End of Year review

Hello all,

First of all and as ever, well done to everyone for all the effort and work that you've put into your studies so far this year. You are proving to be a brilliant class - keep it up!

Recently, we have been studying Shelley's Frankenstein, and have focused on chapters 5, 10 and 11 in class. We have been learning the ways that Shelley uses language to manipulate the reader's response to the monster in the novel, in preparation for an essay on that topic, which we'll complete early next term.

Over the holidays, I'd like you to do two things. One is to conduct some research into the writer Mary Shelley, focusing on this question: how might the circumstances of Shelley's childhood and early life have contributed to her writing the novel? Can you identify events which may have inspired her?

Secondly, you need to find out about the social and historical context of the novel, probably by using the BBC website here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/prosefrankenstein/ . Again, your focus is to consider how the context affected the production of the novel - what themes can you identify which are present in the novel and the society from which the novel came?

If you want to push yourself a little further, then perhaps look at Romanticism, which was an artistic / cultural movement from around the time that the novel was produced. Why not have a look at some poetry, such as Keats or Wordsworth, and see if you can identify any links with Shelley's writing?

Most importantly though, have a wonderful Xmas and a well-earned rest!

Mr Boulter

Hello!

It's been a while since I posted, so I just wanted to make a couple of points.
1 - well done on your Inspector Calls drafts. I really hope that you have understood and absorbed your feedback and targets. Redrafts are due in to me on Friday 11th December.
2 - I've enjoyed watching the progress you've made during our little digression into poetry. You seem to have grown in confidence and skill; we'll have one more lesson on this tomorrow, then get back to Frankenstein!
Mr Boulter

Poetry Party!

Hi - just a quick post to give you the link to the Stephen Fry book on poetry. This is a really good read and gives you little tasks to do which will increase your confidence and skills when reading and writing poetry. Highly recommended! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ode-Less-Travelled-Unlocking-within/dp/0099509342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258988796&sr=8-1-spell

Thanks everyone - expect more of this in the next few lessons!

Mr Boulter

Extension Reading

Hi all,

Further to the homework that you've been set below, if you are aiming for an A / A*, and if you are considering doing Eng Lit at A-Level, you would really benefit from doing some extension reading around this text. To this end, we've subscribed to a website: http://www.emagazine.org.uk/ which has loads of short articles and film clips to help you.

When you go to the site, click on Enter Subscribers' Site, then use the following:
username - emagazine7
password - z94k33

Have a look round by all means, and browse to see if there's anything that interests you in particular (books you've read, authors you enjoy), but in particular, you might want to read the articles in the Novel section on Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. I honestly believe that the more you put in to this subject, the more you will get out and the more you'll enjoy it. Therefore, have a go at doing some of this reading and be ready to use what you've learnt in class discussions.

Have a great weekend,

Mr Boulter

Learning from Frankenstein lesson today!

Language techniques
1 – Careful control of imagery and descriptive detail, eg November
2 – Control of atmosphere and setting
3 – Use of onomatopoeia
4 – Symbolism, eg candle
5 – Control of colour imagery

What's that coming over the hill?

Hello everyone.

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted, mainly as you have been busily completing your Inspector Calls drafts in class - well done on the excellent way that you approached this by the way. It's going to take me a little while to mark them, but I'll get them back to you ASAP, then you'll have a week or so in which to make any improvements you need to.

We have had a slight change of plan - I've had to shuffle the units and we are now going to do the pre-1914 Prose unit (using Shelley's Frankenstein) before we do Macbeth. The novel is a brilliant piece of writing, and a really gripping tale. Time constraints mean that we aren't going to be able to read the whole thing in class, but you really need to read the book in its entirety at home; in class well focus our study on deeper analysis of key extracts, learning about the writer's craft, use of language and structure, and the influence of the historical context on the novel.

So, your homework is as follows.

1) Get hold of a copy of Frankenstein. These are available for £2 from Borders or Waterstones, or here from Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Frankenstein-Wordsworth-Classics-Modern-Prometheus/dp/1853260231/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258134799&sr=8-1 . Alternatively, you can get it from the library, or it is easily available online (difficult to read the whole thing online though I reckon!).

2) Start reading it, aiming to have it finished by 7thDecember - this gives you three weeks to buy and read the text. It's quite challenging, but you need to stick at it!

Well - that's it! If you finish it quite quickly, it would be well worth reading other novels from this period - see me for ideas.

