Aiming High?
Additional Study Materials
Unseen Poetry

Give yourself no more than 30 minutes to do this task. We will have an additional follow up Intervention session on this on the first Wednesday back at lunchtime in my classroom 1.15-1.45 where we will spend 30 minutes reviewing the poem and you will be able to check your understanding.

I will be doing more of these types of Interventions where part a will be on the blog, and you will arrive to the Intervention session for the follow up.

Read the poem and consider it carefully. Look for its main ideas, language features, consider the effects of the language features used and write down 10 statements showing your consideration of the above and which show your interpretation of the poem.
For example:

One of the main ideas present in the poem is that...
One techniques present in the poem is the use of...we seen this in the line: "..." The effect of this is to...

Do not research the poem. Only write down your own thought (you will not be able to research the unseen poem in the exam).

Don't worry if you 'don't get it', get what you can from it. No matter how small you feel your understanding of it is.

AFTERNOONS (by Philip Larkin)
Summer is fading:
The leaves fall in ones and twos
From trees bordering
The new recreation ground.
In the hollows of afternoons
Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children.

Behind them, at intervals,
Stand husbands in skilled trades,
An estateful of washing,
And the albums, lettered
Our Wedding, lying
Near the television:
Before them, the wind
Is ruining their courting-places

That are still courting-places
(But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acorns,
Expect to be taken home.
Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.

The Four Minute Mile

In the sport of athletics, the four-minute mile is the act of completing the mile run (1,760 yards, or 1,609.344 metres) in less than four minutes. It was first achieved in 1954 by Roger Bannister in 3:59.4.^[1] The "four-minute barrier" has since been broken by many male athletes, and is now the standard of all male professional middle distance runners. In the last 50 years the mile record has been lowered by almost 17 seconds.

Before Roger Bannister did this, it was a common belief across the world that a mile could not be run in under four minutes. Indeed some even believed it was harmful to your health to do so.

Interestingly, in the year that Roger broke this record, and with it the belief, many more athletes did the same.



What is your current belief about your ability in English Language and Literature?
What belief do you need to break in order to reach your potential?

At Last! Holiday Homework

Apologies all, I did not upload the homework and have had a rethink.

In preparation for your Mock exams and the final exams (we are always playing the long game remember), you will return to school and complete an exam style, timed question on 'An Inspector Calls', one of our primary texts.

Therefore this holiday remaining, please study the text/ characters/ themes/ key quotes ad consider the texts and its messages carefully. You will want to be knowledgeable also about the author, his motivation for writing the book, his message, Capitalism, Socialism, the issues in Britain after the war in society and the similarities between the time of the books conception and the time it is set in (which are of course very different).

This homework is better preparation for the real exam as you will not know what aspect of the text you will be asked about in the final exam.

Remember: knowledge is power, and power leads to great results.

Ensure you have detailed and in depth knowledge of the entire book and all its threads of ideas.