Danesfield English Department is very proud of the work that it does with pupils and with the standard of attainment our children achieve. We have consistently exceeded our targets in both Key Stages. Our team of teachers is energetic and innovative and contains a wide range of expertise.

Our aim is to provide all pupils with the ability to speak, read and write English with confidence. We also recognise the importance of helping each child achieve their full potential, and this ethos governs the quality of teaching and learning in the English Department. Children do not learn at the same pace, neither do they use the same learning style, therefore staff teach and support, taking into account the individual child’s needs. We want our able students to excel and those who find English more difficult to make steady progress. Our setting arrangements and varied resources support this good practice. We try to empower the pupils by teaching them how to set their own targets for improvement: one child’s target might be to include more adverbs in their work, whilst another’s in the same group might be to write in paragraphs.

In Year 5, pupils are taught in mixed ability tutor groups. Further Literacy Support and small group work supplement the daily literacy hour for those children who would benefit from extra help with reading and writing. This is in addition to the provision made for children on the Special Educational Needs register. All this additional help with Literacy is one of the reasons why Danesfield was recently awarded the Basic Skills Quality Mark.

In Year 6, 7 and 8, children are taught in ability groups, so that teaching can be more focused on the needs of particular children. Again, support is provided where beneficial.

English lessons are lively and use a range of stimuli to inspire the children including up-to-date literature, Internet research and a variety of non-fiction texts which explore current issues. Through all this runs regular practice at improving word power and sentence structure. Using the frameworks of Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 Literacy Strategies, enables us to teach skills which are really going to take the children forward.

We have visiting poets and fiction writers to the school and offer the children opportunities to take part in writing competitions. In recent years we have done particularly well in inter-school public speaking competitions which are linked to our Year 8 module of work. We were also the proud winners of the Threshold Prize for poetry two years ago and continue to encourage our budding poets to submit their work for publication. Drama features in many modules of work, including the Year 7 Newspaper project where the pupils create their own community and report upon the dramatised events in a newspaper which they then publish using ICT skills. Journalism is also encouraged live, as children write about school events for presenting in assembly or for publishing in the local press. All in all we intend to provide a scheme of work which is rigorous but fun as we want the children to enjoy learning.

Click on one of the links to find out what we’re doing in each year group and how they might be helped at home.

Jane Burton
Head of English