THE HAYESFIELD CURRICULUM
English Faculty
We count it a privilege to guide our students through the exciting adventure that is English at Hayesfield. Our ultimate aim is to open their eyes and minds to the rich world of poetry, prose and drama around them. We seek to instil a lasting love of language and a thirst for literature that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
Faculty Subjects
Our English curriculum reflects high expectations and aims to inspire a passion for Language and Literature. We focus on building student confidence and maturity as readers, enabling them to engage with increasingly challenging texts.
We secure the core literacy skills necessary for success, teaching students to write clearly, fluently, and accurately, adapting their language for audience and purpose. Our goal is to ensure students can communicate their ideas and views clearly, confidently, and respectfully upon leaving school. We also work to develop cultural capital for all and ensure every student achieves a meaningful qualification (Grade 4 or higher) to confidently pursue their next steps.
English Language
Revision and Support:
You can support your daughter by encouraging these activities, which help develop her core writing and analytical skills:
Recommended Study Techniques (KS3 & KS4)
- Active Recall: Try writing out everything she can remember into the back of her book. Go back and check her original notes and add anything she may have forgotten in a different colour.
- Elaboration: Elaborate on her notes by asking herself how and why questions. For example, How does the writer create a specific tone or mood?
- Summarizing: Summarize her class notes into her own words.
- Dual Coding: Use dual coding—draw pictures to accompany her notes to help her remember key terminology and concepts (like rhetorical devices or sentence structures).
- Online Resources: Use the BBC Bitesize website, which is a useful resource to aid understanding of topics studied (especially on the Language paper, which focuses on reading and writing skills).
- Workbook Practice: Utilize Revision workbooks from school for suitable task and exam practice, and CGP English GCSE revision books for support on skills and key terms.
General Support
- Ensure she completes homework and classwork to the best of her ability and keeps her folder organized and up to date.
English Literature
Revision and Support:
You can support your daughter in her study of Literature by encouraging these activities and using these resources:
Recommended Study Techniques (KS3 & KS4)
- Deepen Reading: Encourage her to make the most of our resources, including the suggested reading list in each KS3 unit to inspire reading more about the topic of study.
- Contextual Learning: Learn something of the context in which the studied texts were written.
- Repetition is Key: Ensure she reads all the texts more than once to have clear ownership of each text in the Literature exam.
- Discussion: Read the texts (and watch film versions) as a family and discuss themes, characterisation, as well as enjoyment.
- Supplemental Media: Utilize selected and relevant podcasts shared in relation to curriculum units.
Useful Resources
- Revision Guides: Revision Guides for all the Literature texts studied are available through Scopay at a reduced rate.
- Online Literature Aid: Use Spark Notes for support with the literature texts we will be studying.
- General Support: Utilize PLCs (Personal Learning Checklist), English Support lunchtime sessions, the English Office, and Easter and May half-term revision support days.
- GCSE Pod: Use for bite-sized chunks of great information related to the texts.
English Faculty
| Head of English | Ms Elizabeth Twohigg (ET) |
|---|---|
| Teacher of English | Miss Carrie Przewiesik (CPR) |
| Teacher of English | Mrs Caroline Gardener (CGA) |
| Teacher of English | Mrs Joscelyne Beazley (JBE) |
| Teacher of English | Mrs Katharine McGowran (KMG) |
| Teacher of English | Ms Susanna Mountcastle (SMO) |
| Second in Faculty | Ms Melissa Trew (MTR) |
|---|---|
| Teacher of English (Year 1 ECT) | Miss Catherine Glover-Jones (CGJ) |
| Teacher of English | Mr DeMarco Ryans (DRY) |
| Teacher of English (Part Time) | Mrs Fran Foster (FF) |
| Teacher of English | Ms Rosemary Boyd (RBO) |
| Teacher of English | Ms Symone Thompson (STH) |
| Teacher of English (Year 2 ECT) | Mr Toby Skelton (TSK) |
Curriculum Intent and Implementation Booklets
Enriching Learning
In English it is so important that students get a sense of the world in which they live. The texts we study are varied but we also encourage students to visit the cinema and theatre and read around every topic they study to enrich their understanding of Literature and Language. Where possible we provide opportunities to visit the Royal Theatre in Bath and The Little Theatre cinema. We also ensure that every year group has an author visit where authors give a talk and run a Q and A session where students can purchase the novels, have them signed and meet the author.
