Chronicle Summer 2023

ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE 24

Spotlight on Subjects By Fiona Wickens

As Teddies’ Head of Pupil Voice and Action it has been a pleasure to help the pupils to celebrate together the work and activities which are at the heart of our many subject areas. This year’s new Departmental Representatives Project is all about our children articulating the richness of their education and seeing its place in the world. To share some of the impressive and wide-ranging work of the academic teams here at Teddies with a wider audience, our first Departmental Representatives from the Shell, Middle School and Sixth Form have compiled articles about the life of their Department, four of which are shared with you here. Working in trios, the Reps organised meetings with Heads of Departments to gather insight into the curriculum and its importance for young people today, to discover how new research shapes what we learn and to learn more about Departmental enrichment opportunities. We hope that you enjoy the four articles below and those which will follow in the school newsletter. All the articles will be published in-house next term, when our Departmental Reps will also be working together on a new cross-curricular project.

The English Department By Leilah Changizi-Cooper, Lower Sixth

has encouraged pupils to consider racial issues in society. By exploring these books, Teddies is aiming to ensure that questions of inclusion and diversity are included in our English curriculum. The Shell have also been diving into many forms of literature, from Manjeet Mann’s The Crossing to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet . These texts spark interesting conversations in the classroom and broaden the material that the pupils read. Recently, Robin Robertson paid a visit and read some of his poetry to the

In the English Department, teachers are looking for pupils who take risks, who are motivated and who are determined to persevere with their work even if it is challenging. Pupils and teachers delve into new books and explore new ideas. The Department kick-started the year for the Shell by focusing on essay structure and creative writing, which has shown great results in recent assessments. The Department has been working to include as many books as possible that explore differing

Sixth Form, and, last October, Lower Sixth IB students went to the National Theatre to see a production of The Crucible , which was very exciting. Pupils recently saw a production of The Tempest , performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Phoenix Society (the English Department’s academic society) saw a performance of Puccini’s Turandot at the Royal Opera House in March.

cultural issues in order to broaden our knowledge of contemporary literature and society. In Mrs Bouwer’s A Level class, pupils studied Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, which got them thinking about LGBT rights as they explored the struggle of a character coming out in 1950s America. Mr Clapham and his Lower Sixth IB class have been studying I is a Long Memoried Woman , a collection of poems by Grace Nichols, which