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English curriculum essentials
You may well begin reading this chapter with a fistful of questions. What exactly constitutes the English curriculum? Does it resemble my own school experience? Put simply, with no doubt some trepidation, what do I need to know?
This chapter will hopefully provide many of the answers you need, while provoking some new, even more useful questions.
The English curriculum is at once reassuringly familiar and at the same time incredibly wide ranging in its scope. In this chapter, the aim is to identify and distil the essential knowledge and skills required to teach English, so that you can enter the classroom with confidence. We will cover the broadly known basics of reading, writing and why teaching Shakespeare to a bunch of bored teenagers isnāt as insurmountable as it may first appear.
If you were to read the newspapers and listen to the siren calls of the media, you would be right to have your sense of confidence and belief in teaching English dented. Stories in the press easily demonise the decline of the English language. Grammar has apparently been irreparably broken by the onslaught of technology. Reading for pleasure is withering on the vine, and the very standard of childrenās writing is in inexorable decline. Who would enter such a profession at such a time?
Well, me. And you. There are also many thousands of fellow English teachers who are still happy to haul themselves up the barricades. School leaders, parents, charities and politicians are responding to the challenges of falling literacy. For myself, despite the swirling media tales of gloom, and after over a decade of teaching English, I have never felt so optimistic about the job.
You too should be reading this book with excitement and brimming with confidence as you embark upon your teaching career. Too much of the cynicism in the media is founded upon polarising debates over issues such as the supposed decline of grammar, perpetual changes in the English curriculum and the shackling of learning at the hands of stifling examinations.
We must steel ourselves in the midst of such rhetoric and simply get on in our classrooms with inspiring a love of reading and a love of English in its rich diversity.
My optimism derives from my deep-rooted sense of purpose about the teaching of English. The same drive and passion that led me into teaching English in the first place, over a decade ago. The debates that surround English take on a secondary importance in the face of the knowledge that learning English provides essential tools for literacy, and it can give life-long emotional nourishment to the students in our care.
It is worth considering what purpose brought you to the brink of teaching English. Ask yourself: How will you cultivate and retain such optimism in the face of trials and a torrent of late-night marking? What did your experience of learning English teach you? What kindled your passion for English, and how can you pass that on?
The effective teaching of reading
The importance of reading is one of those universal truths upon which everyone can agree. In considering what passion brought to you to teaching English in the first place, many of you will find the answer was rooted in a deep love of reading. Something that changed you and opened up a world of imaginative opportunities that you have the urge to share.
Reading begins long before students enter the English classroom, of course. It is most typically rooted in the earliest of years. Reading with parents or family members creates long-lasting memories and can ensure a lifelong love of reading. From a very early age, reading is imperative. Robert K. Merton coined the sociological concept of āThe Matthew Effectā, from the Biblical reference that explains that āthe rich get rich and the poor get poorerā. This applies to language use and reading, where the āword richā get richer, whereas the āword poorā get poorer. From birth, some children read less with parents, fall behind at school and, cumulatively over time, read far less than their more proficient peers.
The gap in vocabulary between the word rich and the word poor is daunting. Studies by the Department of Education have indicated the gap stretches to many thousands of words between different students ā even as early as seven years of age. If this wealth and breadth of words become effective predictors of broader success in education, then we clearly have a crucial task at hand.
It is our role to attempt to close that vocabulary gap. This task takes many forms. We need to help students with weak literacy to decode words more effectively. We need to know what strategies best suit this task ā from āreading recoveryā schemes outside the English classroom, to āguided readingā strategies, and many more besides that occur within our English lessons.
Reading strategies and skills
Reading in English is most typically divided into fiction and nonfiction reading. Many English departments approach their Key Stage 3 (KS3) curriculum by dividing schemes of learning into fiction and non-fiction strands. Schemes such as the study of a novel, or a varied collection of poems, would represent the study of fiction, whereas a non-fiction scheme may concentrate upon per suasive texts, such as a scheme on advertising or political speeches.
Other English departments approach the curriculum thematically. For example, a scheme of learning on āWar and wordsā may encompass war poetry, a novel such as Michael Morpurgoās brilliant Private Peaceful, first-person accounts of war, political speeches from the war, etc. These approaches have the benefit of creating a pattern of meaning, whereat students can connect vocabulary and ideas and build their knowledge and understanding.
