English Department – Curriculum Outline Year 7 2015-16
Unit
What will I do?
How will I be assessed?
Term 1
My First Impressions of Montgomery and descriptive/ narrative Writing
We will begin the journey into Key Stage 3 by completing a piece of writing about our first impressions of Montgomery and will move into working on narrative and descriptive writing. There will be a strong emphasis on the technical accuracy of your child’s writing. They will develop their technical skills in the areas of spelling, punctuation and grammar; paragraphing using varied and clear topic sentences; sentence structure and variety of sentence types and vocabulary. During this first half term we will evaluate the areas within writing that your child needs to develop and enhance as we progress through the year.
Novel Study
Term 2
Poetry
Reading and Writing NonFiction Transactional Texts
During this half term, students will read a novel with their class teacher. The choice of novel studied will vary, although popular choices are ‘The Hunger Games’, ‘Divergent’, ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, ‘Holes’, ‘Skellig’, and Stormbreaker’. As they read the novel as a class, students will learn new vocabulary and make inferences about characters, themes and context, learning how to use evidence to support their ideas by referring directly to the text. Alongside studying the novel’s setting, plot, and characterisation, and the effects of these on the reader, they will also gain a greater understanding of purpose, audience for and context of the writing and draw on this knowledge to support comprehension. Part of the first half term after Christmas focuses on poetry, where students will study a th range of pre 19 century and modern poets and poems, gain an appreciation of how poetry can be performed and create some of their own poetry. Students will also be taught subjectspecific terminology and revisit poetic techniques, such as metaphors, similes and personification, to use within their analysis whilst studying their poems. The poetry unit will act as a basic introduction to the poetry sections on Paper 2 of GCSE AQA English Literature. Students will develop their reading and writing skills across different text types and in reading across different time frames. They will learn how to draw inferences from and create their own formal letters, informal letters, reviews, reports, speeches and articles for newspapers and magazines and leaflets. They will learn how
In the first two weeks your son or daughter will write a piece entitled ‘My First Impressions of Montgomery.’ An assessment will take place in which your child will write a piece of narrative or descriptive writing. Homework will be set weekly. Near the time of the assessment, your child will be given the titles or genres to choose from and they will be able to complete some preparation work at home, as well as with their teacher. It would be fantastic if you could help your son or daughter to develop their ideas and prepare for the assessment. In addition, encouraging your child to read widely will really help them to develop their vocabulary and give them ideas to inspire them in their own writing. Students will complete an assessment where they are provided with an extract from the novel to analyse in response to a question. The second half of the question will require the students to respond by referencing other places in the text. Homework will be set weekly throughout the novel study.
Your child will complete a Literature reading assessment in the mid-year examination period where they will apply their understanding of a poet’s use of language and technique and be assessed on their ability to learn poetic techniques and their impact. Homework will be set weekly.
In the mid-year examinations students will be assessed via an AQA Key Stage 3 English Language examination paper. Homework will be set weekly.