The Norwood School English department is committed to fostering a love for language, encouraging students to read widely for a range of purposes, but most importantly for pleasure. Through a range of texts, from different cultures and times, we aim to engage, inspire and challenge our students. Our units of work at KS3 include a greater diversity of fictional voices than the National Curriculum requires, and through these voices, we encourage students to explore the ways in which language and literature shapes our identities and the world around us. At the heart of our curriculum is a strong focus on creativity. We aim to equip students with the skills they need to articulate and develop their own ideas and responses to the changing world around them. It is our belief that pupils deserve to study both heritage literature and contemporary texts that allow them to engage fully with the world they live in. We encourage students to develop independent critical responses to a wide-range of texts and consider the role language and literature plays in our contemporary world.

Big Ideas

• Genre
• Purpose
• Audience
• Message
• Structure
• Imagery
• Rhetoric
• Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar

Key Principles

• Encouraging a love of reading
• Nurturing and celebrating all talents and abilities
• Fostering a positive and supportive learning environment
• Exploring the ways language shapes our identities
• Fostering creativity, innovation and personal response
• Encouraging Independent critical thinking
• Facilitating exposure to range of texts
• Celebrating diversity
• Exploring the writer’s message
• Deepening analysis of the writer’s craft
• Providing tools to articulate ideas
• Finding our own voice
• Developing an academic tone
• Communicating with accuracy and clarity
• Becoming engaging storytellers