
This is a re-blog post originally posted by Joshua Clarke and published with kind permission.
The original post can be found here.
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Around the turn of the year, I was tasked with redesigning my school’s KS3 English curriculum. This has proven to be, once getting past the undeniably daunting and overwhelming nature of the task, immensely rewarding and a challenge packed full of creativity and opportunity. My thanks to a host of voices from whom I have gleaned tips and advice throughout the process so far, including, amongst others, Rebecca Foster (@TLPMrsF), Tom Sherrington (@headguruteacher), David Didau (@learningspy), Michael Tidd (@MichaelT1979) and Daisy Christodolou (@daisychristo).
- the teaching of writing must come out of reading and the study of existing examples
- students should be immersed in rich and varied examples of language
- grammar may be taught explicitly but always contextualised (i.e. draw out the effects of a text, identify the components causing the effect, and add meta-linguistic terminology to describe those techniques)
- the teaching of spelling should be integrated throughout schemes of learning and come from an etymological and morphological perspective in accordance with David Crystal’s views on rule-bound teaching (see ‘Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling’ – 2012)
- students should be afforded regular opportunities for ‘real-purpose’ writing
- speaking and listening should be re-prioritised and oracy for literacy promoted
- text-internal inference should be taught explicitly from the earliest point (Williams, Jazz C, 2015)
- learning is gradual; skills must be returned to at regular intervals in order to become embedded – topics should not be rushed.
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