WELCOME TO THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
Our aim is to make sure all students leave school with at least the basic skills of spelling, punctuation and reading. We also believe English is about making students able to understand other people's points of view and to imagine what it is like to be someone else, somewhere else. We encourage students to read as much as possible through classwork and homework, and to express and develop their thoughts and feelings through creative and factual writing, as well as varied spoken work. We also want students to enjoy playing with words and "tricks of the trade", and much of their learning focuses on how language works in poems, stories and plays.
KEY STAGE 3
In Years 7 and 8 we emphasise basic skills, knowledge of technical terms, wide reading and creative, imaginative writing. In Year 9 students will be ready to take on the Functional Skills course. They will also have worked with computers, studied some of the ways that films and advertisements influence audiences and developed their library and Internet skills. They will have read various books, plays, and poems; given talks, recited poems… In short, they will have been stretched to give their best, but had fun with words, rhythm, rhyme and ideas.
KEY STAGE 4
Students will be guided in Year 9 to study one of two routes: English Language and English Literature or English and Media Studies. Both are rewarding courses, catering for individual interests and talents.
KEY STAGE 5
ENGLISH IN THE WIDER COMMUNITY
Every year we run competitions to encourage students to read books and write poetry and stories. Collections of our students’ poems have been judged the best of all Cumbria schools and many of our students’ poems have been accepted for publication by the highly respected site, learn.co.uk. Our students have even had poems published in South Africa. We have theatre trips, including Shakespeare at Stratford (for older students) and plays in London, Leeds and Newcastle (and Ullswater Theatre too!).
