English

Reading at The Grange School

Every year group tutor reads aloud to their tutor group for at least 15 minutes three times a week with students tracking using reading rulers.
The canon of books has been purposely constructed so that students not only develop a love of reading, but are also exposed to a range of reading sources that offer a high value of cultural capital; it will allow them to see how literature has developed and evolved from the 19^th century to present day. Furthermore, research suggests that it ensures that all students expand their vocabulary and recognise complex use of sentence structure and punctuation as a purposeful device within literary art. The canon has not merely been designed based on subjective teachers’ love of reading but up-to-date research.

2021-2022 Canon:   

Year 7

‘Treasure Island’ R.L. Stevenson

‘A Terrible thing happened to Barnaby Brockett’, John Boyne

 ‘The Secret Garden’, Francis Hodgson Burnett

‘Bear Grylls, Mud, Sweat and Tears’ Non-Fiction

Year 8

‘Sherlock Holmes’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

‘Frankenstein’ Mary Shelley 

‘Life of Pi’, Yann Marten

‘Going Solo’, Roald Dahl Non-Fictio

Year 9  

‘The Book Thief’, Markus Zusak

‘I am Malala’, by Malala Yousafzai, co-written with Christina Lamb, Non-Fiction

‘A Christmas Carol’, Charles Dickens

‘Animal Farm’, George Orwell

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, Harper Lee

Year 10

‘Lord of the Flies’, William Goulding

‘War of the Worlds’, H.G. Wells

Non-Fiction texts from selected Newspaper Articles

‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, Douglas Adams

Year 11-Revision of GCSE texts

‘Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’, Mark Haddon novel

‘Jekyll and Hyde’, R.L. Stevenson

AQA Non-fiction/Fiction anthology

Non-Fiction texts from selected Newspaper Articles

Home Learning

All students are set home learning in English on a weekly basis.

KS3: Every week, students are set Reading Plus which is designed to improve reading speed, vocabulary and inference skills, and to motivate and engage students.

KS4: Weekly home learning is to be done on-line wherever possible using either Seneca for revision of literature texts or MS Forms to revise key concepts and language skills.