Intent

In English, a Royds student will leave ready to thrive in their community, able to speak and write fluently and articulate their ideas and emotions. Reciprocally, through their reading and listening skills, they will truly understand the ideas and emotions of others. Our students will not be hindered by communication barriers between themselves and others, creating empathetic, astute, and enfranchised community members. We regard the intellectual and emotional development of our English learners as intertwined; they cannot possibly engage or write a text without the intellectual knowledge and skills we traditionally associate with English teaching, and a more holistic development of their emotional literacy.

Objectives

Our curriculum is organised in such a way that provides our students with the opportunity to learn expected behaviours and be successful in their learning so that we can achieve our #LiveLoveLearn mission.  Our strategic intent is therefore very simple:

• Provides a diversity of powerful knowledge, which over time, cumulatively builds to provide the cultural literacy that enables students to function in society.
• Enables all students to enjoy learning and experience success.
• Takes into account individual needs.
• Creates a culture of high expectation and aspiration to raise standards of attainment and progress.
• Develops confident and responsible individuals who can make a positive contribution to society and live safely and independently.

Implementation: Design

At Key Stage 3, the English curriculum is designed to provide a high level of challenge for all students by the inclusion of ambitious texts. This creates high expectations of our students’ analytical development and vocabulary acquisition, as well as fostering an aspirational reading culture. Both male and female role-models feature within our chosen texts for our young people to aspire to emulate, as well as characters whose actions enable students to safely explore and question their own moral standpoints. We also ensure cultural diversity in the writers and/or characters that the students engage, broadening their world view and cultural capital. Interweaved with the class readers, are opportunities for developing real-world writing skills, as well as offering space for creative and artistic expression.

At Key Stage 4, the English curriculum is designed to draw upon the emotional exploration of texts at Key Stage 3, to offer astute and perceptive comments about authorial intent. Our GCSE English Literature set texts have been chosen to expose the students to as broad a world view as possible. Regardless of the paths our students choose Post-16, it is imperative that they can confidently understand and evaluate the merits of a text in a digital global world, teeming with all manner of written communication. The importance of high-quality verbal communication is maintained at Key Stage 4; through seminar style discussion and debate, we hope to foster a collegiate environment, with students respecting both their peers’ intellectual and emotional development.

Further Information

To find out more about the content of the curriculum for each year group, please see our five year English curriculum map.

If you require more detailed information, please email the Head of Department. Mrs Bletsoe’s email address is jbletsoe@roydsschool.org.