Activities that we provide to support your daughter’s progress in English include:
- BANES debate Public speaking club and competitions
- BANES/Literature Festival Debate club and competitions
- Bath Literature Festival Competitions
- KS4 Literature support
- International Literacy Day
- World Book Day
- Various author visits
- In house Battle of the Books
- Reading Clubs – Battle of the Books, The Centurion Award and Carnegie
- Readathon
- Theatre club
- ESU Churchill Public Speaking Competition
- Poetry Live
- Hayesfield 100 (List of Reading Books)
You can support your daughter’s progress in English by encouraging her to:
- Read widely and everyday- there is no better activity to help in supporting literacy skills across the whole curriculum
- Use the advice of our School Librarian, Hayesfield’s online catalogue, local Libraries, the interlibrary loan service and access to University Library catalogues to extend their reading
- Visit writers at local bookshops and Literary Festivals
- Write for the School Magazine, local papers, appropriate creative writing for online
- Enter local, regional, university and national competitions for creative or essay writing
- Listen to Radio Four plays, arts/review programmes live, via iPlayer or online
- Enjoy solving crosswords and complex word puzzles
- Use GULP ( General Universities Lecture Programme), the BRSLI ( Bath Royal Scientific and Literary Institution), ITunesU and You Tube to access undergraduate level lectures
- Take part in Hayesfield Library activities, such as shadowing the Carnegie Award, Battle of the Books, The Centurion Award and/or read shortlists for the Booker Prize
- Enjoy a range of live theatre via Hayesfield Theatre Club
- Establish Book Circles, Fan Fiction Workshops, Film Clubs and the like to share expertise and enthusiasm
Recommended Reading List
Recommending a book is a very difficult task – but here is a list of books of varying length, topic and difficulty – browse through them and there must be something you would like to read!
Year 7 and 8
- Richard Adams: Watership Down
- Lisa Thompson: Gold Fish Boy
- Kiran Milwood Hargrave: The Island at the End of Everything
- Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
- Michael Morpurgo: War Horse
- R.J Palacio: Wonder
- Lewis Hine: Looking at the Stars
- Jack London: The Call of the Wild
- Elizabeth Acevedo: Poet X
- George Orwell: Animal Farm
- Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Onjali Q. Rauf: The Boy at the Back of the Class
- Geraldine McCaughrean: Where the World Ends
- Ele Fountain: Boy 87
- Irfan Master: Out of Heart
- Annabel Pitcher: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece
- Patrick Ness: A Monster Calls
- Sally Nicholls: Ways to Live Forever
- Elizabeth Laird: Welcome to Nowhere
- Steven Camaden: Everything All At Once
- Frances Harding: A Skinful of Shadows
- Sarah Crossnan: One
- Malala Yousafzi: I am Malala
Year 9
- Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
- Tom Easton: Girls Can’t Hit
- Sally Gardner: Maggot Moon
- Robin Talley: The Lies We Tell ourselves
- Jennifer Donnelly: A Gathering Light
- Holly Bourne: Am I Normal Yet?
- John Green: Paper Towns
- Lucy Powrie: Paper & Hearts Society
- Delia Owens: Where the Crawdads sing
- Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
- Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
- Marcus Sedgwick: The Foreshadowing
- Brian Conaghan: When Mr Dog Bites
- Karen McManus: One of Us is Lying
- Julie Berry: All the Truth that’s in Me
Year 10 and 11
- David Nicholls: One Day
- Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle
- Ally Condie: Matched
- Gabriel Zevin: Elsewhere
- Kate Cary: Bloodline
- Melvin Burgess: Sara’s Face
- Markus Zusak: The Book Thief
- Khaled Hosseini: 1,000 Splendid Suns
- Julia Green: Blue Moon
- Alice Kuipers: Life on a Refrigerator Door
- Philippa Gregory: The Other Boleyn Girl
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Chronicle of a Death Foretold
- Alice Sebold: The Lovely Bones
- Anna Perera: Guantanamo Boy
- Jenny Downham: Before I Die
- Meg Rosoff: How I Live Now
- Danny Scheinmann: Random Acts of Heroic Love
- Pittacus Lore: I am Number Four
- Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca
- Jenny Downham: You Against Me
- S.K Wright: It Ends with You
- Delphine de Vigan: No and Me
- Jodi Picoult: Nineteen Minutes
- Sarah Dessen: The Truth About Forever
- Brian Conaghan: The Weight of A thousand Feathers
- Emma Donoghue: Room
- Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong
- Kathryn Stockett: The Help
- Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
- Rosamund Lupton: Sister
- Susan Hill: The Woman in Black
- Sarah Crossnan: Moonrise
KS4 Final Exam Resources
Please click on the links below to find resources that will help your daughter to achieve her personal best by preparing thoroughly for her final examinations: