Within Year 7, students are introduced to a variety of different genres that gently transition students from KS2 into KS3.

At the beginning of the year, students will study Dystopian texts where they will learn dystopian elements that they can mimic into their own creative work. After, the year group will study ‘The Giver’, a dystopian novel and will use previous knowledge to analyse specific parts of the text.

Further on in the year, we will focus on the introduction to Shakespeare and allow students to grasp certain aspects of a Shakespeare text. After, the year group will focus on survival writing which allows students to understand another form or genre of writing which will broaden their own creativity. Finally, this year group will have the opportunity to study Romantic poetry, as well as transactional writing, which they will not only need for GCSE but also for their future careers.

Year 8 begins with a clear emphasis on Gothic writing. Firstly, we will study the elements of Gothic fiction, which will support the study of ‘The Woman in Black’, which follows on from this.

Through these topics, students will be learning about the gothic genre and the methods used to create it. Following this, Year 8 will focus on creative writing using the method of anthropomorphism, where they will learn specific skills to develop and shape their own voice.

This links nicely to the past GCSE text: Animal Farm, which they study in the spring term. Here, the analysis and the requirements of a GCSE response are established further.

Finally, in the summer term, we focus on transactional writing, specifically letter writing. After this, we finish the year with cultural poetry and begin to develop our skills in writing analytically about poems.

Year 9 begins with creative writing, introducing students to a narrative style called dual narrative. Here, we give students the opportunity to not only read this style of narrative but also recreate the style in their own creative piece, therefore giving students a broader selection of styles to choose from at GCSE.

We then go on to study ‘Lord of The Flies’. This text challenges students’ vocabulary, as well as their inference skills at GCSE level. It also develops the ability to understand and write about the context of a text.

Later in the year, we introduce the students to Detective Fiction, another narrative style we can develop for GCSE. The year group will read a range of different detective stories, (English and American literature), learn the features and create their own piece: imitating the style by using the features discussed.

The end of the year consists of students learning how to write a transactional piece, which is linked to the GCSE English Language Paper. To finish we have a gentle introduction to GCSE poetry skills and ‘Romeo and Juliet’: a text that students study in Year 11.

• Person Edexcel Entry Level Certificate in English (Entry level 1, Entry level 2, Entry level 3)
• AQA Level 1 and 2 Functional Skills in English