English
Ms S Pleasants (Head of Faculty of Communications)
Ms S Webber (Second in charge of English)
Mr S Gaskins
Ms Z Stevens
Miss I Trottin
Mrs C Evans
Mr J Shield
The English Department at Witchford is an exciting place both to teach and to study. The Department is forward-looking, innovative, energetic and creative in our approach. The staff posseses a wealth of professional and academic expertise, and we place great emphasis on collaboration and shared good practice on a day-to-day basis. All of our department members work tirelessly and ceaselessly to promote students' academic achievement and their wider emotional development as young citizens.
The Department staff shares a passion for developing students as highly competent and analytical users of language, and for fostering a genuine intellectual joy in the world's great literary heritage. Many of our students go on to study A and AS Level Language and Literature at sixth-form college in Cambridge and the wider region.
The English Department is housed in our own new block of teaching rooms which is fortunate to have a wonderful view of Ely Cathedral. The English Block has a well-appointed Special Needs suite and a brand-new Interactive Learning Centre, which has an interactive whiteboard and thirty personal computers for students' to use.
Across Key Stage 3 students are taught in mixed-ability groups, with banded setting year 9. The Key Stage 3 curriculum provides a challenging and varied diet, including media study, close reading of a range of quality fiction, language skills and extended directed writing. The Department invests each year a substantial sum in building up our stock of texts, and we insist that each and every student reads some quality fiction each week. The English Department embraces the spirit of the National Strategy in its work across Key Stage 3.
Students are taught in ability sets for GCSE. We study AQA Specification A GCSE courses: English 3702 and English Literature 3712. Some students also have the opportunity to take the AEB Literacy Tests and the Welsh Board Certificate of English, so that they may start their young adult life with as wide a range of English qualifications as possible.
Throughout students' school careers the English Department maintains strong home-school links. We place great emphasis on ongoing contact with parents and carers, to ensure that students' educational experience is as enriching and fulfilling as possible.
The English Department has a long-standing and fruitful relationship with the Faculty of Education at Homerton College, Cambridge, and we undertake the school-based training of new English teachers each year. This is very exciting as we have the privilege of seeing new young teachers grow and develop, and we all benefit from fresh new ideas and approaches, whilst passing on our own wide range of practical experience to new entrants to the profession.
The department places great value of staff teamwork and collaboration. Department members regularly pool their experience and expertise to develop new schemes of work and resources, to provide every student with the best possible educational experience.
The English staff is tireless in our drive to raise academic achievement for all students and to foster the love of language and literature for their own sakes. We provide a caring and nurturing, yet academically rigorous and stimulating environment in which all of our students can learn and develop. It is this that we hope is our greatest legacy to our students.