It’s an ancient and well-worn truism: if you keep putting the same stuff in, you’ll keep getting the same stuff out. Whether you’re eating a disappointing pie or reviewing your GCSE English Language and Literature results, it’s easy to focus on problems with the ‘hardware’ of the process: the quality of the oven, the pie tin, the ability and engagement of your students… All of these are a significant factor in the outcome, whether it’s grimaces round the dinner table, or a disappointing 4/5 GCSE pass rate. But if the recipe remains unchanged – whether it’s for a pie or an English curriculum – the results are unlikely to be a pleasant surprise.
Your curriculum recipe almost certainly covers all the material: reading non-fiction and fiction… critical, creative and transactional writing for a variety of purposes… all with oracy opportunities built in, of course… But are you spending more time covering content than focusing on the development of skills that underpin achievement in English? Is all that content earning its keep? Is it creating enough opportunity for students to grow as readers, as writers, as communicators?
Think about the skills that students need in order to be ‘good at English’: the mechanics of critical writing beyond a formulaic acronym; understanding how writers structure texts; how to plan and structure a range of forms and writing purposes; the impact of the vocabulary and sentence structure choices that writers make – and that students as writers must make. Each of these skills – and more – need to be visited and revisited throughout and across Years 7-11.
Curriculum design in English isn’t about achieving alchemy or overnight transformation. English is necessarily a recursive subject: a long slow accumulation of layers of skill, knowledge, understanding: more like climbing a spiral staircase or walking backwards up a helter-skelter than a journey along a straight road. Students need to encounter the same skills over and over again in a variety of contexts, but each time with a higher level of challenge to achieve a greater depth of understanding.
And above all, that long spiral journey must start from where your students are – and take them to where they need to be.
If you’d like some help or advice on curriculum design, get in touch.
Leave a Reply