LAB Literary Festival school trips...

Year 7:

In year seven, we commenced our chronological study of literature through the ages with The Odyssey. The epic poem was fascinating as we embarked on Odysseus's journey, originally recited thousands of years ago by Homer. Next, we jumped forward to the eleventh century with Beowulf. We followed the heroic adventures of the protagonist and enjoyed learning about warrior culture of medieval Europe before venturing into Middle English with Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. We then looked at verse from a different perspective by considering various sonnets such as Wyatt’s Whoso List to Hunt and Shellyey’s Ozymandias. The diversity of characters and learning about Renaissance ideals paved the way for our final text: the first modern novel, Don Quixote.

Year 8:

Following on from our study of Don Quixote, we began year eight by studying two tragic Renaissance plays: Macbeth and Dr Faustus. Both plays, through their presentation of tragic heroes, consider the consequences of rejecting traditional forms of authority. We then moved onto the Romantic period: a time defined by rejecting Enlightenment values and celebrating the beauty of nature, spontaneity and freedom. Studying six of the most prominent Romantic poets: William Wordsworth (1770- 1850), William Blake (1757- 1827), Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Lord Byron (1788- 1821), John Keats (1795- 1821) and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792- 1822), we explored both Romantic poetic conventions and themes within a range of poems. Finally, we studied the gothic novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley in 1816 and published in 1818. The novel explores the dangers of powerful knowledge. Like Macbeth and Dr Faustus, Victor Frankenstein is punished for transgressing the boundaries of human capabilities.

Year 9:

We continue our study of the literature in chronological order through the study of the following texts in year nine: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Modernist poetry from a selection of poets, Animal Farm by George Orwell , Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Headstrong Historian by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. For the last lessons of the year we have also been learning how to write short stories through character development and the different types of conflict experienced in stories.

Much of our English curriculum throughout key stage three has centred on the western literary canon. However, in year nine, we finally read a text that wasn’t written from a eurocentric viewpoint: Things Fall Apart. Written by Chinua Achebe in 1958, Things Fall Apart is written from a postcolonial (meaning after colonisation) perspective and details the tragic life of Okonkwo from an authentic narrative view point. Similarly, we have started to look at texts through different lenses. For example, we have looked back this year at previous works, and considered feminist, marxist and post-colonial viewpoints on these subjects, thinking about questions such as: “what’s a woman’s role in this situation?” and “is there equality in the presentation of characters in this novel?”

Year 10:

This year, year ten have studied Language and Literature separately as we prepare for our GCSE exams in year eleven. It has been an opportunity to consolidate the knowledge we have gained over key stage three and challenge our thinking and ambitions as we look forward to the future.

Our study of Literature included Malorie Blackman’s Boys Don’t Cry, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and fifteen poems pertaining to the theme of belonging. In Language we have also been learning transactional writing such as speeches, articles and reports and mastering the art of writing narratives using description for impact.

Examples of work...

Vocabulary:

This academic year, I have been working on a Trust-wide project for the English department, which has focused on how to teach vocabulary and how to encourage our students to become lifelong learners of vocabulary. Many of the KS3 students were involved in an activity that helped to assess their current vocabulary skills, and the results of this were used to create a specific vocab knowledge organiser. This knowledge organiser, in combination with a one-off lesson designed to teach the students how to best use this tool, aims to help teach (or re-teach) the basics of vocab - root words, prefixes and suffixes - to enable them to break words down into their component parts and take an educated guess at the meaning. The knowledge organisers have been made available to all KS3 students, and have been added as a resource to our English classrooms.

Ms. Hunt

Effective revision strategies in English:

Throughout the year we, as students, frequently use the below revision strategies to help effectively move information from our short term to our long term memory. These strategies are:

• Flashcards (quizlets are extremely useful like the examples above)

• Self testing

• Memory dumps

• Past papers (going over previous tests and practising in that format).

Literary Crossword

Wordsearch

Achilles Anecdote Animal Farm Aristotelian Triad Beowulf Chaucer Dickens Don Quixote Frankenstein Homer

Hyperbole Literature Malorie Blackman Onomatopoeia Shelley

Student reading recommendations: