English

Upper School English The English curriculum is designed to allow pupils to explore the wonderful world of literature and to encourage them to foster a lifelong love of books. The girls are encouraged to think critically about the texts that they study and they are given countless opportunities to develop their creative skills through tasks linked to various themes and characters. This year the girls in the Upper School have been inspired by an array of texts ranging from ‘Macbeth’ by William Shakespeare to ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C.S. Lewis. From role play and art, to letter writing and play scripts, the girls have learnt to explore a range of genres and they have allowed their imaginations to take them to new and exciting places. Creativity is the key ingredient in every lesson.

This year, our Glendower Handwriting Competition required the girls to write a poem based on the topic of ‘Truth’. Our annual Poetry Recital, judged by staff from South Hampstead High School, City of London and Wycombe Abbey, brought out the performer in us all. Our Creative Writing Competition based on ‘The Future We Want’ took us on an array of wonderful journeys. Opportunities to perform, recite and debate have allowed the girls to develop their ability to address an audience with confidence and express their opinions maturely and articulately.

The curriculum comes to life in a multitude of ways at Glendower. Shakespeare’s life and works have been explored during Shakespeare Week and through a range of workshops and role plays. School trips have taken the girls to many inspiring places – Year 6 have traced the steps of Charles Dickens by visiting the Dickens Museum and they witnessed ‘A Christmas Carol’ coming to life on the stage at the Old Vic Theatre. Year 5 had great fun at the Sky Skills Studio filming and editing their own trailers. Visits from animated storytellers and wonderful authors, such as Jeremy Strong, allow the girls to delve into the world of literature and learn from the very best. These special experiences enhance the curriculum and give the girls wonderful memories to treasure.

It has been a busy, productive and exciting year in the English Department! Here are a few of the tasks that the girls have completed this year.

Mrs Cadenhead

Head of English Year Four

Year Four have delved into many different styles of writing: from instructions and diaries to travel writing and the adventure stories, to mention a few!

The girls have been exploring poetry and used ‘Hold Fast to Your Dreams’ by Langston Hughes as a framework to write their own, based on the theme of chasing your dreams and never giving up. We also studied the poet Lemn Sissay and created our own versions of his poem ‘When I’m Older’.

As ever, the termly set texts were received with open arms and the girls enjoyed the fantasy story ‘How to train your dragon’ at the start of the year. This is always a fun and exciting way to begin Year Four, as we start to pick-apart the vivid characters and learn about inference. ‘Pig-heart Boy’ by Malorie Blackman is another well-loved text which allows the girls to explore more mature themes of moral dilemmas, poor health and ultimately, death.

The move to online learning offered girls the opportunity to play with the formatting of their writing and was extremely useful when creating their explanation texts. The girls produced some factual and wellconsidered explanations of alien adaptations to different planets in our solar system. We also had some hilarious examples of how our home appliances really work. Did you know that the dishes in your dishwasher are actually licked clean by cats? Well, you do now!

Year Five

Year Five explored a stunning book called ‘The Lost Words’ by Robert Macfarlane. It was inspired by the decision to remove 50 everyday words from the Oxford Junior Dictionary in 2017. These words were all related to the natural world and they included: otter, dandelion, heron, conker, fern, kingfisher, ivy and willow. The decision to take these words out was made because it was argued that children do not use them enough these days and that they should be replaced with words that are more common in today’s world, such as blog, broadband, voicemail and celebrity. The Lost Words book started an important debate about the loss of language and, on a wider scale, the loss of the natural world all around us. Year Five set themselves the challenge of bringing these words back to life! The Lost Words book is referred to as a ‘book of spells’. It contains acrostic poems that are meant to be read out loud in order to summon these words back into our hearts. The girls were inspired by this idea, and so they selected a natural word that was special to them and then created their own ‘spells’ using ambitious vocabulary and striking imagery. The final poems were simply beautiful and 5C shared some of these in our class assembly. Year Six went on an adventure through Middle-earth for this year’s Book Week as they explored the wonderful story of The Hobbit. They began the week by designing their own hobbit character and creating an identity card for them. In maths they created detailed maps of fantasy lands, using their knowledge of scale, proportion and direction. They examined some of the bizarre creatures that Bilbo and the Company come across (from the unintelligent trolls to the bizarre, cave-dwelling Gollum) and they had great fun designing their own imaginary beast for their hobbit to encounter. The girls then created their own lost tale for the book, detailing their hobbit’s adventures. Their map was completed with a set of instructions from none other than Gandalf. As Tolkien said, ‘Courage is found in unlikely places’ and our hobbits were quick to learn this lesson in the girls’ stories. What a memorable week!