What will be common across all schools is that the reading skills practised and honed by students will spiral upwards in terms of challenge and degree of difficulty. This will mean that many common reading strategies are revisited. This will complement the development of new, challenging vocabulary, ideas and knowledge. The following table includes a range of reading strategies to be taught in English.
Reading strategies | Definition |
ā¢ Skimming | Reading quickly to get an overview of a text |
ā¢ Scanning | Searching for the key information in a text |
ā¢ Summarising | Synthesising the key ideas in a text |
ā¢ Questioning | Formulating questions on a given text |
ā¢ Inferring | Making meanings from clues given in a text |
ā¢ Empathising | Reading ābetween the linesā to find meaning in a text |
ā¢ Visualising | Creating images to better understand a text |
ā¢ Close reading | Homing in on key words or phrases |
ā¢ Reading backwards and forwards | Being able to move around a text to clarify ideas and make connections |
ā¢ Predicting | Making educated guesses |
These reading strategies do need to be made explicit to students. If they understand the strategies they need to apply when reading, then they are better placed to read independently. Our ultimate aim is that students read fluently and independently, drawing upon these reading strategies automatically. As English teachers, we need to have an acute knowledge about where students are on the continuum between being weak, dependent readers and becoming fluent, independent readers.
There are many approaches to the teaching of reading to help develop vocabulary recognition and to develop reading skills. Crucially, creating a strong culture of reading in the classroom is key.
We need to question how we are going to foster reading for pleasure that complements the development of reading strategies. Reading will not flourish without being cultivated.
We must ask: Do we provide a range of reading materials that students can access? Are we talking about reading on a regular basis, celebrating and modelling the act of reading? Do students have a good knowledge of reading material that is well suited to them? Are our classrooms great adverts for reading: do we prove apt role models for reading?
Creating a thriving culture of reading doesnāt stop in the English classroom, of course. Many schools undertake āBig readsā or an annual āReadathonā. They encourage regular author visits and make the library a learning hub of the school. Find out what your school does to promote reading and get involved.
Reading the āliterary canonā
The choice of reading material is often a battleground of debate. Such a debate could be simply mediated by agreeing that students need challenging texts, chosen by teachers, for their learning, alongside being guided to making their own choice of high-quality, wider reading.
The āliterary canonā is lauded as central to the English curriculum. Since F. R. Leavis, in the 1950s, wrote the book The Great Tradition, effectively outlining an accepted ācanonā of great literature, debate as to who should be part of this āgreat traditionā has been fought out tirelessly. His opening line states: āThe great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad ā to stop for the moment at that comparatively safe point in history.ā1 Without doubt, any classification of quality is sure to arouse debate and criticism. Leavis had no intention of prescribing these novelists to an unwitting bunch of Year 7 English students, but it was the beginning of an important debate about what literature we should teach in English.
The debate shows no sign of slowing. Margaret Mathieson quoted Matthew Arnold in describing English teachers as āThe Preachers of Cultureā. They were people on a mission to bring culture to the masses.
The question is: whose culture?
We must ask ourselves: Should our interests define what our students read? Should the interests of our students affect what we decide to read in the classroom? And whose ācanonā is it anyway?
Recently, many politicians and educationalists have undertaken the debate with thrusting arguments. The value of ācultural capitalā has become a clarion call for many. The idea is that the knowledge of prestigious and traditional literature provides a social value that can help with social mobility and becoming a success in life.
Although it is hard to argue with the value of the classics, such prescriptivism is likely to stick in the throat of many English teachers. In the most recent iterations of the National Curriculum, classics of the literary canon, such as the plays of Shakespeare and modern British fiction, have been cited as compulsory, with more specific recommendations, such as Romantic poetry and poetry of the First World War making the cut.
Few could argue with the ambition of such lists. Like going shopping, we need lists, otherwise we forget to buy the crucial ingredients we need ā or even the healthy staples, milk and bread. Not only that; there remains a great deal of choice for individual teachers, despite these prescribed lists.
In the reality of the classroom, a āde facto canonā emerges, formed by the shared expertise of experienced English teachers. Ask English teachers what they teach and why, and the āde facto canonā will become clear to you. Find out what students are reading. Find out what teachers are teaching successfully to the students in your school. Create your canon that is best suited for your students.
It is important to question your own knowledge of fiction for children. What have you read from Michael Morpurgo, Eoin Colfer, Frank Cottrell Boyce,...
