Welcome to your new Year 10 class.
Your first GCSE year can be daunting, learning has quite suddenly got very ‘real’ and a lot of what you do in class, and the assessments that you sit, may echo through future years in your life – but at the same time Year 10 English is a fascinating, academically challenging and mature programme of Learning.
Choosing Rebellion, Activism and the Voice of the Anti-Hero as your English programme for Year 10 means that, you probably found the darker, more dystopian aspects of your Key Stage 3 programme attractive; you’re somehow inexorably drawn to the unusual and deep down you sense that something is rotten in the state of… This programme will take a media-savvy journalistic approach. You’ll need to think fast, question everything and be willing to speak up. You will be asked to challenge yourself, take risks and show ambition.
We’ll be reading the work of some of the 20th Century’s greatest satirists, poets and activists. We’ll explore modern text communication, political and online language and compare this with your own speech to learn how the wool can be so easily pulled over our eyes. We’ll look at the grammar and style of a range of journalistic writing and publish our own. We’ll read Hamlet and explore modern anti-heroes such as Donnie Darko and A Clockwork Orange’s Alex De Large. Throughout, you will be practising the key skills required to succeed in the GCSE examinations. In parallel to this everyone will be completing for homework their own longitudinal journalistic inquiry by investigating links between self-selected books, films and art and presenting these in documentary form.
This site will be an important resource hub for you as the year progresses and will contain everything from details of homework to examples and videos of your own good work. I recommend that you subscribe to the site so that every update is delivered to your email inbox – and that you encourage your parents to do the same as, after all, they are your greatest supporters and the more informed they are, the better they can help!
Your success this year will be determined by the small things. Determination and grit are what is called for – making progress in small increments, day by day, is the only real way to ensure your own achievement. I will be here with you, every step of the way.
Welcome to my class, it’s going to be a great year!
Christopher Waugh
