English
Key Stage 3 Summary
At Bridge, we are passionate about reading and writing. We focus on building critical reading and writing skills through introducing the students to a wide range of texts, from Beowulf to The Hunger Games.
In addition to this, we build students' ‘soft skills’, such as the ability to discuss and debate effectively, critical thinking, independence, resilience and, of course, a love of reading.
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HT1 |
HT2 |
HT3 |
HT4 |
HT5 and HT6 |
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7 |
First Stories Looking at what stories are and where they began |
Dickens Looking at the characters of Dickens |
Poetry An introduction to poetry concepts |
The Tempest Intro to the plays of Shakespeare |
Trash Students read a novel as a class and do work around the autobiography |
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8 |
Advertising Looking at symbolism, meaning and representation in advertising |
Black Voices A look at the history of Black British writing |
Identity Poetry Looking at how people express their identity through poetry |
Romeo + Juliet Looking at wider themes in Shakespeare |
The Gothic An exploration of genre and context |
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9 |
Dystopia A study of genre conventions |
Richard III Looking at the how Shakespeare develops character across a play |
Comparative Poetry Looking more closely at the construction of poems and how to compare them |
Editorial Looking at how authors create their voice and write persuasively |
The Dark Lady Students read the novel and learn about Jacobean London and issues of race and class. |
Beyond the classroom, we work with The Ministry of Stories, Literacy Pirates and Debate Mate to offer enrichment activities across Key Stage 3. We regularly support students in entering writing competitions and some of our students have had their work published.
Key Stage 4 Summary
At GCSE we study AQA English Literature and English Language over a two-year course.
The course is designed to expose students to a wide variety of exciting texts whilst ensuring key exam skills and techniques are secured and practised.
As with Key Stage 3, we believe it is important to continue building students' ‘soft skills’ in preparation for Further and Higher education, job and university interviews and applications and, as always, to build a lifelong love of reading.
The full course content can be found here
Key Stage 5 Summary
At AS and A Level we study OCR English Literature.
The course is academically challenging and engaging, allowing students to study a range of plays, poetry and novels, ranging from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ to the contemporary Chicano poetry of Juan Felipe Herrera. We do a deep-dive into the dystopian genre, reading a range of classic and contemporary extracts as well as comparing two seminal texts: ‘1984’ by George Orwell, and ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley. Students are invited to use a range of lenses – feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic – to get the broadest, most wide-reaching and most exciting understanding of our other exam texts: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, ‘A Doll’s House’ and the poetry of Christina Rossetti. Students will also have the opportunity to study a twentieth-century American text of their choosing; past choices have included: ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, ‘Tender is the Night’, ‘Jazz’.
At Key Stage 5 we develop students view of themselves as scholars working with a range of challenging secondary critical texts to broaden their understanding and help to bridge the gap between A Levels and Higher Education.
The full course content can be found here
Useful Links
Use the sites below to help you when you are making revision resources such as flashcards and mindmaps for your GCSEs.
They are also useful when you are annotating your texts as they tell you what the key symbols and events are in each scene/chapter.
GCSE Literature:
This link is to Bitesize from the BBC. It has resources for all of your exam texts: www.bbc.co.uk/education/subjects
This link is to Litcharts it has revision resources for ‘Macbeth’, ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Lord of the Flies’: www.litcharts.com
This link is to Sparknotes it has revision resources for ‘Macbeth’, ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Lord of the Flies’: www.sparknotes.com/sparknotes
They also have No Fear Shakespeare, which has a line by line translation of Macbeth: nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth
GCSE Language:
This link is to Bitesize from the BBC. It has resources for each skill you need in the two Language papers: www.bbc.co.uk/education/subjects