Reading, Writing, Reflecting

I'm sure that S3 will be won over by the sheer wonderfulness of the blog here. But until they do, there is just the three of us keeping this going for those who miss the class.

Today we looked at personal, reflective writing skills. These are vital because they make up a sizeable chunk of exam questions, they can be used in your folios this year and next, and when you are famous rock stars, footballers and beauty therapists you'll want to be able to write your autobiography.

The keen beens amongst you have signed up for the emailed weekly synopsis of the lessons. If not, just remember this:

• Emotions, emotions, emotions!


• Make it vivid, improve, improve, improve it


• A nice way to catch the readers attention is to include all 5 senses in the first paragraph, to describe feelings, but also to keep a sense of tension to encourage the reader to read on!

Next week you're going to be putting this into practice under exam conditions on Thursday. The question is Choose a time in your life when you have experienced conflict. Write about this, and remember to include your thoughts and feelings. You'll have an hour and ten minutes, but feel free to prepare as much or as little as you want to.

But as you sow, so shall you reap.

Also next week, we'll find out whether Millington is guilty or innocent in Conduct Unbecoming, we'll watch as much of the video as we can get through, and on Monday, we'll be doing a group talk graded task. More on that next week.

Finally, homework. Creative writing pieces are due on Thursday, 13th March - write a story in which one of the central characters experiences a conflict. However, none of the main characters can be a human.

BBC Wildlife Beast Research

Hey folks

This week you've learnt all about functional writing. This means writing that is to tell people about things - like newspaper reports, letters, or reports into beasts.

We've been reading "The Nature of the Beast", where we are starting to see some signs of a mysterious monster creeping around the mysterious town.

So you all pottered down to the library where research was done into gorillas, sloths, a variety of big cats, mermaids, the Loch Ness monster and even unicorns. I've even learnt the unicorn song and that they have a spot just above the heart where you can kill them!

More importantly, our learning outcomes have been:

• How to use books and websites to collect notes, not just copy and paste!


• Using numbered lists and bullet points in reports


• Using headings to sort similar facts together into paragraphs


• How to show where we get our information from - our sources

Finally we raced through the basics of doing a good talk, using the 50:50 rule

1. Good content - interesting start, loads of facts in a formal presentation, and a conclusion


2. Good presentation - look at the audience, nice and confident, loud and clear voice, and no fidgeting.

Good luck for the talks!

Intermediate 1

OK, so this week you guys started to realise how close those exams are - just 27 lessons left!! Although I'm sure some of you can't wait for it all to be over...

We've been reading "A Candle for the Birthday Boy" by Christopher Hawkins (http://www.christopher-hawkins.com/) and focussing on the structure, character, themes and setting.

The important thing about this is how the story follows the traditional short story structure by following the exposition/rising action/climax/resolution formula. Just like fun maths!

But there's all sorts of other things going on - the pinata is a great example of personification, and is also used as a red herring to deliberately mislead the reader into thinking poor old Danny has been chopped up and put inside, when, in reality, the twist in the tail is far more spectacular!

There's also good use of foreshadowing, with clues about the eventual outcome all the way through the story. The ominous outcome of the story is really signposted all the way through for readers who've been paying attention.

Finally, we spoke about how this is really a cautionary tale about fidelity and not cheating on the wife. That's why Nate is such an empty, plain character - it's because he is supposed to represent *man* in general. The setting is deliberately vague - it could be anyone's backyard!

We covered loads more, but for those of you who have missed classes this week (grrr) those are the basics that you'll need to know.

If you want to read more gruesome short horror stories, let me know and you can borrow the collection that this little gem came from

Today in class we read for ten minutes at the start. we then listened to some peoples talks. i did my talk so i know what it is like to be up there, i was nervous, but it wasn't as bad as i thought it would be. If you are going to do your talk on wednesday, good luck!
Love, hugs and kisses
Ch :)

Friday 29th

Today we again went into the LRC for a chance to finish of our moment in time talks. People got to use the computers and look through books to help them find information for their chosen topic

Thursday 28th

Today we read Act 2 Scenes 3 4 5 and 6.
We talked about the religious significance in the play so far.We talked about how the idea of changing religion has come up 3 times already in the play (note: it is always the Jews having to change to Christian never the other way round).Wea lso talked about all the "brilliant" insults in the play and how most of them are dirrected at Shylock.

Mr Sharpe also reminded us again what a brilliant and confident writer Shakespear is ashe can even make jokes about his oter plays.We then watched what we read on the DVD.

HOMEWORK for Tuesday 4th of March

Have your talk Prepared as some people will be doing them on Tuesday.

Good Luck

sh =)

Tuesdays Class

Today in class we went down to the LRC to reasearch and plan our talks. People had the chance to go on the computers and do powerpoints or they could look through books provided for their subject of the the talk which we will be doing on tuesday next week.

mm =)