing groups at lunchtimes, and have created our own school newsletter. We are hoping to expand this offer in the new academic year.

6. Highlight any apps/ or resources that students will use

In English, we use a variety of different resources, including: spag.com for revision and homework in year 6, Seneca Learning for revision in year 11 and sparknotes.com for revision in year 11.