Have a great weekend year 10 and well done for your continued excellence this year,

Mr Boulter

End of Term review

Hello,

Well, we've reached the end of the first term of year 10, and you can all be very happy with the way you've worked. We've focused on An Inspector Calls, and are ready now to write coursework essays as soon as we get back after half term. This is great but .... what have we learnt? What's the point, really, in terms of what we can take away from the unit which might be useful to us? Well, the aims by this point are that you:

- understand the plot, characters and themes of the play

- understand some of the ways that a writer has used the form of a play to communicate to the audience. For example: use of stage directions, props, use of language, dialogue, interaction between characters, entrances and exits, dramatic irony etc

- understand that plays can be interpreted differently by different directors, actors and audiences

- understand the importance of the social and historical context on how the play is understood by an audience

- understood some of the ways to be successful in showing your knowledge, particularly by writing developed paragraphs which expand on points in detail

Overall though, this has been a unit focused on improving your skills as readers. It's aimed at helping you develop into more confident, sophisticated readers, which is of course a skill which you can then transfer onto anything else you read also. Which, as it happens, means Macbeth for us, as this is the next text we'll apply our skills to!

Over the holidays, you need to complete this homework:

- prepare yourself for your essay by making sure that you understand the title and that you've thought about what you are going to write. You will not be given an essay plan, but have to come up with a series of your own points - we have spent time on this already. Remember that your title is:

Discuss the ways that Priestley has crafted the opening scenes of An Inspector Calls to prepare the audience for events to come.

I'm afraid that we aren't able to let books go home, but if you want to look for quotations, this link has the opening scene: Inspect Calls plus a really useful introduction, but as ever, Bitesize is your best bet. The Character section has loads of quotations but you need to have read it all.

We won't write the essay during Monday's lesson, but will use it as a final preparation lesson, so come with any questions!

Please spend a minimum of one hour preparing for this piece of writing. If you want to spend more then you can, but remember that you need a holiday too...

Mr Boulter

Bad news!

Hello all,
Looking at the timetable for this week, it occurs to me that we only have two lessons as one is being taken for Enrichment day. Sorry I didn't clock this earlier, but it does mean that we'll be unable to write the essay in class this week after all, and will have to save it for after half term. This is probably no bad thing and will give you more time to prepare. This week, we'll look at a model of excellent writing and finalise our personal planning.
Thanks for your efforts last week; as I said in class your plays were fabulous and I haven't enjoyed marking a homework as much for a long time.
Well done and keep it up,
Mr Boulter

Lesson review

Hi all,

Just a quick post to say a really sincere well done for your performance in the lesson on Thursday. We looked at the opening of the play with the intention of learning how to analyse a text in detail, picking up and commenting on nuance and subtle aspects of the writer's craft. You did this superbly, as proved by the fact that we spent about twenty minutes discussing the first ten words (so have you decided on your interpretation of why he does pass the port to Eric...)!

Anyway, in terms of effort, application and the way you handled a long discussion, it was an excellent class performance, so well done.

Thanks also for getting your homework in on time - I'm looking forward to marking these but it will have to be later in the week (Year 11 coursework to mark as well I'm afraid).

The plan for this week is as follows:

- learn about another couple of techniques that Priestley uses, namely dramatic irony and entrances / exits

- learn how we might go about planning an essay of this sort

- gather evidence and quotations for our essay

- analyse some models of excellence and understand our success criteria

- be ready to write our essay in class next week

Hope this is all clear, and once again well done to all,

Mr Boulter

Homework

Hi all,

Today's lesson aimed to develop our understanding of character into detail considering the precise implications of some key quotations for each character. For homework, I'd like you to show this understanding in a more creative way, by completing the scene-writing activity suggested in the books. So, your task is:
- write a short scene involving your character at a certain point in time. You will need to have copied down the exact details from your book
- the scene should last approximately 500 words, and include a description of the stage setting and stage directions. Use the play as a model for this, although if you want more details about how to do script-writing, look here: http://www.coxhoe.durham.sch.uk/classrooms/Y4%20Learning%20Resources/Play%20Script%20Rules.htm or watch this if you want to be really professional! http://www.ehow.com/video_4871792_write-play-script.html
Again, this is an opportunity to show resilience and creativity in your approach to learning, and is designed to help you get a really good understanding both of the characters and their actions, but also of the choices that dramatists make when creating their work. When we come to our coursework (which is imminent!), the experience of having worked as a writer of drama will help you understand the choices that Priestley made with his work.

