English
The English Department
The English Department at Eastbury Community School is a dedicated and successful department. We are fortunate to have a wide range of experience, skill and expertise within the department which is why we have seen sustained success in our results over the years. Our department’s in-depth knowledge of assessment and how to move pupil progress forward underpins our historically outstanding results at GCSE and A-Level, securing above national average outcomes for our SEND and disadvantaged pupils.
Striving to reflect diversity and equality is a belief that permeates our curriculum. We have fostered a creative and consistent approach to delivering a diverse and socially explorative curriculum across all key stages that encourages students to become engaged, independent, and literate learners. Diverse texts, writers and issues are part of the fabric of our inclusive curriculum, and we welcome the challenge of reforming our curriculum to make it relevant to our young people. We encourage pupils to embrace and value creativity by linking texts directly to their own experiences, fostering a sense of academic curiosity, and a love of learning; it is consistently expected that students appreciate and respect the experiences they listen to or read about. The English classroom is a safe space for students to explore challenging ideas and subject matters with the professional support and guidance of our staff.
At all key stages we offer:
- a rich, broad and balanced curriculum
- an inclusive curriculum designed to engage, support and challenge every learner
- a curriculum that values diversity and reflects the world our students live in
Our English curriculum is underpinned by Eastbury’s three principles:
Excellence: In our subject means we endeavour to make students’ experience of English at Eastbury engaging, fun and limitless by offering a broad curriculum that enriches our students. We strive to give young people the opportunities, experiences, knowledge, and analytical tools to speak, write, and read confidently, appropriately, and on their own terms in whatever context they find themselves in. We want them to see language and literature both inside the classroom and beyond as a gateway to achievement, intellectual curiosity, and personal well-being in every aspect of their lives, both in the present and the future. We make every effort to create opportunities to encourage pupils towards the world of work, making them knowledgeable about the career opportunities available to them through engagement with real world experiences.
Collaboration: We embrace meaningful cross-curricular opportunities and work extensively with external agencies to enrich the lives and experiences of our learners. Innovative pedagogies such as the Let’s Think in English cognitive acceleration programme (King’s College London) use dialogic principles to promote peer learning and challenges understanding, helping pupils to develop mature, informed responses of the society in which they live. As a Royal Shakespeare Company Lead Associate School, we provide our staff and students, and those in our local community, with exciting opportunities to engage authentically with Shakespeare’s work.
Success: We strive to maximise the potential of every young person and foster independence and resilience in their approach to learning. As far as possible, we want to give pupils the same experiences regardless of prior attainment levels; this includes the same choices in what they read, the same opportunities for response, the same freedoms and constraints, and the same access to high quality texts. We want all pupils to feel successful in our classrooms. To offer all of this to pupils, we build on what they themselves bring to the classroom, focusing on how they can make connections between what they already know and new learning, and how we can encourage the development of their personal voice and response to the world around them. Character education and cultural literacy are embedded within our lessons and it is consistently expected that students appreciate and respect the experiences they listen to or read about.
Curriculum Information
- English Curriculum map
- English Key Stage 3 Curriculum Overview
- English Key Stage 4 Curriculum Overview
- English Key Stage 5 Curriculum Overview
- Key Stage 3 Curriculum Endpoints in English
