Year 7: which books have your DC studied in English this year?

[Bonsoir]

Grateful for as many replies as possible!
TIA

[PastSellByDate]

Good question Bonsoir - I'd be curious to hear what other schools state comprehensive, grammar or private are doing.

For DD1 Y7 at a state comprehensive:

1 x Shakespeare Play: As You Like It - read in class and some tv clips watched for particular scenes. (This may be showing my age - but no memorising soliloquies, which oddly I found disappointing as I can still rattle off - Is this a dagger I see before me? Handle towards my hand....).

1 x Fiction: Lemon Snicket Series of Unfortuntate Events: The First. Started but not completed.

1 x Non-fiction: Boy - read in class.

I believe they have done poetry as well.

To be fair the school seem to be really focusing on writing - planning/ outlining/ revising or editing - which has noticeably improved DD1's work in many subjects.

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Not a huge amount of reading in my opinion. But in the US it's typically 1 book a month for six months/ with 3 months dedicated to other forms of writing like famous writing/ Speeches (Declaration of Independence/ Gettysburg Address/ Martin Luther King's I have a Dream/ etc....) [In my day they were big on memorising some of this - so most US kids can recite the preamble to our Constitution: We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.... there is a catchy song which does make that easier] or Poetry (Frost The Road Not Taken/ Banjo Paterson's The Man from Snowy River (a popular film at the time) - again memorising & reciting some/ or Non-Fiction (Anne Frank/ biographies of famous Americans/ etc...).

Homework in my day (when dinosaurs roamed the land) was usually read the next 20 pages or Read Chapter 2 by Friday kind of thing.

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Another local secondary Selly Park (a girls school) has published a suggested reading list for Y7: www.sellyprk.bham.sch.uk/resources/english/reading/year7.pdf - I hasten to add DD1 does not attend this school, but a friend does.

My understanding from friends with daughters there is more reading is being tackled - and certainly it is assigned as homework. I have also checked with friends with sons at Kings' Heath Boys and more reading is being done there.

I rather suspect our school (now rated Good after being rated NEEDS IMPROVEMENT) is working to the old 'get them to 'C' at GCSE' formula still - but I could be wrong.

I do acknowledge it is a balance - and if as a school they think it's more important to improve writing skills first and focus on that - maybe they're right.

However, I'm very curious to hear what other state comprehensives have assigned this year.

[Bonsoir]

Thanks, PastSellByDate! Will be interesting to see more replies - thank you for being so complete!

[jaws5]

London comprehensive here, that I remember they've read a Shakespeare play (I can't remember which), Shakespeare sonnets and other poetry and Animal Farm by G Orwell.

[gleegeek]

There's not a lot of reading going on in school for my dd either They've dipped into Twelfth Night, read Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce and compared two poets Benjamin Zephaniah and another whose name I can't remember...

Fortunately dd reads widely but that seems quite unusual in her cohort Love the idea of a reading list, but don't recognise many books from that list... Would love secondary English teachers to do more encouraging of reading and a reading list would help.

[Tryingtokeepalidonit]

Where I work we have a text based English curriculum so during Y7 pupils will read 3 of: The Graveyard Book; Wonder; Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea; Nation; Mr Stink; The Invention of Hugo Cabret; Five Children and It and A Christmas Carol. They will also read a non fiction text from A Cat Called Bob, The Scrapbook of Walter Tull or Boy. In addition to this they will study A Midsummer Night's Dream, Beowulf ( the Morpurgo and the Heaney versions), a film study Chicken Run, A Corpse Bride or Jaws. Within the study of the texts they will cover elements of all four NC strands which we carefully track. The teachers choose the texts according to the ability of their classes, we set in English.

I am liking forward to seeing what other schools do.

[Tryingtokeepalidonit]

looking duh

[Bonsoir]

I would like additional bit of information, please: how many hours (how many lessons of how many minutes) did your DC have per week in Year 7?

[ShanghaiDiva]

My son is now in year 10, but generally they study one text per term. Year 7 would be timetabled for 3 lessons per week - 50 minutes per lesson.

