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KS3 English
Please click on the links below to find out more about each unit.
| Year Long Term Objective: Students will become confident readers that appreciate writers’ motivations – both in fiction and non-fiction texts. Students will become confident writers, crafting their writing in a range of forms and for a range of purposes. | ||||||
| Year | Autumn 1 | Autumn 2 | Spring 1 | Spring 2 | Summer 1 | Summer 2 |
| Medium Term Objective: Students will secure the foundations to confidently handle an unfamiliar text. A deliberate focus on engaging stories and characters will shape the year. | ||||||
| 7 |
Novel Study: Dickensian Characters ‘A Christmas Carol’ | Performance Poetry (leading into Poetry Festival) | Shakespeare: Midsummer Night’s Dream | Picture Book Unit | Novel Study: The Giver | |
| Medium Term Objective: Students will be exposed to more mature feeling texts that explore darker themes and ideas with more sophisticated characters, plots and settings. Students will begin to explore writers’ motivations against a contextual backdrop. | ||||||
| 8 |
Novel Study: Strength through Struggle ‘Salt to the Sea’ | Voices of War (Poetry) | Shakespeare: The Power of Rhetoric – Julius Caesar | The Gothic | Travelling through Time | |
| Medium Term Objective: Students will study contextually rich texts to charge their inference with a wider appreciation for the writer’s motivation. They will demonstrate a deep understanding of the texts studied through creative assessments that will provide an opportunity to exercise sophisticated connections with the writer and the reader. | ||||||
| 9 |
Novel Study: Against All Odds ‘Noughts & Crosses’ | Media Studies: Media Manipulation | Protest Poetry | Understanding Genre | Novel Study: Lord of the Flies | |
Novel Study: Dickensian Characters 'A Christmas Carol'
Overview
A study of the exploration of characterisation using extracts from a range of Charles Dickens’ texts, leading to the study of characters within A Christmas Carol. Students will consider, reflect, and evaluate how Dickens uses his characters as a tool to explore themes and key messages. Students will use their reflections as inspiration to develop their own character descriptions.
Unit aims:
- Explore how Dickens use his characters as a vehicle to convey certain opinions and beliefs about Victorian society
- Develop selection and retrieval skills to evidence ideas
- Analyse the significance of names and their revealing aspects about characterisation
- Explore how Dickens creates successful characters through description and how to adopt similar strategies to create own
Example Key Words
Perspective
A particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; point of view.
Nomenclature
The devising or choosing of names for things, especially in a science or other discipline.
Onomatopoeia
The formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named (e.g., cuckoo, sizzle).
Personification
The attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something non-human, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.
Metaphor
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
Simile
A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion).
Performance Poetry
Overview
Pupils will explore the art of spoken word poetry, analysing techniques – both language and performative – used during performances to convey meaning. Pupils will examine ‘slam poetry’ and evaluate performances in preparation for their own performance of a Christmas poem for the annual Christmas poetry festival.
Unit aims:
- Explore the art of Spoken Word poetry.
- Analyse techniques, both language and performative, used during performances to convey meaning.
- Write poetry inspired by A Christmas Carol and apply knowledge of the art to create effective performances.
- To understand the term, ‘Slam poetry’, and to explore the techniques used to create meaning.
- Evaluate performances of poems, forming judgements about areas to improve.
Example Key Words
Euphony
The quality of being pleasing to the ear.
Didactic
Intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive.
Prosodics
The patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry.
Intonation
The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
Assonance
Resemblance of sound between syllables of nearby words, arising particularly from the rhyming of two or more stressed vowels, but not consonants (e.g., sonnet, porridge), but also from the use of identical consonants with different vowels (e.g., killed, cold, culled).
Consonance
Consonance occurs when sounds, not letters, repeat.
Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Overview
A study of the Shakespearian play A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Pupils will be introduced to William Shakespeare and the historical context of the play (Elizabethan era, Globe, religion etc). Using their contextual understanding, pupils will be able to understand Shakespeare’s influences to help them analyse key characters and the plot.
Unit aims:
- To appreciate and engage with a Shakespearian play and understand the development of a character in Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- To gain understanding of what truth/reality is compared to illusion and how/why Shakespeare uses these ideas in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
- To create evocative descriptions based on moments from the play
- To know how Shakespeare uses dramatic techniques to illustrate his scenes
- To track the development of characters throughout the play
Example Key Words
Playscript
A written version of a play or other dramatic composition; used in preparing for a performance.
Narrator
A person who narrates something, especially a character who recounts the events of a novel or narrative poem.
Didactic
Intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive.
Prosodics
The patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry.
Intonation
The rise and fall of the voice in speaking.
Assonance
Resemblance of sound between syllables of nearby words, arising particularly from the rhyming of two or more stressed vowels, but not consonants (e.g., sonnet, porridge), but also from the use of identical consonants with different vowels (e.g., killed, cold, culled).
Novel Study: The Giver
Overview
A study and exploration of choices within society and different societal structures, using the dystopian novel The Giver. Pupils will develop their critical thinking skills by discussing the term ‘society’ and exploring whether an ‘ideal society’ is achievable for humanity.
