Curriculum notes
Curriculum notes
Year 8 Sch - Autumn Term 2008
ENGLISH
Comprehension
• Retrieve, deduce, infer and interpret
• Comment on writers’ use of language, purpose and viewpoint
• Effective use of a quotation
• Personal responses
• Awareness of mark scheme
• Sift, plan, structure and write extended responses
• Extended responses (structure: point, quote, explain)
• Comparative essay writing skills
Poetry
• Analysis and comparison of a range of pre- and post-1914 poems
• Revise skills: annotation
• Form (sonnet, ballad, ode)
• Focus on poetic techniques: metre, rhyme (pararhyme, internal rhyme, eye-rhyme), enjambement, caesura, sibilance, refrain
Writing
• Narrative (revision of all techniques)
Prose
• Analysis of extracts from classic / contemporary novels
• Comparative work
Shakespeare
• Analysis of extracts from various plays
• Focus of language / form / devices
Grammar and Punctuation
• Elliipsis, hyphen, dash and brackets
• Euphemism, oxymoron, synecdoche
• Revise paragraphing, connectives and speech punctuation
• Revise use of colon, semi-colon
• Revise use of commas in complex sentences
MATHEMATICS
• Pythagoras’ theorem
• Graphs
• Simultaneous equations
• Area and volume
• Quadratic expanding and factorising
• Changing the subject of a formula
• Algebraic fractions
• Similar triangles
• Surd form
• Standard form
SCIENCE
• Reactions of metals with oxygen, water, acids and metal oxides
• Displacement reactions
• Reactivity series
• Review of chemical reactions
• Energy resources – renewable and non-renewable
• Generating electricity
• Conservation of energy
• Transfer of energy
• Series and parallel circuits
• Current and voltage
• Electrical components
• Electromagnets
FRENCH
• Conditional tense
• Emphatic pronouns
• Using perfect and imperfect tenses together
• Plu-perfect tense
• Depuis, venir de, tenses after “si”
• Prepositions
• Pronouns
• Après avoir/être + P.P.
• Avant de and infinitive
• Preparation for specific scholarship exams by developing reading, writing, listening and speaking skills
GERMAN
Revision and extension of:
• Describing appearance
• House and home
• Household tasks
• Communication in the classroom
• School
• Opinions about daily life at school
• Plans
• Education in Germany and the UK
• Intensive writing and speaking practice
SPANISH
• Weather
• Revision of tenses
• Personal information
• Family and friends
• Spare time, hobbies, sports, house and home
• Geographical surroundings
• School life, education, world of work
• Holidays, accommodation, transport
HISTORY
Early Modern Period
• The Battle of Bosworth Field
• Henry VII
• Henry VIII
• Variety of general topics depending on chosen school in preparation for mocks
• Religious changes during Tudor period
GEOGRAPHY
• Plate tectonics – volancoes, earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis
• Rivers
• Fieldwork at Juniper Hall
• Settlement
LATIN
• Verbs of fearing
• Semi-Deponent verbs
• Deponent verbs
• Participles and uses
• Relative pronouns
• Subjunctive and uses
• Translation and comprehension practice
GREEK
• Passive verbs
• Indirect statement
• Indirect questions
• Various constructions
• Translation and comprehension practice
RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Set texts and ethical issues
• David and Bathsheba
• Solomons’s Wisdom
• Elijah
• Euthanasia
• The Environment
• Poverty
• Revision of New Testament texts
ICT
• OCR CLAIT module on PowerPoint presentations
• OCR CLAIT presentations exams
DRAMA
• Understanding the concept of collective authorship
• Gain knowledge of sub-text within a story
• Using the above, create a short play based on Colin Ward’s ‘Runaway Trial’ showing an awareness of the needs of an audience
MUSIC
• Keyboard composition and performance based on Eleanor Rigby
• Samba percussion
• Orchestral score reading using Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition
• Research a 20th century composer
• Graphic score based on Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man
ART
SLD
• Focussing in the language of drawing: to record, analyse and express ideas in a variety of media
• Exercises in perspective, use of tone, texture and the depiction of space and form and mood
• Translate into an A4 print
JRH
• Use Photoshop to digitally explore image manipulation before scaling up work and displaying it as a collage
• Theme will be ‘famous people and contemporary characters’
JLM
• Produce a range of observational studies and be introduced to the concept of abstract art
• Look at Kandinsky’s painting ‘Swinging’
• Working to music (different types) to allow the rhythm to have an effect on the work
• Use of various media
DESIGN TECHNOLOGY
• Design and make a contemporary clock based on the housing / body / element of the clock mechanism
• Looking at many different contemporary design shapes and forms in furniture, cars, planes etc. and also look at certain 20th century artists
• Challenging the making aspect of this project
• Pupils to make decision on fixings and how we attach one material to another
PSHE
• Welcome back and target setting
• Self esteem
• Fire safety
• Alcohol awareness
CITIZENSHIP
• School Council
• Voting
• Racism
• Bullying
• Immigration
• Road safety
• Personal safety