S3 Panic-aversion Therapy

Hey Everyone

Here are the links from yesterday's last minute revision session for the S3 English exam. Remember, be cool and think about your power song!

Follow these links for more help on revision for the exams.

• BBC Bitesize - http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/education/bitesize/standard/english/tandard/english/
  
• SQA – www.sqa.org.uk – downloadable papers and mark schemes
  
• The podcast

In class, on Friday 2nd, we marked eacher others work on the "Courtroom Climax". We were trying to see what level our classmates piece of writing would get. We also watched the Simpsons and learned a bit more about Judaism that would help us in our essay about Shylock being a victim or a villain.

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"A Candle for the Birthday Boy" - Christopher Hawkins

OK, so this week we spent some time on this text. It's not to everyone's taste but it does the important job of being a short prose piece, and it plugs an important gap in preparation for the exam: readiness to be able to write on the structure of a text.

The question you were asked was about the ending of the book, and why it was good. As previously, below are my thoughts about how I would answer it. The important thing to note is that, for a question about endings, you need to show how the action creates this ending, and how it is a suitable way to finish the text.

You are all experts on writing introductions now, so I'm just going into the main points. This is what I would do for this question:

• "The kid was turning six, and he was missing the whole thing" - I'd establish that this is the opening line to the story, and it sets up the plot. The story becomes about a missing boy - where is he?
• Next, I'd go on to establish the threatening presence (or actually absence) of Tabby: "One who scared him sometimes with the feral look that seemed to come over her like a storm" with analysis of key words - "feral" meaning wild, and the simile "like a storm" which effectively create an impression that she is dangerous and unpredictable
• Next, I'd use the line "And, of course, there was the pinata" which stands out as a paragraph on its own. It focuses the reader on the pinata. It catches our interest. It is "big and garish, an eyesore in the shape of a bloated sheep" which starts to suggest a menacing mood, with connotations of sickness, disease and even death. However, I'd also explain that the pinata is used as a red herring, to deliberately mislead the reader.
• Next I'd show how the suspense is built by the continued mystery of the pinata. It is held in place by a rope tied "like a noose" (which has futher connotations of death, and possibly even execution, because Tabby is getting her vengeance on Nate) and I'd use a quote to show how Nate is worrying about the contents as the plot builds towards it's climax: "But if it was just paper, why didn't it move with the wind? If there was only candy inside, why did it need such a thick piece of rope to hold it in the air?"
• I'd go on to show the dramatic climax of the story - when the pinata is broken to reveal "its contents in a slush upon the ground" but that it is just pig entrails and a pig's head, and Danny is revealed to be safe.
• Finally, I'd show the resolution of the story - the surprise twist in the tail. The punch is poisoned: "But it was too late. The cup was almost empty, and all around him, children were starting to fall." I can now refer back to the pinata as a red herring, when in fact all the clues, about "dead flies" and Tabby, who had "filled the punch bowl and covered it with plastic wrap to keep out the bugs"

So that is how I would have answered this question. The key fact is that the tension mounts all the way through the story, the mystery of what is hidden inside the "grinning" pinata is revealed in the climax to be a red herring, and the the ending is appropriate / effective / good / surprising because in the final resolution, Tabby manages to get her revenge in the most surprising way.

Ten days people. Tick tock. Tick tock. Close reading this week. See you Tuesday,

Hi S2

Those of you wishing to strengthen your essays could try exploring some of the following links. The top two are the most helpful because they are short but have a quite deep understanding. The other two are essay-length but will really help you both with ideas, and critical language:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shylock

http://nfs.sparknotes.com/merchant/characters.epl

http://www.sol.co.uk/forthvalley/larbert-hs/mag/writing/shylock.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/merchant/ei_shylock.html

The Truman Show

OK, so we've established reality TV is a waste of all our time. But making a film about reality TV, well, that's just a whole separate kettle of post-modern fish.

This week we'll be focussing on painstakingly dissecting some of the key scenes to look at how the director (not Christof, the director of the film - Peter Weir) creates the idea that Truman is being controlled.

For the keen beans who want to beef up their folio grades for this year and next, below are some good line resources where you can get inspiration and also familarise yourself more with critical language.