I have put pictures of the page with the questions on and also a sample page from the play on this post. Click on them to make them bigger, and use the sample page to remind you of the format and stage directions that Priestley uses. Finally, if you would like to be more creative and make up your own scene - perhaps the scene which follows the inspector's phone call at the end - feel free to do so, and therefore ignore the questions in the book.
Due in on Wednesday period 3 please!
Have fun and enjoy your long weekend,
Mr Boulter

Homework feedback

Hello. This is a quick post to say how impressed I was with the general quality of the homework you produced last week. The best efforts showed excellent resilience and resourcefulness, as you approached the task creatively, put in the effort, and used a range of texts to inform your response. Well done.

I set you all a target on the sheets I gave out; now it's your job to act on this. In particular, if you got the wide reading target, do try to get hold of a copy of All My Sons, which is an American play written at a similar time to An Inspector Calls, dealing with similar themes. If you can read this - it won't take long - it will help you to understand Priestley's themes even more. It is also available on itunes, but will cost you about 8 quid, so it might be better to borrow a copy from me and read it.

Mr Boulter

End of week review

This is just a quick post to say well done for the work you've put in this week, and particularly with the homework - I'll look at it this weekend, but it's already obvious that lots of you have put in a lot of effort. More on this when I've marked it.

It's worth pausing here to reflect on what we've learnt. Our intentions were that at the end of this week, we'd have a more sophisticated and detailed understanding of the character that our group is working on. Are you able to identify three things you've learnt about your character from the group activities this week?
Otherwise, I'm afraid it looks like the proposed theatre trip is not going to happen as the play is sold out for all nights apart from during half-term, so it's not practical to go I'm afraid. Sorry about that - we'll look to organise something else soon.
No homework for you this weekend, but expect a piece early next week.
Have a great weekend,
Mr Boulter

ps: remember - Eric Is Bananaman!

Research homework

Hi all,

To clarify the requirements for your homework. I'd like you to conduct some research into the context of the time at which the play was written, ie post-war Britain. Ideally, I'd like you to do this through comparing life in 1912 with life in 1946. You can present this information in the form of conventional notes, a mindmap, a powerpoint presentation or a poster, but it needs to be something which can be handed in and marked.

The two topics to I'd like you to focus on are:

- The importance of social class

- The role of women in society

There are many websites to help you with this: you may find that the BBC and the Bitesize site in particular may be useful. You'll need to be quite resourceful and resilient in digging out the information, and I would suggest that you remember and re-employ the skills you developed in your year 9 history project. You should spend about an hour on this task, and I'd like it to be handed in during our lesson on Wednesday.

OK, that's it - I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Have a fantastic weekend,

Mr Boulter

Reading Part 2

Well - another really enjoyable lesson from my perspective took place on Tuesday, with lots of very high quality discussion of the play and the themes, and also of what you might be reading at the moment. I just wanted to record two things:

- The Stephanie Meyer series of novels 'Twilight' came very highly recommended from several class members

- To add to my ideas from below, look at the BBC's Big Read webpage for 100 ideas: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml

Mr Boulter

Reading Matter

Hi all,

Thanks for your attention and performance in Monday's lesson - a very impressive start to the week. One of the things that we discussed was the value and importance of private reading in supporting your learning over the next two years and beyond. We talked about the idea of choosing reading which pushes and challenges us a little, whilst still being enjoyable... moving beyond Anthony Horowitz! So, here are some ideas for books you might choose to read over the next few months:

Out and Out Classics:

- Lord of The Flies by William Golding

- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

- Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

- Of Mice and Men - by John Steinbeck

These are all tried and tested novels which millions have loved, so may well be worth trying. It was interesting to talk to the boys in particular, and find that many of you were struggling to find books you wanted to read. This is a problem for us, particularly as boys last year did significantly worse than the girls at Cheney (boys: 54% A*-C, girls: 74%A*-C). Girls also got more As and A*s. We really believe that this is partly because the boys weren't reading enough, so here's a list of books that boys in particular have enjoyed over recent year groups (although of course girls have enjoyed them also!):

Fever Pitch and High Fidelity - both by Nick Hornby - the first about growing up as a football fanatic and the second about being obsessed by music

Sporting biographies - there are loads of these. Most high profile sportspeople have at least one; popular examples include Steven Gerrard, Tony Adams (interesting as it discusses his addiction to alcohol and prison sentence), Rooney, Lance Armstrong, Michael Jordan etc etc etc. Other sports are equally rich with possibilities - I recently read Marcus Trescothick's biog which was entertaining, but Flintoff, Strauss - they've all got them. Here's a link to an Amazon page with lots of ideas: http://www.amazon.co.uk/William-Hill-Sports-Books-of-the-Year/lm/R1QONP2R96Y5T7/ref=cm_srch_res_rpli_alt_3 . These books may not be great works of literature, but they can be interesting and enjoyable.

