English - Year 7
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| Knowledge | ANCIENT ORIGINS Anchor text: The Odyssey translated by Simon Armitage. Satellite texts studied include: The epic of Gilgamesh (extracts) The Iliad by Homer (extracts) Creation myths from Greek, Yoruban and Chinese mythology. Poetry by Carol Ann Duffy and Margaret Atwood The Penelopeiad by Margaret Atwood. The students will explore the six underpinning concepts of English via these texts: Metaphor,story, argument, pattern, grammar and context. Students know - The five stages of Aristotle’s plot structure - The common features of creation myths - How epic heroes are presented - The similarities between different epic stories - A range of different narrative structures (chronological, non-chronological, in medias res etc,) - The plot of the Odyssey | LINKS TO LEGENDS Anchor text: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Simon Armitage. Satellite texts studied include: Beowulf (extracts) Arthurian legend (extracts) Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en A Thousand and One Nights (multiple authors) La Belle Dame sans Merci – John Keats The Lady of Shalott – Alfred, Lord Tennyson The students will explore the six underpinning concepts of English via these texts: Metaphor,story, argument, pattern, grammar and context. Students know • Metaphors are made up of tenors and vehicles • Symbols are a metaphor where the tenor and the vehicle stay the same throughout the text e.g. Heorot symbolises human civilisation • Kennings are used in Old English poems to describe characters and things e.g. Grendel is called ‘a prowler through the dark’ • Aristotle’s plot structure: Inciting moment, exposition, rising action, complication, climax, reversal, falling action, Denouement, End. • A quest narrative involves a hero, sent far from home, facing many dangers before eventually returning home successful • Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Greek Knight are structured using alliteration and caesura. This was a common form in medieval poetry. • English changed over time from Old English, spoken by Anglo Saxons, to Middle English after the Norman Conquest. • Chivalry was a strict code of behaviour that knights were meant to follow at all costs. | ROMANCE Anchor text: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare Satellite texts include: Patience Agbabi’s grime remix of the Canterbury Tales A Midsummer Night's Dream (extracts) Sir Orfeo Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti The students will explore the six underpinning concepts of English via these texts: Metaphor,story, argument, pattern, grammar and context. Students know - Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author who had a big impact on English Literature - English as a language has changed over time. - Chaucer wrote a long collection of stories called ‘The Canterbury Tales’. - The Romance genre has been popular since the Middle Ages. - The term romance refers to any imaginative adventure concerned with noble heroes, gallant love, a chivalric code of honour and daring deeds. - Courtly love was the love of a knight for a noble lady that followed strict roles and was not to do with marriage or romantic love. - The Knight’s Tale is a classic chivalric romance. - Fortune’s Wheel is a medieval symbol that showed how ‘fortune’ controlled your life. - Chivalric romances use archetypes such as the Hero, The Lady and the Villain. - Shakespeare subverts the conventions and archetypes of Romance in his plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. - The presentation of women in Romance texts has changed from silent, obedient and pious characters like Emily, to outspoken, disobedient and challenging characters such as Helena, Hermia and Juliet. - The Romance genre developed over time into the modern fantasy genre. - Over time writers have reused, subverted and changed the archetypes of the Romance genre. |
| High frequency vocabulary and grammatical structures taught | Key Vocabulary: Symbolism Narrative Structure Metaphor Simile Imagery Exaggeration Rhetorical Question Personal Pronouns Triples Tenor Vehicle Ground Tier Three Vocabulary Myth Creation Myth Cosmogony Hero’s Journey Epic Hero Hubris Divine Favour Archetype Oral Tradition In Medias Res Deus ex Machina Xenia (Greek concept of hospitality) Epithet Students can - Use tenor, vehicle and ground to analyse a range of metaphors - Use excellent epithets to evaluate and analyse characters and themes - Write thesis statements using excellent epithets - Show an awareness of themes and motifs - Use thesis statements to write topic sentences - Analyse a writer’s use of language using PE-WET - Evaluate a writer’s intent - Use creative sentence types to craft descriptive passages. - Use tentative language to explore two different viewpoints. | Key Vocabulary: Character Arc Narrative Structure Five-Act Structure Cyclical Structure Symmetrical Structure Symbolism Metaphor Tenor Vehicle Ground Tier Three Vocabulary Epic Hero Hero’s Journey Quest Narrative Medieval Romance Courtly Love Chivalry Arthurian Legend Archetype Trickster Temptress Alliterative Verse Caesura Kennings Epithets Students can - Use tenor, vehicle and ground to analyse a range of metaphors - Use excellent epithets to evaluate and analyse characters and themes - Write thesis statements using excellent epithets - Show an awareness of themes and motifs - Use thesis statements to write topic sentences - Analyse a writer’s use of language using PE-WETCAR - Evaluate a writer’s intent - Use creative sentence types to craft descriptive passages. - Use tentative language to explore two different viewpoints. | Key Vocabulary: Influence Develop Subvert Present Challenge Obedient Disobedient Archetype Convention Perspective Representation Evolve Contrast Symbol Tradition Narrative Interpretation Transformation Structure Genre Tier Three Vocabulary Courtly Love Chivalric Code Chivalric Romance Fortune’s Wheel Hero / Lady / Villain (archetypes) Subversion Narrative Voice Characterisation Symbolism Allegory Allusion Students can - Use tenor, vehicle and ground to analyse a range of metaphors - Use excellent epithets to evaluate and analyse characters and themes - Write thesis statements using excellent epithets - Show an awareness of themes and motifs - Use thesis statements to write topic sentences - Analyse a writer’s use of language using PE-WETCARTS - Evaluate a writer’s intent - Use creative sentence types to craft descriptive passages. - Use tentative language to explore two different viewpoints. - Track an image in a Shakespearian speech, annotate it and summarise the meaning. |
| Assessment | Formative Assessments: Writing: A non-chronological report. Reading: An extract-based question focused on the character arc of Odysseus. | Formative Assessments: Writing: A persuasive letter Reading: An extract-based question focused on the conventions of Legend. | Formative Assessments: Writing: A piece of creative writing (description) Reading: An extract-based question focused on Romeo and Juliet. |
| Cultural Capital Careers Cross Curricular Links | Cultural Capital: For clarity, when discussing the progress students make in English what we mean is knowing more and being able to do more. At secondary school, this requires a solid foundation in decoding, reading fluency, orthographic awareness, letter formation, handwriting, and specific knowledge of how to read, write and speak in English. Clearly the performance of feeder primaries has a lot of impact here. The better we know what our students arrive with, the better we can adapt our curriculum to fit the needs of the students we serve.The pillars of progress in English – reading, writing and oracy – should both address barriers and take advantage of opportunities to support the broad and ambitious curriculum we’re offering. Not only will the stories we’ve selected help students access later aspects of the curriculum, but also the approaches taken to how these texts are read, how writing is scaffolded and how academic discussion is placed at the heart of the curriculum. The guiding idea behind the Year 7 curriculum is to provide students with a foundational knowledge of where literature – and especially English literature – came from and has developed over time. We introduce concepts that will be returned to on multiple occasions as the curriculum unfolds with the intention that students will be able to make meaning links and connections. Careers: historian, artefacts curator, actor, performing arts, poet, artist, teacher, anthropologist, philosopher, lecturer, literary critic, librarian Cross curricular links: Ancient and Medieval history, drama through performance, maths and music through exploration of poetry. | ||