Unit aims:
- To select and make inferences from a variety of supporting quotations
- To accurately use punctuation when quoting
- To identify key details in a text through skimming and scanning
- To track and trace the development of the theme rules and control/choices
- To track and trace plot and character developments
- To consider the generic influence of the Dystopian
Example Key Words
Community
A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
Society
The community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, and organisations.
Govern
Conduct the policy, actions, and affairs of (a state, organization, or people) with authority.
Utopia
An imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.
Surveillance
Close observation, especially of a suspected spy or criminal
Dystopian
Relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.
Novel Study: Strength through Struggle 'Salt to the Sea'
Overview
A study of the historical fiction novel Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys. Students will explore and track shifting, changing, and interweaving narrative voices to gain an understanding of how writers successfully structure and craft their texts in a sophisticated way. Students will use this understanding to inform their own pieces of narrative writing.
Unit aims:
- Study a text within a historical framing (WW2) to deepen inference potential
- Develop selection and retrieval skills to evidence ideas
- Consider, reflect and evaluate how key themes are presented in the novel: identity, social and moral responsibility, prejudice and inner strength
- Draw comparisons between fiction and non-fiction
Example Key Words
Foreshadowing
A warning or indication of (a future event)
Dual narrative
A form of narrative that tells a story in two different perspectives, usually two different people.
Perspective
A particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; point of view.
Semantic field
A lexical set of semantically related items.
Pathetic fallacy
The attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature.
Narrator
A person who narrates something, especially a character who recounts the events of a novel or narrative poem.
Novel Study: Lord of the Flies
Overview
An exploration of plot, characterisation and themes within the text Lord of the Flies. This unit will prepare pupils for GCSE study as they develop foundational knowledge and comprehension of the text itself. Pupils will delve into writer’s craft and identify and understand contextual influences, making links with society today.
Unit aims:
- Read and study the whole novel
- Explore plot, characterisation, themes and writer’s craft within the genre
- Make links between ideas and contextual influences
- Develop ‘WHAT – HOW – WHY’ format as a structure for analytical responses and develop academic phrasing
- Identify and understand big ideas and purpose
- Develop annotation skills
Example Key Words
Foreshadowing
A warning or indication of a future event.
Totalitarian
Relating to a system of government that is centralised and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.
Conditioning
The process of training or accustoming a person or animal to behave in a certain way or to accept certain circumstances.
Dystopian
Relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.
Utopian
Modelled on or aiming for a state in which everything is perfect; idealistic
Democracy
A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
External Links
Audiobook:
Lord of the Flies William Golding Audiobook – YouTube
Hiroshima context:
CBBC Newsround: Hiroshima – A survivor’s story in animation – YouTube
Poetry: Voices of War
Overview
An exploration of World War 1 poetry. Pupils will be introduced to the concept of different voices of war/varying perspectives and how these people were affected. Pupils will explore and challenge stereotypes about war and use their understanding to explore writers’ intentions, methods and evaluate the impact of writing. Pupils will use their knowledge to focus on writing analytically.
Unit aims:
- To introduce pupils to the concept of different voices of war and how different people react and are affected by conflict
- To challenge stereotypes about war
- To identify writer’s intentions and viewpoints – WHAT
- To explore the methods used – HOW
- To consider and evaluate the impact of the writing – WHY
- To equip pupils with a skillset to begin to evaluate the success of different writers
Example Key Words
Imagery
Visually descriptive or figurative language, especially in a literary work.
Simile
Figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (e.g., as brave as a lion).
Perspective
A particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; point of view.
Allusion
An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference.
Repetition
Repetition is the primary way of creating a pattern. Meaning accrues through repetition. One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas.
Sibilance
Sibilance is a figure of speech in which a hissing sound is created within a group of words through the repetition of “s” sounds.
External Links
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices-of-war/ve-day
Five of the most beautiful WW1 poems written by women – The National Student
https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-gift-of-india/
Guillaume Apollinaire to Sarojini Naidu: the war poets you don’t study at school – New Statesman
Simon Weston CBE | Official Website | Soldier, Survivor and Inspiration | News and Updates
Shakespeare: The Power of Rhetoric - Julius Caesar
Overview
An exploration of the role of rhetoric in Ancient Rome through the study of key speeches in Julius Caesar. Pupils will explore how rhetoric was used as an important tool of government, law and philosophical debate. Pupils to find inspiration from Julius Caesar’s play to write a speech that uses engaging rhetoric to change an opinion of the people.
Unit aims:
- Use William Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ as a stimulus text to teach the power of rhetoric
- Identify and analyse rhetorical devices
- Develop select and retrieve skills, gathering evidence from the play
- Surface the relevance of a Shakespeare play within a modern context; how does rhetoric feature in the 21stCentury?
- Understand the concept/importance of audience and purpose
- Consider rhetoric through the historical lens of the Roman Republic
Example Key Words
Tribunes
An official in ancient Rome chosen by the plebeians to protect their interests.
