English

The English Curriculum at Wales High School is designed to ensure that students have the knowledge and skills they need in order to be able to know more, remember more and do more and make excellent progress. The curriculum is structured and sequenced to allow students to build on their prior knowledge and to lay the foundations upon which to build, and make connections with, future knowledge.

We aim to ensure breadth and diversity in the curriculum by exploring literary and non-literary texts from a range of genres, perspectives and time periods across KS3-5.  Our approach is often consciously New Historicist, as we believe this allows students to see literary works as a reflection of not only the author’s life and times, but a lens through which they can explore their own experiences.  The texts chosen as part of our curriculum are examples of high-quality literature and are there to expand students’ cultural capital, encouraging them to think deeply about some of the wider social issues they may encounter and to see literature as a response to events of the time.  Students are encouraged to become critical readers and thinkers through the explicit teaching of core concepts and ‘big ideas’.

We want them to be able to write functionally, fluently and beautifully, according to their purpose, in order to effectively communicate their ideas and views about the world around them.  We also want our students to be confident in expressing themselves verbally, becoming articulate speakers and presenters.