Enjoy!

http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/teaching/witm/recommended/trumanshow.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show

http://www.haikuwhiz.com/attachments/4767.pdf

http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/stories/index.pl?noframes;read=29

http://artsncrafty.blogspot.com/2007/04/truman-show.html

merchant of venice

On Tuesday Mr Sharpe was off and we did a sheet of questions on the 'Merchant of venice'. Once we had finished this we did our 10 minutes reading.
B.A

S3 - Ranting with all my Rantingness

OK, so you all enjoyed reading (and critiquing!) my own "Write your Views" piece about reality TV. For those who missed it, it's reproduced below.

On Thursday you will be writing your own editorial rant about Reality TV in a "Write your Views" essay yourself.

It's important to remember that this should be your own thoughts, not mine, and that it is fine to be opinionated: you aren't expected to be balanced or neutral. Just tell us what you think.

Enjoy the weekend and see you on Tuesday.

“Reality TV – Look at the Pretty Colours” By Mr R Sharpe

Last weekend, my friend Tom’s parents won a reality TV show. The basic idea was very simple. A load of people they didn’t like came round for dinner. You could tell that they won because at the end because they got given £1000.

The thing is, that £1000 was funded, in part, by me. I, along with 25 million others, pay £139.50 every year for the right to own a TV. That means that £0.0004 of the money that went to Tom’s parents came from my pocket.

The irony to all this, of course, is that I could have just gone round for free, and I wouldn’t have had share the experience with an unwashed student or anyone else. The show hasn’t been aired yet but I imagine that if I were to watch it, I wouldn’t recognise the two people on the screen, in spite of knowing them well.

The show, like all reality TV, doesn’t take much planning. Take some normal people, throw in some abnormal people, and wait for something to happen. If it doesn’t, make something happen.

The truth behind these shows is often more sinister than the empty-headed logos suggest. The clever use of editing can trick the audience into believing almost anything. Even more worryingly, recent improvements in sound editing has created so –called “Frankenbites”. This new word, a combination of “Frankenstein” and “soundbite” describes where individual words, said by the “stars” across, say, an episode, are edited together into a single sentence which was never actually said.

The growth of reality TV as a genre has, like all organic growth, been slow. It surfaced with Candid Camera in the 50’s, when normal people were “pranked” by professional comedians. Big Brother, an idea originated in George Orwell’s book “1984”, was an early sign of things to come. Yet we, the modern audience, couldn’t wait for organic growth. We needed Jade Goody now, dammit! So we added some artificial fertilizer, left it out in the sun, and wham! Today it has spawned a million hybrid children. We have Celebrity Big Brother, American Big Brother, and each follows the same, braindead formula. “How to Look Good Naked”, a more recent evolution (there should be an opposite of that word) should be the shortest series ever commissioned. I can picture how it should have been:

“Hi, I’m Gok, and this is how to look good naked. Eat less and do some exercise. Thanks for watching, now over to some professionals with a programme and a script”

If it sounds like I am being unfair, it is because I am. But I like my entertainment to have some kind of purpose. If I’m to watch someone on the screen, I’d like them to have put some thought into what they are going to say and do. Perhaps practiced once or twice. Is it too much to ask that maybe they even receive a little training in front of the camera? Big Brother can be recreated in your own home (provided you have neighbours) with an electric drill, a couple of video cameras and Microsoft Moviemaker. And from what I can gather from the show, the way to look good naked is to buy more stuff.

The Romans used to have a phrase – “panem et circenses” to describe this way of keeping the lowest of their citizens entertained. It translates as “bread and circuses” and meant that if you kept the fools fed and gave them clowns to laugh at, they wouldn’t revolt and start cutting heads off the government.

Today’s bread and circuses involve watching failed celebrities, low-grade celebrities, and wannabe celebrities all desperately being uniformly unique. The development of reality TV has been at the cost of intelligent programming. It’s free to make and, because millions watch it, it rakes money in from advertising. But the hidden cost is that each time they make a show, another Jade Goody could be born. Then we have to clean up her dirty nappies for as long as her career lasts. It is the worst possible picture of the future of humanity. Our culture once tried to touch the stars, now we like to watch milkmen eating tadpoles.

Or, if you prefer the edited Frankenbite summary of the previous paragraph: Reality TV is intelligent programming. The future of humanity is free. Jade Goody is a star.

Mr R Sharpe©