Curriculum Leader: Ms Hayes

Teaching Staff:

Ms Shinks

Mr Clark

Mr Green

Miss L Jones

Ms J Young

Ms D Davies

Ms A Wafer

English should excite, enthuse and build upon the numerous skills taught at KS2. A love of reading and writing is fostered and continually promoted through various schemes of work and a rich variety of literary texts from the literary canon. Pupils are given the opportunity to explore the world of literature, current affairs and historical periods in time. They are taught to write in a variety of contexts, utilising a variety of structural and linguistic devices to enhance their technical ability.

We deliver a curriculum that is broad, ambitious and inclusive. Teaching within the English department is delivered, and refined, using the latest pedagogical frameworks and methodologies, supported by academic research such as Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction.

Our intent is that all Xaverians will have:

  • a strong command of the spoken and written word, with a rich vocabulary and a knowledge of how this can be applied in the real world
  • critical abilities to be perceptive readers and listeners, who are able to detect bias and discern fact from opinion
  • a knowledge of how audiences can be manipulated by the language and content that is presented to them in the media
  • a bank of rich social, historical, world and cultural knowledge
  • the ability to live out the values of the gospel

Our learning journey has been carefully planned. It is structured to ensure a sequenced acquisition of knowledge and skills so that students are continually supported in their development. Our plan ensures an incremental building of knowledge, vocabulary and skills. Recap and retrieval are features of our curriculum maps to ensure that knowledge is secure.

Our curriculum maps are purposefully sequenced to ensure that students revisit knowledge, skills and task types regularly, and in different contexts, thus deepening their understanding and ensuring that knowledge is retained in their long term memory.

Across each year group, we explore a range of literary texts through which we deliver the fundamentals of our intent. We study a diversity of authors, styles, texts and themes throughout all three key stages. There are purposefully recurring themes in our curriculum which means students’ thematic understanding becomes broad and deep. Students are given opportunities to make connections and comparisons across texts from different time periods.

It is our desire that our curriculum ensures that no student leaves our school feeling socially, intellectually or emotionally disadvantaged, irrespective of their own personal situation. We ensure this through the study of literature from different cultures and traditions in order to develop students’ knowledge, empathy and prompt curiosity about the wider world. We believe that our varied literature choices over the three key stages will broaden our students’ social and cultural understanding.

The English Department delivers the aims of the school’s mission statement through our diverse and thought-provoking curriculum, thus providing our students with the opportunity to live: ‘Life in all its fullness’.

Reading Club, Film Club, Theatre trips, Lectures at local universities, Author/poet visits, Debating Club, Dungeons and Dragons Club & Writing for Pleasure.

How To Support Your Child’s Learning

Reading is key to success. Each pupil should be reading their own reading book for at least fifteen minutes each evening at home, parents should monitor this. Each pupil should have a reading book in their bag each day. Pupils should be fully equipped with a pencil case and dictionary/thesaurus. Pupils and parents should visit the Central Library in Liverpool as much as possible.

Central Library, Liverpool.Local theatres: Empire Theatre, Shakespeare North Playhouse, The Everyman and Playhouse Theatres

Pupils should watch a variety of film versions of our set texts, which include: Of Mice and Men, A Christmas Carol, An Inspector Calls, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Animal Farm.

Pupils should be encouraged to read a wide variety of both fiction and non-fiction texts. The department has a recommended reading list for each key stage. The school library is furnished with a plethora of interesting texts, which the pupils can borrow before or after school.

BBC Bitesize, Click Revision, Mr. Bruff on Youtube, The British Library & The Royal Shakespeare Company.