Focus on Key Stage 3

These pages include details of the curriculum followed by Year 7 and 8.

A powerful way to help learning is to ask your son/daughter about the topics they have experienced and encourage them to talk about their understanding and interests with you.

English

As Year 7 continue their focus on childhood in literature, they have begun the study of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They are enjoying the mischievous, magical fairy world that exists alongside a group of teenagers who fall in and out of love with each other and also have the pressure of parental expectations about who they have to marry. Students have been developing their skills of inference and analysis through their reading alongside a continued focus on writing skills.

Year 8 students have begun the study of The Outsiders which is set in 1950s America and deals with their year long theme of identity. It is a story written by a teenager herself and presents a picture of teenage life in a gang. The Greasers are the poor kids growing up on the wrong side of town and their rivals are the Socs who are the wealthy students from the west side of town. Students are becoming increasingly nuanced in their interpretation of fiction and working hard to develop their vocabulary in order to embellish their writing.

Maths

Year 7 have been studying fractions and ratio, looking at arithmetic with fractions and understanding the relationship between dividing by a fraction and sharing in a ratio. We have also been working on understanding that dividing by a fraction is the same as multiplying by its’ reciprocal.

Year 8 are moving on with their Algebraic manipulation skills and using them to solve equations and inequalities.

This term, Year 7 had a visit from the University of Sussex with their planetarium for a presentation about the James Webb Space Telescope. This fitted in well with the Universe topic which was covered in Terms 1 and 2. Students have also been studying Chemistry by looking at particles and how they behave.