English: Key Stage 5

Inspiring confident communicators, reflective and critical readers, and thoughtful, articulate writers.

The English curriculum at Spalding Grammar School is designed to produce students who are confident communicators, reflective and critical readers and thoughtful, articulate writers. We aim to equip our students with the skills they need to join in an ongoing conversation about the world they live in, informed by carefully-selected texts from a wide range of genres and periods.

At A level, we offer both English Literature (AQA Specification B) and English Language (AQA) as separate subjects. English Literature is taught collaboratively with Spalding High School. At Spalding Grammar we are primarily responsible for Unit 1, in which students focus on the key literary genre of tragedy, building on their study of Macbeth at GCSE and exploring how this genre has evolved over time. In Unit 2, taught at Spalding High, students examine the genre of crime writing. Students are also introduced to different critical and philosophical approaches, such as Marxist, feminist and post-colonialist readings, and are encouraged to see meaning as dynamic rather than static, produced by the interaction of texts, readers and contexts. The NEA enables students to pursue their own interests, allowing them to make independent choices of both texts and tasks.

In English Language, teaching is split between two members of staff. We see language as vibrant, dynamic and profoundly political, and examine the ways in which it can be used to build relationships and represent the world. Accordingly, we encourage students to make frequent connections between the work they do in class and their own experiences as users of language in the wider world, reflecting on their own personal language histories and on how identity is encoded and enacted through language. Students have the chance to develop their own interests through the Language Investigation element of the NEA, which has seen them exploring topics as diverse as the development of children’s writing, the speech patterns of people who speak English as a second language, and the representation of the England football team in the media.

A level students in both subjects are able to access the department’s subscription to e-magazine, produced quarterly by the English and Media Centre, which contains short, accessible articles aimed specifically at post-16 students. English Literature students also have access to Massolit via Spalding High School. Wider reading is signposted frequently, often through links on Teams, and we also provide students with links to relevant television and radio programmes and podcasts.

We endeavour to make students aware of the importance of both English Language and English Literature to the world of work, and provide opportunities for them to speak to professionals in fields such as publishing, journalism and speech and language therapy.