Other options? There are far too many to mention. What about music biography (loads of books about Nirvana, for example), daft books (Around Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawkes? Playing the Moldovans at Tennis? Anyone read The Timewaster Letters? see link here http://www.robincooper.co.uk/ ), history (books about war for example, such as the recent Anthony Beevor study of D-Day, which has some amazing stories, or the Lost Voices series), scripts from TV series, travel (Bill Bryson is great and very readable), Science (erm, Bill Bryson again is pretty good!) ... there are millions of things you can read and that you will enjoy. It's just about pushing yourself a little, and forcing yourself to get into a book, which might take a little effort at the beginning, but will quickly become a real pleasure.

So, I look forward to hearing about what you've read!

Mr Boulter

End of week reflections

Well done to 10X4 on an excellent week's work, characterised by a very encouraging level of enthusiasm and engagement from everyone. We've begun our study of An Inspector Calls, with the aim of learning about the different ways that dramatists can influence an audience. You've read the opening in groups, and used a list of adjectives to come up with some initial interpretations, providing evidence to support your views. Following this, we've listened to a professional recording of the same scene, which we'll continue nice and early on Monday.

Main learning points so far have been about the use of dramatic irony, when the audience knows more than the characters on stage - Birling's references to war and the Titanic are examples of this. You need to consider how this might influence audience reaction to the character, given that the play was written in 1946, so the audience would know that Birling's confident statements were absolutely wrong...

Homework is on the post below. If you are interested and want to extend your knowledge and understanding of this topic, there are a number of things you could do as well. You might choose to read an online study guide to the play - this one contains some stimulating ideas: http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/drama/inspectorcalls.htm , or else the BBC Bitesize pages are good - see link on the right hand side. Alternatively, why not take the opportunity to read or watch some other modern drama and compare? I would recommend Arthur Miller (All My Sons and The Crucible are both great) as a good starting point - see me for more details or if you'd like to borrow the texts. Remember that if you are able to put more in to a subject like English, you tend to get more out - the more widely you can read and think, the more enjoyment you'll get!

OK, have a brilliant weekend, and once more thank you and well done on the excellent start that you've made individually and as a group.

Mr Boulter

Welcome 10X4!

Hello and welcome to the class English blog for 10X4. It was great to meet all the students on Friday, and thank you for the enthusiasm and ingenuity you showed when creating your team newspaper structures! I was encouraged to see so many of you co-operating and working well together as a team, and we’ll need much more of this over the next two years.

The point of this blog is really to help make sure that everyone who needs or would like to know is informed about what we are learning, how things are going and what work you need to complete at home. So, the primary audience is the students, but I’m also very keen that parents / guardians and any other interested parties are kept up to date, so they are best placed to support you. A situation where teacher, student and parents work together and all know what’s going on tends to get the best outcomes for students I think.

Beyond making elaborate, mobile-phone supporting structures, what are we going to learn? Well, we’ll being with a study of modern drama, using the play An Inspector Calls by JB Priestly as our central text. We’ll learn about the ways that dramatists create meaning in the words and directions that they provide, but also we’ll consider how decisions made by the director and actors can influence an audience. Basically, we are looking to improve our reading skills, and become more sophisticated, powerful and knowledgeable readers.

Beyond this, we’ll go on to study a range of texts: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and a range of poetry, particularly from Simon Armitage and Carol Ann Duffy. We’ll also produce our own creative writing and responses to media texts as well as completing two further Speaking and Listening assignments. Next year, we’ll also read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, which will be your text for the exam. If you want to read the texts before studying them in class then that would be great. The fact is that students who read regularly, and who choose texts which offer them a little bit of challenge, are likely to do very well in this and most other subjects. As a result, your homework this week is to read for at least 45 mins (but if you’re reading something decent you’re likely to want to read more), and be prepared to discuss what you’ve read from Monday 14th September.

Finally, a word about motivation. Of course, a big part of why we are here is to get the best exam results we can, but that’s not the only, or most interesting reason to study. The English language and its millions of uses is a fascinating topic, and learning about it can make you more powerful, help you to enjoy the texts you see around you and enrich your enjoyment of life. If you approach the course with this in mind, rather than just grades and exams, you’ll enjoy it more and probably do better at the end of it as well.

Enough waffle. I’ll do my best to update the blog on a regular basis – if parents or students have any questions or points to make, feel free to leave a comment by clicking on the link below.
Mr Boulter