The English Faculty is a big department which has a wealth of resources to help pupils with their learning. Here are a few key points for parents:

In Years 7-9 every pupil should be reading an Accelerated Reader book from the library, and should be reading at least one Accelerated Reader book every half term. If pupils are not set specific homework, pupils should be reading their Accelerated Reader book. Any assistance parents can give is appreciated. We strongly advocate listening to your child read a little every night if you are worried about their reading. The test scores for the Accelerated Reader are very revealing and can be obtained from your child’s English teacher or the librarian, Mrs Butler.

In Years 10-11, pupils study the OCR English and English Literature course. In Year 10 pupils should read: all the stories from the OCR Opening Worlds, the play Death Of A Salesman, a post-1900 section from the Opening Lines poetry anthology (which changes from year to year), Romeo and Juliet. They are tested by OCR on these texts in May and June by modular exams. At the very end of Year 10 and during Year 11, pupils must read: Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, lots of media texts (reading a quality newspaper every day will assist with this), six stories from Opening Worlds (which changes from year to year), a pre-1900 section of the poetry from Opening Lines and re-read Romeo and Juliet. They are tested by two English GCSE exams and one English Literature exam at the end of Year 11.

We offer both English Language and English Literature at A Level. Please click on the link to Mr Gilbert’s website for more information, lesson plans and homework.

Mr Gilbert's website contains his lesson plans for all years, all the homework for his classes and information about other teachers' lessons and homework.