Republic
A state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
Conspirator
A person who takes part in a conspiracy.
Democracy
A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
Rhetoric
The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.
Senate
The state council of the ancient Roman republic and empire, which shared legislative power with the popular assemblies, administration with the magistrates, and judicial power with the knights.
External Links
The Gothic
Overview
An exploration of the Gothic genre and the contextual circumstances that influenced writers to explore human feelings and emotions through supernatural elements – connecting people to the unknown and irrational aspects of humanity. Pupils will explore a range of texts and focus on writers’ intentions, developing their reading and critical thinking skills.
Unit aims:
- Understanding of contextual influences
- To develop a detailed understanding of the context to Gothic literature
- Understanding the conventions of Gothic Literature
- Use reciprocal reading strategies to approach more challenging texts
- To foster enjoyment of writing creatively and successfully by producing specific, Gothic inspired pieces of writing
- Develop selection and retrieval skills to evidence ideas
Example Key Words
Gothic genre
Gothic literature is a genre of fiction which first became popular during the 18th century.
Pathetic Fallacy
The attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature.
Conventions
A way in which something is usually done.
Narrator
A person who narrates something, especially a character who recounts the events of a novel or narrative poem.
Supernatural
Manifestations or events considered to be of supernatural origin, such as ghosts.
Uncanny
Strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way.
External Links
The origins of the Gothic:
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-origins-of-the-gothic
Professor John Bowen discusses key motifs in Gothic novels, including the uncanny, the sublime and the supernatural. Filmed at Walpole’s house – Strawberry Hill:
Travelling Through Time
Overview
Pupils will use Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder as stimulus to produce a piece of cross-curricular creative writing – a series of diary entries. Pupils will build on creative writing skills exercised in previous units, including quality/engaging sentences, ambitious vocabulary choices and methods to create a specific tone/mood.
Unit aims:
- Build on creative writing skills exercised in previous unit; quality/engaging sentences/ambitious vocabulary choices/deliberately creating a specific tone/mood
- Semantics – how to use specific banks of language to create deliberate effects
- Maximise artistic opportunities by illustrating their work, drawing and labelling time machine and dinosaur
- Use historical facts to inform creative writing
Example Key Words
Extinction
The fact or process of a species, family, or other group of animals or plants becoming extinct.
Authoritarianism
The enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
Totalitarian
Relating to a system of government that is centralised and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.
Morality
Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.
Predator
An animal that naturally preys on others.
Repetition
The action of repeating something that has already been said or written.
External Links
Einstein’s ‘light clock’ theory could provide an interesting angle:
Novel Study: Against All Odds 'Noughts & Crosses'
Overview
A study and exploration of discrimination, segregation, and race within a modern diverse text. Pupils will develop their understanding of how writers communicate important messages through the narrative techniques of characterisation and structure and how such messages are influenced by contextual factors.
Unit aims:
- Explore racism as an issue globally and within contemporary Britain
- Understand the differences between stereotypes, prejudice, and bias
- Develop selection and retrieval skills to evidence ideas
- Develop contextual analysis by including theory within study
- Develop critical thinking skills
- Consider, reflect, and evaluate how key themes are presented in the novel: racism, division, violence, awareness, privilege, power, and love
- Understand the importance of persuasive devices in transactional writing
- Develop transactional writing skills and be able to write in varied forms, such as a letter, diary entry, speech, and article.
Example Key Words
Perspective
A particular attitude towards or way of regarding something; a point of view.
Rhetoric
The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques
Transactional writing
Transactional writing is one form of writing that informs, persuades, and above all communicates. It is non-fiction writing that passes information between individuals or groups of people. It includes, speeches, letters, articles etc.
Hyperbole
An exaggerated statement or claim not meant to be taken literally.
Emotive language
Emotive language is defined as a language that brings out emotions by using emotions. In simple terms, emotive language is identified as words that are used to evoke the emotions of the readers.
Rhetorical questions
A question asked to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer.
Media Studies: Media Manipulation
Overview
An introduction to Media Studies; students will explore how audiences are manipulated by the media they consume and the moral and ethical issues that the media holds.
Unit aims:
- To understand how audiences are manipulated by the media they consume
- To understand how music artists construct their star personas through a case study of Pharrell Williams
- To understand the basic concepts of Dyer’s Star Theory (explained below)
- To understand the basic concepts of the hypodermic needle theory
Example Key Words
Representation
The way aspects of society, such as gender, age or ethnicity, are presented to audiences. Representation is how media texts deal with and present gender, age, ethnicity, national and regional identity, social issues and events to an audience.
Ethnicity
The quality or fact of belonging to a population group or subgroup made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent.
Activism
Media activism is activism that uses media and communication technologies for social movement, and/or tries to change policies relating to media and communication (media policy activism).
Manipulation
Media manipulation exploits the difference between perception and reality.
Pacifism
Pacifism is opposition to war, militarism, or violence
Morality
Morality refers to the set of standards that enable people to live cooperatively in groups. It’s what societies determine to be “right” and “acceptable.”