Last minute advice

A fair few of you have been to see me, so here is some last minute advice and reassurance. First of all, don't worry too much about this! We obviously want you to do well, but if you get anything wrong, it's not the end of the world, and we'll make sure that you know how to avoid making the same mistake in the future - what with it being our jobs and all. So, take a deep breath, make sure you follow the guidelines, and you'll be fine.

1. Plan. Spend the first ten mins collecting your ideas, answering the question in your head, going over the extract, using the toolkit (that I've pictured here), picking out quotes and linking ideas together. You might see kids who have written a side in the first ten minutes; that doesn't matter. Plan. Do all your thinking now, so that you'll avoid all that thinking whilst writing I want you to avoid. Plan it over one side, maybe two, but make sure you put a single line through it to show that it is a plan.

2. For the second half of the TKAM question, choose your extract carefully - make sure it answers the question you have been asked! Once you've picked your extract (make sure it isn't too long or short), simply analyse it in the same way that you analysed the first.

3. At the end of every paragraph, just check that it answers the question you have been asked. If you've planned properly this shouldn't be an issue, but it won't hurt to check.

4. Check out the model answers. We'll do more of these later on, but you kids are throwing your sizeable intellect at this question like it is a Literature exam, and it's not. Check out the models I've given you or provided you with online, and make sure your answer looks like an exemplar language response, not the model Literature responses you all gave me in the baseline assessment.

5. Don't forget the basics on the written section. You're all really, really able pupils, so make sure that you don't include any mistakes that suggest you aren't. Apostrophes and capital letters are standard, so make
sure you use them. Any problems with the apostrophes, then check this out.

Questions? Comments? Bell & Ross watches? All welcome - send them in to the usual address.

Past papers, exemplars, that kind of thing

Afternoon all – Like every year, I'm starting to get a lot of requests from parents (and students) for past papers, mark schemes, exemplar answers and the like. This year I thought I’d save everyone a lot of time and point everyone to the publicly accessible part of the Edexcel website, where you should be able to find all of these, and more. A word of warning though – the site isn't the easiest to navigate, so just remember that you need to look at the resources under “Unit 2 – The Writer’s Voice – 5EN2H. (I've just checked and noticed that there are two of these headings – open the second one for all the really good stuff). If you are in 11x1 or 11y1 you will be completing the higher paper, and the exam is Unit 2 of the course (you've already completed units 1 & 3), and you only need to worry about the ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ questions in the first section (and the writing section, obviously). 

Hopefully this will be all you need, but if you run out of past papers or exemplar answers then come and see me; there are a few kicking around the department that I'm not allowed to host here (because they’re still in copyright).

If any parents would like to be added to a mailing list to notify them when the English blog updates, then you can let me know your email address here. ( The first five pupils on that list will immediately become ClubClass members, so there's an incentive to show your folks...)

I’ll update tomorrow with a few things to remember before the exam; don’t worry though, it’s nothing we haven’t done in class.

Finally, I'm still a little unsure about hosting an anonymous markbook, but loads of you seem to be quite keen. I’ll put it to a vote, which you can find on around the top right of your screen.

Yes Arnold bros

Morning all! It was lovely to meet you yesterday, and I'm sure the next year will be plenty o' fun. I thought I'd draw your attention to some of the things that we covered yesterday, and let you know generally how I operate my classes.

First up - the seating in there made me ROFL. I'll move you, and I make you this bet now; you'll end up having more interesting, in depth conversations about the text with people you might not normally chat to then if I just parked you with your mates. If that's not true by Christmas, I'll bring in more Minstrels then you could conceivably eat. And then I'll eat them all myself, because you'll have all lost.

Second - the book. I recommend picking up your own copy of the text, so you can annotate and scrawl and put post it notes all over (you'll be given a clean copy for the exam). ) Different types of study guide are available, too, and it would be useful if between you you all picked up a variety (although only buy one each, obvs), so could swap them around between yourselves. I'm aware that I'm suggesting buying a few books here, so if your pocket money will only stretch to a few Beyblades, then check out any number of the online study guides, which rock in at £0.00. I'll put this bluntly: kids who read study guides get miles more marks then kids who don't.  For the kids who are really gunning for the top end stuff, then I recommend this; we'll be using extracts from it in lessons, and it's the one that will make your brain hurt the most. If you want to pick up a copy, I thoroughly recommend the £0.01 option, where you only pay for postage.

