INTENT:

Being a confident communicator and reader are key skills to be able to engage with the world and communicate with those around us. English at Sapience Girls Academy will focus on creating enthusiastic and flexible communicators who can create and understand messages and their multiple layers of effect. We will learn to read and write for pleasure and to engage with the modern world. We will read in order to connect with experiences from around the world. Mastering the English language so we can share and shape the world.

The overarching concepts for English at Sapience Girls Academy are:
● Comprehension – read a range of texts accurately.
● Understanding a range of reasons why people write – be able to draw connections between a writer’s purpose, personal experience and their message.
● Understanding how a range of texts can be built up – understand the reasons / effects behind this and be able to use this to communicate effectively in a range of different situations and forms.
● Understanding the effects of language – be able to explore how writers manipulate the effects and subtle messages created through their choice of words and use of literary techniques.
● Clear and confident communication – write and talk accurately using a range of vocabulary, punctuation and structures to create desired effects.
● Exploring the world – through reading and writing about a wide range of texts develop an appreciation for the people, places and experiences of our world.

IMPACT:

At all stages, pupils will develop a more personal appreciation of how reading and writing share and shape the world. By the end of KS3, pupils will have read a range of different kinds of text that share different experiences from around the world, helping them become confident readers of poetry, fiction and nonfiction.

Through exploring these texts pupils will be able to discuss (in writing and verbally) the key messages a text creates as well as draw a simple connection between those messages and events connected to that text. Pupils will be able to base those ideas on quotations and details from the text. In their own writing, pupils will have an increasingly strong grasp of punctuation, using it accurately and sometimes for effect. Their vocabulary will have grown in order to support confident writing in a wider range of forms (stories, letters, speeches, essays etc.) AND in creating a wider range of effects.

By the end of KS4 pupils will be able to master a wide range of arguments about the set GCSE texts. They will do this by using text-specific knowledge, exploration of language effects and the development of their own opinions about a whole text. This will be demonstrated through extended essay writing in response to whole texts and extracts. Verbally they will be confident in communicating formally in front of an “audience”. In terms of their own writing they will be able to write at length, developing well-structured texts that develop ideas over several paragraphs, using language, structure and punctuation to create complimentary effects.