KS3 & KS4 English curriculum

Pupils explored a wide range of poetry in our primary curriculum, with a focus on how poets, including Joseph Coelho and Matt Goodfellow, responded to place in their poems. Pupils now read more complex secondary poets, and start to use analytical skills to explore the methods writers use to respond to place. They also start to emulate those more complex techniques so that their poetry writing and appreciation becomes more accomplished. Later in the curriculum, pupils look at Maya Angelou's poetry in depth to explore how context shapes a writer's voice, and then find their own poetic voice.

1. Considering the nature of home
2. Exploring memories of home in the poem ‘Childhood Tracks’
3. Analysing 'Search for My Tongue'
4. Analysing the poem 'Island Man' by Grace Nichols
5. Comparing poems about place and home
6. Exploring regional pride in the poem ‘Anthem of the North’
7. Analysing ‘This Poem is Taking Place on Stolen Land’
8. Exploring the link between place and identity
9. Exploring what home means through the poem ‘Filter’
10. Planning ideas for a poem about your home
11. Using punctuation in poetry
12. Exploring example poems about place and home
13. Writing our own poetry about home
14. Performing our poems about place and home

• Pupils understand that poems have different structures to prose
• Pupils can write a clear topic sentence using the structure: "[Author] presents [character/setting] as..."
• Pupils can use evidence from a text to support their argument
• Pupils can expand explanations to show a clear understanding of a text
• Pupils can identify a range of different word classes
• Pupils can use single paragraph outlines to plan their writing
• Pupils can use a range of different adjectives to describe tone
• Pupils can identify sensory language, onomatopoeia, sibilance, repetition, personification and metaphors
• Pupils can use compound and complex sentences to develop key descriptions
• Pupils are able to use adverbial phrases at the start of a sentence