Year 10 GCSE English Literature Texts

It is hard to believe that we are coming to the English of the first half term of your child’s GCSE English course. I would like to take this opportunity to thank so many of you for purchasing copies of the Blood Brothers play. We feel that this has already made a real difference to levels of engagement and also students’ independence having a book of their own to make notes in.

The next text that we will study after the half-term holiday is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, followed by Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare in January.

In order to help your child learn effectively, we recommend purchasing their own copy of these texts to use in school and at home. Doing this will enable them to annotate their own copy during lessons, which will in turn facilitate more personalised and focused revision across KS4. We hope that having their own copies will encourage students to take more responsibility for their own learning whilst at the same time fostering independent revision skills. Students will use these copies of the texts for two years until the end of Y11 and therefore it is a worthwhile investment.  

Our recommended versions are: 

All texts can be bought from a good bookshop or by ordering online. Texts only need to be available from the following points in the year, which may help spread the cost: 

Students without their own copy will be able to use an alternative school copy during  lessons, but unfortunately they will not be permitted to make notes in them or take the copy home.

If you would like to purchase a copy, but find yourself in need of financial assistance, please email finance@valley.outwood.com in confidence by Wednesday 14 October. Please be aware that you may need to provide proof that you are already in receipt of financial support to be eligible.

If you have any questions, please contact Mrs Johnson via email at enquiries@valley.outwood.com 

Rebecca Johnson (Head of English)