GCSE books

[JaneyGee]

What books did your child study for GCSE English this year?

Dd did A Christmas Carol, Inspector Calls and Macbeth.

These

Inspector Calls, Jekyll and Hyde and Romeo and Juliet.

Animal Farm
Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Macbeth

The other half of the year did Pride & Prejudice instead of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. They also did another dystopian novel instead of Animal Farm but can't remember which.

An Inspector Calls was done in Y9.

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Macbeth
An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls, Jekyll and Hyde and The Merchant of Venice.

I've been teaching the same rotation of books now for 20 years and it's vvvvv much time for an overhaul!!! There's so much out there!!!

DD also did Drama GCSE and they did Blood Brothers. When she talked about it at her performing arts school both her drama and her singing teacher groaned and said "they still do this?" They did it at their exams 20+ year ago.

Why do English/Drama texts do have to be so bloody depressing? DD also did Of Mouse and Men in Y9. She really struggled finding any enthusiasm for it. I think the whole of 4 years English was a series of depressing texts apart from Richard III which DD classed as a history session, not literature.
Also all the poems they did for GCSE were depressing, suicidal, dystopian etc. Do we really want to put a whole generation of teens of reading?

J & H
An inspector Calls
Macbeth

All male authors. (Shakespeare is mandatory, the other two are from a list that includes Pride and Prejudice).

Everything for WJEC GCSE is miserable. Of mice and men has been in it for 400 years. I could literally recite that book. Sometimes, I don't even read off the pages I look at the kids. A wiser person than I once said "it's new to them even if it isn't to you" and I try to remember that