Hello year 10! I hope your exams last week went well and that you’re enjoying the relief of having them out of the way! I also hope you enjoyed the cathartic ‘ranting’ lessons last week which followed!

These lessons were designed to introduce you to the next pieces of controlled assessment which will take place this half term. The first will be a speaking and listening assessment which will take place in the week beginning 27th of June and will be worth approximately 7% of the English GCSE. The second will be a piece of written controlled assessment which will take place in the week before work experience (week beginning 4th of July), and will be worth 7.5% of the English GCSE. A letter has been sent to parents via your English Teacher, a copy of which can be found here.

One of the pieces of homework will be to investigte this type of writing, and the examples below might help you you to do this (although there are plenty of others you can find independently as well). Try to read a few of the examples then find some of your own as well. Remember to concentrate on the structure and organisation of the articles and the rhetorical features used in them. Which do you find the most convincing?

• Richard Littlejohn has won “National Irritant of the Year” several times so is a good starting point. His page on the Daily Mail website can be found here. In fact the Daily Mail presents many strong opinions, so browsing the articles you find there might be helpful. Have a look at their “Debate” section here to start you off. 
• Charlie Brooker is another good ranter! He writes for the Guardian and you can find links to his articles here, and you can browse the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section and read work by their other writers by clicking here (although not all of these would be classed as ‘rants’).
• Some local newspapers will present strong opinions as well, try the Hornsey Journal or the Tottenham and Wood Green Journal to start you off.

If you find any interesting or helpful ‘rants’ please add them as comments below so that they can help other people.

Use this quiz to revise the ‘Character and Voice’ poems:

Click here for larger version

Use this quiz to help you revise some key terminology for writing about poetry.  You can make the game full screen and select any of the options. Wordshoot is recommended!

Click here for larger version

The rest of the poetry revision materials will be added to the Anthology page tomorrow afternoon. You can visit the page today for a copy of all anthology poems and a sample revision pack for “The Horse Whisperer” and “The Hunchback in the Park”. You will need the password which your English teacher has given you to access these materials, so see your teacher or Ms Simon if you don’t have it.

You should also make sure you have a copy of the AQA revision booklet (available from the English office for £4) to use over half term.

Remember to check the page again tomorrow for a full set of revision resources at the click of a mouse.

Calling all Key Stage 4 students! It is now only two months until you sit your English and Literature examinations (dates below) and it is vital that you start revising today. No one is expecting you to be chained to your desk from now until the end of the exams, but it is important that you get organised straight away in order to avoid a last minute panic.

There will be weekly revision resources and activities for you to use posted here every Friday.

Please make sure you use the right ones for your year group: they will either be tagged (year 10 or year 11) or colour coded (blue for year 11, green for year 10). Please ask your teacher if you are unsure. You can also use the tabs at the top and on the right hand side of this page to navigate.

Year 11 English Paper 1: Monday 16th May

Year 11 English Paper 2: Wednesday 18th May

Year 11 Literature Examination: Tuesday 24th May

Year 10 Literature Examination: Wednesday 8th June

Year 10 English Examination: Thursday 9th June

Good luck and happy revising!

All year 10 students will soon be completing their second piece of controlled assessment, called the “Spoken Language Study”. Your teacher will provide you with lots of resources to support your completion of the tasks, but there will also be lots here. Remember that you should always ask your teacher if you are unsure about anything.

You can download a copy of the student  Spoken Language Study Booklet if you lose the one your teacher gave you. If you do, please make sure you catch up on any work missed or misplaced.

Parents, if you have any questions about any of the materials please feel free to contact your child’s English teacher via telephone or e mail.  You should have received this letter, outlining the dates of the assessment, as well as this summer’s English exam dates.

This is an exciting area of study which is brand new to your course. We will be looking at how spoken language is used by TV chefs, analysing their speech patterns, language and voices. In order to get a head start, you might like to look on youtube at some of the chefs below.

Delia Smith, Antony Worral-Thompson, Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, Sanjeev Kapoor, Rick Stein, Keith Floyd, James Martin, Marco Pierre-White, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Marcus Wareing, Angela Hartnett, Richard Corrigan, Paul Rankin, Gino d’Acampo, John Burton-Race.

Here’s a video to get you started. As you watch, think about where he pauses, any incomplete (‘minor’) sentences, repetition and fillers (‘sort of like, erm, you know etc)

Dear Parents / Carers / Year 11 Students,

Welcome (or welcome back) to the GCSE English blog. The APS English department has designed this blog to help GCSE students prepare for their forthcoming examinations, and there is a wealth of information here which will help you to do so. Here is a brief guide to the contents of the blog and how to use it. Ue the links below or the tabs at the top and to the right of this page to navigate and explore.

• For links to past papers and information about examinations, please click here.
• For support in redrafting or catching up with coursework, please click here.
• For resources and activities designed to aid learning and revision, please click here.
• For links to external websites which will support learning in English, please scroll down and look at the links to the right of this page.
• For revision activities, please scroll down this page: there are lots of tasks which will help year 11 students to prepare for the mocks and for the GCSE examinations in the summer.
• If you have any suggestions as to how we can improve this blog, or if there is anything you would like to see here, please leave a comment in response to this post. Alternatively you can contact Mrs Simon, at csimon@apsch.org.uk or on 020 8826 4878.

Please note that these activities and resources are designed for the curriculum followed by year 11 only: year 10 are following a different specification, and can use the links on the right of the page to find appropriate resources.

Welcome to your GCSE courses, and to this English blog, which has been set up to give you all the support we can in your English, English Language and English Literature GCSEs.

You are the first year group to study the brand new GCSE courses, so lots of the information currently on the blog is related to the old courses.  But we’ll be adding more and more for your courses as you go through Years 10 and 11, so keep checking back to see what’s new.

Use the ‘About GCSE English’ link above to access information about what you’ll be studying over the next 2 years.  Make sure you select the course that you are studying – if you’re in Ms Freeman or Mr Austin’s groups, you’re studying the single English course, while everyone else is studying the joint English Language and English Literature courses.

Don’t forget to show this to your parents too, and to give them the letter with your teacher’s contact details.  After they’ve looked at the information here, they need to complete and sign the contract, for you to bring back to your teacher.

Good luck over the next 2 years – and remember your teachers are here to help you succeed.

Revision breakfast!

A reminder to Year 11: the English department are running revision breakfasts / lunches before all the English exams again this year.  

These will start at 8am for the morning exams on 25th May and 8th June and 12.20 for the afternoon exam on 10th June.  See posters in the English corridor on the day for which rooms to go to.

Light food and water will be available and teachers will do some warm-up activities to get topics into your heads and remind you of key tips for each paper.

Spread the word!

Miss DuPlessis has found a fantastic website with lots of resources to help you with revision for poetry and “Of Mice and Men”, click here to see it. This will be invaluable for revision and for anyone who has missed one or more poetry lessons.

We hope your mocks are going well, remember to ask your English teacher for help if you need it. Good luck!