Third - reading. I'll be pushing reading non-stop. What often happens is kids often drop off reading round about year 9, and it often doesn't get picked up again. I'll release a recommended reading list for Y11 as soon as I've had a chat with Mrs Cassidy - no point releasing a list of books that the library might not have. Since this is extra curricular, I'll aim to reward this as much as I can - watch this space.

Fourth - Mabel wins the inaugural 'Prize of Skillness', for leading the discussion on the characters. We'll work on ways to lead these discussions (what questions to ask, how to get people involved and so on), and the majority of people will have done one by Christmas. The prize will be whatever confectionery I can steal from Eatherington's desk.

Finally - I'll host as much as I can here - course overviews, an anonymous markbook, resources... you name it. Any particular requests, then let me know.

Any questions / problems, then send them to my school email address. Don't bother with the Gmail one as that never gets checked.

Cheers!

P.S - test on Chapters 1-8 on Monday. Oof.

It's been a while...

Hmmm, can we see oppositional structure here?

I'm sorry - you've probably been crying every night, pawing at your screens, saying "Why? WHYYYYY hasn't he updated? WHHHHYYYYYYYY?", and then going back to your lolcats or Beyblades, or whatever you youngsters do for fun.
Anyways, expect to see a good few updates before the year is out, starting with this one, that includes your homework!

So, in the English workroom (cue lightning flashes, thunderclaps, howling wolves etc) we decided that one of the things we should make you explicitly aware of is the number of terms that we expect our C and above candidates to use. To this end, we jotted down a list of terms that we reckon you should be aware of, and ideally be able to use in your Eng Lit exam. You can find that beast here. So, what we want you to do is to pick ten - any ten at all. Find out what they mean, and then, think about how they might be related to any of the texts that we have studied so far (treat each poem as an individual text). After that, try to write a sentence about a text that includes the definition that you have been studying. If you want, you can fill in this form here (make sure you download it locally to your machine first, mind - File-Download, or just press Ctrl+S).  I'd also like you to get your two best examples, and include them on this open edit document. (Although it looks the same, you should find you can edit and change this one. Don't worry if your term has already been done; the more examples the better!)

Any problems, then drop me a line or come and see me. This is due in Monday 26th, but if you email me at 11pm on Sunday night then you might be out of luck...

A Level?

If you are thinking about A level language for next year, and you've got a few spare minutes kicking about now you have finished your exams, then you might want to check out this book - David Crystal's 'A Little Book of Language', and it's in the library (I've also got my own copy if anyone wants to borrow it). It's written by David Crystal, who is really famous in English language circles, and it is really, really easy to understand.

It gives an introduction into nearly all of the topics that you'll study at AS (such as how people use language when they use technology, how men and women use language differently, how people use language to show they are in charge, or to exclude people from a particular group.... I could go on, but you get the picture).

I don't want to go on, lest I bore you, but trust me - if you want a flavour of what A level language looks like, then check it out.

An Inspector Calls - Introduction

Since we'll be looking at 'An Inspector Calls', a useful starting point might be to explain the difference between left and right wing viewpoints, and the ideas behind  them. Although this infographic isn't perfect, it does give us a good starting point for discussion. Have a look at this, and see if you can start to see any of Arthur Birling's ideas represented here (or the Inspector's, for that matter). If you struggle to read the infographic, then it will be worthwhile checking it out on the original website, that can be found by clicking here.

GCSE Mock! Woop woop

I'm taking a quick break from marking all of your papers, so I thought I'd write a quick post. First of all, the timings are a bit of an issue for some of you, so you can have the timings sheet that I've typed out here.
Secondly, don't worry about any mistakes that you might have made in the mock - I'm glad you've made them now, so I can point them out and you'll be well aware of what not to do come January (almost like the WHOLE REASON for having a mock...).
I'll have your marks for next Thursday, and (along with your CA marks), I'll be able to tell you not only your exam grade, but what you would have achieved over the whole course if your exam had been real.
Enjoy!