English
#readtosucceed
The aim of the English department is to help all of our students develop fully as communicators whilst fostering and nurturing an enjoyment of reading.
The English department is generally busy and noisy and this is entirely by design. We firmly believe that English classrooms should be built upon discussion, a wide range of reading materials and students who are confident in communicating their ideas on paper. Students are encouraged to write in a broad variety of formats, both creative and functional, in order to lay the foundations for future examination success and life after school.
Our classrooms are filled with students’ work as we firmly believe in celebrating student successes and student enjoyment of their work.
In the junior school we pride ourselves in our wide range of classic and contemporary literature and students will have a rich and varied experience of texts including Shakespeare and Dickens right through to more modern authors such as Catherine MacPhail, Louis Sachar and J.K. Rowling. All students in years 8 and 9 take part in the Accelerated Reading programme to help them develop as independent readers and this is overseen both in the English classroom and in library time. In addition our year 8 students are treated to a brand new book of their choice in term one thanks to our participation in BookBuzz in association with the National Book Trust. We believe that it is worth investing in our students’ literacy development.
In recent years we have celebrated World Book Day as imaginatively as possible and students and teachers have transformed into their favourite literary characters to mark the occasion. We have participated in Read On to support the important work of Cancer Fund for Children and we routinely arrange theatre and cinema trips so that our students can experience something they have read in another medium.
At GCSE all of our students follow the English Language GCSE course and a great many also follow GCSE English Literature with great success. English Literature is also a successful option at A Level.
We are extremely proud to have been the first school in the local area to offer Journalism at both GCSE and A Level and the subject continues to go from strength to strength.
Our students are afforded a wealth of opportunities in the classroom but we also believe that it is important that students can have opportunities to excel beyond the classroom. We have enjoyed participating in the Debating Matters competition run by the Institute of Ideas where Oakgrove students have been awarded the Best Speaker accolade on more than one occasion. Our students have also participated in the local Voice of the Future competition on several occasions in the last few years.
A reader lives a thousand lives - Jojen