We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.” (Aristotle)
The English department strives to be at the heart of a vibrant curriculum at Birkdale High School. As a team, we are committed to ensuring that all of our boys thrive across all three core disciplines: reading, writing and oracy, to support them in all of their subjects across the curriculum but also to empower them to remain intellectually curious, lifelong learners.
All teachers within the English Department are dedicated to cultivating a climate of excellence and are passionate about ensuring our boys harness a desire and enthusiasm to learn and succeed. Through our knowledge-rich curriculum, our aim is for all students to foster a genuine love of learning and to appreciate the intrinsic value of education. Learning to the point of mastery enables students to access increasingly challenging aspects of learning with confidence and apply their knowledge to a range of meaningful contexts.
We aim to ignite students’ imagination through reading for pleasure and to help broaden their understanding and perspective of the world around them.
We want students to build strong schemas throughout their learning journey, to become confident readers and critical thinkers. We want them to be able to appreciate writers’ intentions and understand how various contexts influenced their craft. In studying a range of literary canonical non-canonical texts, students will, for example, understand how allusions can enrich our understanding of the human condition, how it has helped shape our cultural heritage and how it resonates with contemporary society.
Throughout the curriculum, students encounter a diverse range of challenging texts and genres, with the intention of developing them as writers who can confidently articulate their viewpoint and express themselves imaginatively and eloquently in the written form.
In terms of pedagogy, we place a strong emphasis on direct instruction of tier two vocabulary as well as the metacognitive processes of reading and writing to build resilience. Our ethos of embracing mistakes is a crucial part of each student’s learning journey; we place value in the process of crafting and drafting, to provide opportunities for them to emulate authors’ styles and explore their own style of writing.
Aspire: Our curriculum will inspire our boys to have the desire to achieve and contribute positively to society through the disciplines of reading, writing and oracy. Our boys will strive to do their best across both Language and Literature.
Thrive: Our curriculum will enable our boys to be resilient, confident and successful at developing their own sense of identity as they progress through the curriculum.
Succeed: Our curriculum will empower our boys with the understanding and empathy to become considerate, knowledgeable life long learners who want to further develop their intellectual curiosity.
