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Key Stage 3 · Year 7 - Foundations · Term 2
Poetry anthology (HT1) + Pre-1914 short stories (HT2). Students meet older syntax in bite-sized form before tackling Shakespeare in T3. Poetry compresses meaning; Victorian short stories build stamina with archaic register. Both feed the National Curriculum requirement for pre-1914 reading.
Set text
Curated poetry anthology + "The Signalman" (Dickens), "The Red Room" (H.G. Wells), "The Necklace" (Maupassant, translation)
Big skill jump
Students exit Term 2 able to decode an unseen pre-1914 extract, identify a writer's method, and write a coherent analytical paragraph linking method to effect.
End-of-half-term assessment
Analytical essay comparing two anthology poems on a shared theme (e.g. outsiders, longing) - 45 minutes.
Week 2
Half-caste - John Agard
Agard writes in Guyanese Creole to confront the term "half-caste". The poem questions why mixed identity is treated as incomplete.
dialectidentityphonetic
Week 3
Refugee Blues - W. H. Auden
Auden's 1939 ballad for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. The blues form gives the poem a slow, sorrowful rhythm.
refraindisplacementpersecution
Week 4
The Highwayman - Alfred Noyes
A 1906 narrative ballad set on a moonlit moor. Bess sacrifices herself to warn the highwayman of the redcoats waiting in ambush.
narrativeimagerymetaphor
Week 5
My Last Duchess - Robert Browning (extract)
A dramatic monologue set in Renaissance Italy. The Duke shows a visitor a painting of his late wife and reveals - without meaning to - that he had her killed.
monologuedukejealousy
Week 6
Caged Bird - Maya Angelou
Angelou contrasts a free bird and a caged bird as an extended metaphor for freedom and racial oppression in 20th-century America.
symbolismcontrastfreedom
Week 7
The Listeners - Walter de la Mare + HT1 assessment
Assessment week. A 1912 narrative poem of unexplained mystery. Pairs naturally with The Highwayman for the comparative assessment.
atmospheremysteryphantom
End-of-half-term assessment
Analytical response on one pre-1914 short story - "How does Dickens/Wells build tension in [extract]?" - 60 minutes.
Week 8
The Signalman - Charles Dickens (opening)
Dickens (1866) wrote this after surviving the Staplehurst rail crash. The narrator visits a lonely signalman haunted by a warning ghost.
gothicforebodingisolation
Week 9
The Signalman - middle and ending
Three visitations from a spectre, each before a disaster. Dickens leaves the cause of the final death ambiguous.
tensionsupernaturalomen
Week 10
The Red Room - H. G. Wells
Wells (1896) wrote a ghost story where the real horror is fear itself. A confident young man dares to spend the night in a haunted room.
fearrationalismfirst person
Week 11
The Necklace - Guy de Maupassant
Maupassant (1884): Mathilde borrows a necklace, loses it, and works ten years to replace it - only to learn the original was fake.
ironytwistpride
Week 12
Comparison: tension in three pre-1914 stories
All three writers build tension differently: Dickens through setting/repetition, Wells through sentence length, Maupassant through dramatic irony.
comparemethodeffect
Week 13
The Signalman revisited - HT2 assessment
Assessment week: 60-minute analytical response on how Dickens builds tension in The Signalman.
analysetensionevidence