Telling Our Story –

The Priory Pembroke English Curriculum

"The human mind seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories as 'psychologically privileged' meaning they are treated differently in memory than other types of material.” Daniel Willingham

“We think in terms off cause and effect, heroes and villains and unifying morals which give meaning to otherwise random events. We tend to conform to a particular way of structuring our stories – chronology, climaxes, resolutions – and by doing so we make it easier for those around us to understand our experiences.” David Didau

Priory Pembroke students follow an aspirational, inclusive, enriching and diverse curriculum that enables them to encounter, understand and question stories - reading examples through time, from this country and from around the world. This enables students to both widen their cultural capital, whilst simultaneously allowing them see themselves reflected in the texts they study. Our curriculum is founded on the principles of the Trust’s English intent statement, but it has been contextualised for our unique and special context. Our students, through studying a diverse range of authors and genres, are able to articulate their own lived experiences and those of others, deepening empathy, their understanding of their position in the historical and contemporary world, as well as becoming adept at communicating these - in both speech and writing.

Through experiencing these texts, students become co-constructors of this country’s story, contributing to culture and society through having their voice heard and appreciating the voice of others. Pembroke students experience high quality texts that demonstrate story telling on the stage and on the page. Pembroke English classrooms seek to immerse students in the contexts that have shaped writers including their ideas, political and social ideologies, as well as the economic and religious environment they lived in. Pembroke students are increasingly adept at using and manipulating language for a range of purposes and functions. They become masters of rhetoric and are equipped with the skills they need to be successful in the wider world. In writing, students are taught to pursue their own original ideas, expressing these in an academic and critical way. The practise of this cements foundational disciplinary skills that are crucial to students’ life chances at GCSE across the curriculum and beyond.

The exploration of The Human Condition is central to Pembroke’s English curriculum, encountering different aspects of it in a range of stories. Their lives will be enriched by visiting authors, , trips to local universities, bookshops, events, and staged productions of texts in the theatre at both GCSE and KS3. English at Pembroke teaches students how to be active contributors to the texts that shape the world around them, so that they can become the informed, culturally enriched, critical thinkers that make true citizens of the world.