Our Curriculum
ENGLISH AT KINGSFORD
Our mission is to ensure that every pupil achieves academic success and is able to truly fulfil their potential in English. We know that being academically successful at GCSE level in our subject has lifelong implications for our pupils’ future life chances. We want every pupil to achieve their very best in English, whatever their ability, so that they have as many options open to them as possible when they leave us in Year 11. In order to make our dreams for our pupils a reality, we foster values that aim to transform the lives of our pupils.
Through the study of carefully chosen texts and stimuli, we teach our pupils about those who are different to us; developing the skills of empathy, enquiry and understanding. We teach our pupils how to express themselves academically and to critically question what they read so that they have the skills to navigate the competitive and complex world beyond Kingsford in their written and verbal communication. Our curriculum is challenging, engaging, and inclusive and it equips pupils with the cultural capital needed to truly succeed; it aims to truly enrich the lives of our pupils, fostering a love of reading and of learning for leaning’s sake. Our teachers are passionate about our subject, and this means that our pupils will be too.
3 Key Principles Of The Spiral Curriculum
The spiral approach to curriculum has three key principles that sum up the approach nicely. The three principles are:
Cyclical: Students should return to the same topic several times throughout their school career;
Increasing Depth: Each time a student returns to the topic it should be learned at a deeper level and explore more complexity;
Prior Knowledge: A student’s prior knowledge should be utilised when a topic is returned to so that they build from their foundations rather than starting anew.
Spacing – the importance of returning back to knowledge and skill in spaced intervals.
Interleaving – teaching topics side-by-side to improve retention and possibly the transfer of knowledge to new contexts.
Retrieval practice (the ‘testing effect’) – that we improve our memory by using our memory… most especially at the point of forgetting.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Carl Sagan
Access free reading and writing activities from your favourite authors from the National Literacy Trust here.
AQA
Why choose AQA for GCSE English Language
A specification designed for you and your students
Our assessments have been designed to inspire and motivate students, providing appropriate stretch and challenge whilst ensuring, as far as possible, that the assessment and texts are accessible to the full range of students.
The specification will enable students of all abilities to develop the skills they need to read, understand and analyse a wide range of different texts covering the 19th, 20th and 21st century time periods as well as to write clearly, coherently and accurately using a range of vocabulary and sentence structures.
Why choose AQA for GCSE English Literature
A specification designed for you and your students
We have worked closely with teachers to design our specification to inspire, challenge and motivate every student, no matter what their level of ability, while supporting you in developing creative and engaging lessons.
We have developed assessment strategies that support students’ achievement in an untiered, closed book context through the use of extract-based questions in the assessment of the 19th-century novel and the Shakespeare plays.