[blueandredbutterfly]

I can't remember what dd did in y7 but this is her school's current KS3 English map I can't remember what dd did in year 7 but this is her school's current KS3 English map www.thedownsschool.org.uk/DSW10/docs/English_Dept/English_KS3_Curric_2014-15.pdf

They have 4 hours of English a week & in years 7 & 8 an hour of that is a library lesson (the school has an excellent library) - where they are expected (& do!) read their own choices. They have to keep a reading diary, dd is a book worm & read at least one novel a week. It's a state comp if that makes any difference.

[GooseyLoosey]

Midsummer Night's Dream
Beowulf (various versions)
Poetry (don't know what as ds was less than impressed by it)
Going Solo (Roald Dahl's autobiography)
Short stories - Frank O’Connor: My Oedipus Complex and other Short Stories

[TobikkoRoll]

Grammar school in the South East. As far as I can remember, I have heard my daughter mention: A Midsummer's Night Dream, Boy, Holes, Goggle Eyes and possibly Millions. Doesn't sound like much, but really I don't think they've studied many texts at all from speaking with her.

They get 3 hours a week of English.

I'm hoping they are building up slowly and will cover more texts eventually?

Why the survey Bonsoir?

[blueandredbutterfly]

remembering back to y7 - an hour of the English was timetabled as 'language' which was spelling/grammar/punctuation. So they had two normal English lessons, one library lesson & one language in y7.

[Bonsoir]

Why? Because my DD is going into Year 7 in a bilingual French-English school and there is room for improvement in the English curriculum and a new Head of English. Lobbying is underway and, as always, data and best practice are the lobbyist's friend!

[meandmymuffintop]

God I can't remember, and she's still in year 7! They've dipped into Macbeth, and are doing an assessment this week on Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince.

But they are really being pushed on, dd's tutor asked me to get her reading from a list of 19th century classics, which she is finding hard. She gave up on Wuthering Heights and we are now doing Oliver Twist together - slowly, very slowly. She's not really enjoying it

I am though!!!

[BakewellSlice]

blueandredbutterfly our local school (in Scotland) also has a timetabled self-chosen reading hour. I was sceptical but have been won over by it, as it has had the beneficial knock on effect of increasing reading at home.

[PastSellByDate]

Hi just to say DD1 Y7 3 x 50 minutes a week for English

Most US schools are 5 x 50 minutes a week - all the way through to age 18.

[Bonsoir]

Yes - 3 x 50' doesn't sound enough to me. DD will get 5 x 50' (or perhaps 55') but of course not much other exposure to English at school.

[Callmegeoff]

My dd currently in year 7 at a brand new free school started with poetry did something else then skellig by David Almond and has moved onto Goth genre possibly Dracula but I'm not sure. She has 4 English lessons a week plus is encouraged to read in tutor time. Shakespeare is being covered in drama. It hasn't occurred to me that this might not be enough, I will look into that reading list.

[squidgyapple]

Oliver Twist and Scrooge
Midsummer's Night Dream
19th Century Gothic Horror short stories
Poetry (various)
There might be more.

They also have to read certain books (~12)as part of the library challenge - this includes children's classics, Black Beauty, Little Women etc.

[Bonsoir]

Ah, interesting that Shakespeare is covered in drama. How many English and how many Drama lessons per week?

[Bonsoir]

That sounds quite good, squidgyapple, especially the reading of children's classics. Is that a state or private school!

[Bonsoir]

?

[LooseAtTheSeams]

Boys comp in London - DS was in Y7 last year and they read a lot of different things as well as trying a range of writing styles, but I can only remember Midsummer Night's Dream! They must have done something by Edgar Allan Poe as DS kept going on about it.

This year (Y8) they've done Much Ado About Nothing and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time as well as selections of poetry. DS was encouraged to read classics as he loves English so I know he read Tale of Two Cities last year and is reading Dracula at the moment and planning Frankenstein next! He also read the Art of War last year but apparently mainly in order to adapt its lessons to Minecraft or something similar!

[Callmegeoff]

I'll have to ask her bonsoir but I think drama is once a week plus she has chosen it as an extra curricular activity. English is 4 lessons a week but I don't know how long the lessons last for.

She is taught in mixed ability groups and the children choose which homework they want to do. For example she has chosen to write a piece of Gothic fiction because she told me she wants to push herself and it has a longer deadline

[squidgyapple]

it's a state comprehensive, Bonsoir