Curriculum design dominates pretty much every conversation in schools at the moment. 

We should welcome this as a chance to really consider carefully which texts have the honour of being included in our shiny new schemes of learning and why.

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Here are a few questions that might help us to make some choices among the myriad possibilities.

1. Has the text been influential? 

If we are looking at a text that has been included in the canon for a number of years, what is it that maintains its position there? Has this text been significant in shaping our understanding of the world or texts that follow? 

Some of the things I would include in this category might be Classical stories, whose characters and narratives have become interwoven into our everyday language.

The story of Narcissus, for example, enables us to label those narcissists that we may encounter on our travels.

Equally Shakespeare, Milton and indeed the Bible have provided some clear foundations for our language and understanding of the world and have provided a basis for many of our modern ways of thinking.

2. How will this enrich the lives of our students? 

Reading alone is a worthy aim. Of course, we, as lovers of reading, want to encourage students to enjoy what they will read.  

However, the texts we are offering them in the English classroom need to offer them something additional.

“Will this be a text that they might not encounter unless we offer it?” could be one approach to take. All students can access some books with great ease and don’t need a push in that direction, such as those by David Walliams.

These types of stories often revolve around worlds that are very familiar to our students, with instantly recognisable characters and settings.

However, in our text choices, we should be exposing them to something new, with a wider range of vocabulary, unfamiliar contexts and character that ultimately might encourage them to see the world in a different way or ask a whole range of new questions about their own contexts. 

If the text we choose doesn’t do this, maybe we need to think about what it is offering beyond the bounds of our students’ own worlds. 

3. How will it build on prior learning and prepare them for the rigours of what will come later?

The position and sequencing of texts are essential when considering our curriculum.

If we need them to be able to fluently discuss the complexities of Romantic poets and Victorian Literature at GCSE and A level, then we need to build to this over time.

We need incremental steps in our choices, increasing the difficulties and complexities of the ideas and vocabulary we expose them to. 

That doesn’t mean we want them to think about the same things over and over, narrowing our curriculum to the requirements of a GCSE specification. But nor do we want to take great leaps forward, moving from Roger McGeough to Chaucer without pause for breath.

However, there does need to be a sense of progress, pushing students just outside of their comfort zone with our text choices, encouraging growth and hard thinking in all we do.

4. What are the big ideas?

We also need to consider what concepts or threads we can weave through our curriculum. Personally, I love pulling threads from texts like Lord of the Flies, Jekyll and Hyde and Macbeth, where ideas of power, duality and ambition are prevalent.

Exploring how different writers examine these universal themes builds something greater than a simple understanding of the play of the novel.

It builds ideas and questions around these universal themes that can then be further enriched by looking at how writers such as Agard and Dharker tackle these ideas, or using non-fiction texts to look at modern contexts with stories of politicians and celebrities. 

5. How many texts do we really need? 

We often commit ourselves in English to covering poetry, prose, plays, non-fiction, as well as giving students the opportunity to write in a range of styles every single year. I wonder if we can do justice to some of those complex texts if we are so busy racing to the next one.

Perhaps what we want to consider is the range of genres we are using or back to the idea of concepts as opposed to trying to cover everything at once.

Looking at how students will encounter these things over the three or five years, might give us the breadth that we are after even if they don’t all do a play in Year 7. 

Then we can concentrate on really mastering these texts or concepts we have spent so long deciding upon, further enriching their understanding with poetry, extracts from other texts, articles, short stories and films to broaden their experiences. 

It just doesn’t all need to happen in tight little six-week blocks, after which we move on and forget it as we race to get through the next topic.

Whatever you decide to include in your next book order, simply asking some of the questions above should ensure that you are building a powerful English curriculum, one that empowers students not just to enjoy reading but to thrive in an environment of challenge and intellectual rigour.

Zoe Enser is a specialist English adviser and former teacher. She tweets @GreeboRunner