At KS3, students are given the opportunity to travel through key literary movements from the beginning of time to the modern and the postmodern!
The linear approach begins with ancient literature and progresses through important historical and modern literary periods giving students the knowledge, skills and curiosity to explore a wide range of texts, and read about when and why they were written.
Year 7 students start the autumn term with tales from Ancient Greece as they follow Odysseus on his epic quest. Next they move on to Middle English, learning about the life, times and language of the Anglo-Saxons and the epic story of Beowulf. In the spring term, students will study Middle English using Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as their guide. For the final unit of Y7, students will study a piece of global literature dealing with young people in foreign, and often challenging, settings.
Year 8 begins with the Renaissance period and Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. Next, Y8 students will progress through time to study the Romantic and Gothic Romantic authors such as William Blake, Horace Walpole, Christina Rossetti and Percy Bysshe Shelley. From the Romantics, students will next transition to Victorian era literature which centres around mystery and the macabre. Y8’s global focus will be on journeys of strength, resilience and challenge written and experienced by international authors.
Year 9 will begin with the study of modern literary greats such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf. In the winter term, students will be introduced to Dystopian fiction which, although based on historical events, often challenge learners to think differently about current social climates and their future world. The spring term will lead students from dystopian fiction to postmodernism where students will be given the opportunity to consider how this movement challenges the tropes of the traditional literature they have studied so far. The final Global literary focus is on experiences where students will be introduced to international texts such as Camus’ The Outsider, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and many more.
Our schemes of work encourage students to develop their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills – as well as challenging them to consider their position as global citizens.
The texts that we study at KS3 are designed to provide the best examples of the genre they fall into; they are varied in content and style, which is excellent preparation for exam success at IGCSE/GCSE, A Level, International Baccalaureate and beyond.
