Holiday Reading

My Goodness! I nearly forgot to give you some guidance for your Christmas reading list - sorry.

The reading list is really a work in progress as I'm hoping to get your feedback on what you like to put something more comprehensive together.

As you know, next term we'll be studying Macbeth and Frankenstein. Any reading you can do around this over the holiday will help greatly. It will be quite intensive once we get back and I advise that you do so. Use these links for Macbeth and Frankenstein for some study around the contexts and literary features. There are also some interesting things on YouTube. Both texts are much studied for GCSE so there are a multitude of resource online.

Any reading helps improve your writing as you learn vocabulary and about sentence structures and have good fun at the same time! Any reading is good; you could read magazines. I recommend about 30mins/day.

Books that I think you will enjoy are (new and old...):

• Lord of The Flies
• Vernon God Little
• The Curious Incident
• Black Rabbit Summer
• Catcher in The Rye
• Jane Eyre
• Waves
• Of Mice and Men
• Witch Child
• Soldier Boy

I've even put a link on each so that you can find out a little more about them (my Christmas present to you!). I've tried to meet the needs of all the class. Please don't rule out the older books immediately; they become classics for a reason.

There are also reading list available online. This link gives suggestions and reviews of over 300 books for teenagers. Try this interactive book chooser and let me know how it works out.

Hope this keeps you going.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Ms Caldwell

If you missed Your Controlled Assessment...

You will have to do it on Wednesday. The same rules as the Citizenship mock will apply. Go to the hall after lunch.
The work you've done already will be in the room waiting for you.
Ms

Here is the poem with some questions and key terms. This is to enable you to extend your learning and understanding outside of the classroom.

Hi Y10

This week we've looked at analysing layers of meaning. It's essential we can do this as this is what gets you the higher grades and also helps you think critically, which will help you with a range of subjects and skills. Find a line in the poem and develop and extend your response. It may seem, at first glance, that you can't get much out of the line, but consider how it presents the speaker and the influence that it has on the reader. As we have found in class, you can often extend and develop the smallest quote, finding layers of meaning. I know I'm going on about it, but it is all about layers of meaning!

What we need to be able to do well is structure paragraphs to show our understanding of layers of meaning. We had some trouble with this! It is something we will work on; once you get the hang of the structure, it will become much easier.

Today we also talked about the next controlled assessment. Here, we will study Macbeth and Frankenstein (two fantastic texts). We'll look at the presentation of good and evil.

Finally, I'm putting together a reading list; this will be on the blog ready for you to add to your Christmas list!

Be ready to share your best book ideas with the class.

Ms Caldwell

Hello Y10

Hopefully, lots of you will be looking at this after being prompted to after Y10 PCE. A reminder then of some of the links that are available to you on this blog. There's a link for: information on semi-colons here; there is more semi-colon information here; the poetic devices sheet that you were given is here; if you would like to look at the analysis on YouTube of Island Man that we looked at in class click here and for further analysis and advice on a broad range of writing skills click here. (I highly recommend this last link as you can work on skills that are specific to your personalised targets.)

This is a great resource for you that will refine your skills for independent study; skills as an independent learner will serve you well throughout your education and for life!

If you still haven't finished your Controlled Assessment, you will do this in the hall on Wednesday 15th in the afternoon with the Y11s mocks. You will have had some experience of this; you have your Citizenship mock this Wednesday afternoon The same rules will apply.

See you next week,

Ms Caldwell