English at Hermitage Academy is an immersive experience. Students will study classics such as Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, and more modern works of Willy Russell’s ‘Blood Brothers’ and the poetry of Maya Angelou. They will also enjoy developing their knowledge of English language, writing creatively and for a number of audiences.
Students will journey through the literary canon, beginning in Medieval England with Beowulf and Geoffrey Chaucer before travelling on to meet William Shakespeare’s tragic hero, ‘Macbeth.’ Pupils can meet brooding Romantic heroes like Wordsworth, Byron and Blake before arriving in the Victorian period for an encounter with Dickens’ reformed miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. The journey concludes in the modern era where they explore 1930s America and the unlikely friendship of George and Lennie in Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’, followed by the social inequality of Edwardian England with Priestley’s ‘An Inspector Calls’, as well as a range of poetry from diverse and exciting voices. In conjunction with this, students will explore a range of fiction and non-fiction from an English Language analytical and creative perspective. This will aid their understanding of English in the ‘everyday’ and prepare them for their next steps. As part of our English curriculum, we will also extend and develop the critical oracy skills that every student will need to succeed and flourish in the world outside of school.