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01/12/20                   Storytelling - extension                             

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01/12/20                   Storytelling - extension                             

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01/12/20                  Storytelling, Language, Structure  

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01/12/20                  Storytelling, Language, Structure  

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Close analysis - passage about Offred's Body

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Close analysis - passage about Offred's Body

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01/12/20                                          HOMEWORK and REMOTE                                                        

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01/12/20                                          HOMEWORK and REMOTE                                                        

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1. Prepare and make notes on NIGHT and BIRTH DAY
2. Write the essay on Brick Lane - posted on the Unseen Prose Column
All work set for Tues 08/12/20

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23/11/20                                                               HOMEWORK and REMOTE

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23/11/20                                                               HOMEWORK and REMOTE

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1. Prepare The Historical Notes for 01/12/20
2. Prepare the unseen prose passage on "God of Small Things" in your Unseen Prose Booklet for 01/12/20

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17/11/20                                                   HOMEWORK and REMOTE

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17/11/20                                                   HOMEWORK and REMOTE

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1. Write identity essay for 24/11/20
2. Prepare Chapters 13-17 Handmaid's Tale  for 24/11/20 question sheets on Handmaid's column, handed out in class and emailed.
3. Prepare Long Queen and History for 23/11/20 Power points on Feminine Gospels column and emailed.

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10/11/20                                                            HOMEWORK and REMOTE

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10/11/20                                                            HOMEWORK and REMOTE

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1. Plan the following essay for next week (17/10/20)
‘In modern literature people often struggle with issues of identity.’ Compare the presentation of issues of identity in two other texts you have studied.

Remember to include in your answer reference to how meanings are shaped in the texts you are comparing.

You must use one prose text and one poetry text in your response, at least one of which

must be a text written post-2000.

You must write about at least two poems.
2. Write the essay for the following week (24/11/20)
3. Makes notes on Chapters 7-12 and read the Feminism doc by next week (17/11/20)
4. Prepare The Long Queen and Work by Tues 24/11/20 - questions will be sent and put on Duffy column.

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10/11/20                                                            Extension: Self Test

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10/11/20                                                            Extension: Self Test

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10/11/20                                                           IV Waiting Room:         Chapters 8-12        

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10/11/20                                                           IV Waiting Room:         Chapters 8-12        

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10/11/20                                                      III Night - Chapter 7

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10/11/20                                                      III Night - Chapter 7

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03/11/20                           Overview of Handmaid's Tale           

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03/11/20                           Overview of Handmaid's Tale           

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OVERVIEW of THE HAINDMAID'S TALE-LAPTOP1266

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For Tuesday 10/11/20
1. Write notes on Chapter 2-6 - see worksheet posted on Handmaid's Tale column.
2.Read and add to the Overview of Handmaid's Tale. (on Handmaid's column)
3. Research Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana.
Read Beautiful and make initial annotations of your immediate responses.

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Homework
Read to the end of Handmaid's Tale - for Tuesday 03/11/20
Remote Learning
Prepare Map Woman for Tues 03/11/20 (see Feminine Gospels column)

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Homework
1. Keep reading Handmaid's Tale - to be finished by the start of next term.
2. Write the Unseen Poetry essay from you Unseen booklet. Text 3 - Page 6. Hand in by half term - Friday 23rd October
Remote Work
1. Consolidate notes on Woman Who Shopped.
2. Fill in as much of the grids as you can (Woman who shopped and Diet)
3. Prepare Light Gatherer and The Cord for next Tuesday's lesson.

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Extension - 40 years since publication of Fat is a Feminist Issue

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Extension - 40 years since publication of Fat is a Feminist Issue

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hen I sat down to write Fat Is A Feminist Issue 40 years ago I never dreamed, or feared, it would still be in print today. I naively hoped my book would change the world. By analysing and suggesting solutions to body and eating problems, I imagined they would disappear. But in truth, of course, when I was writing about girls' and women's body and eating problems, I was writing about inequality, too. And inequality is stubborn. It didn't look it in 1978, at the height of what we now call second wave feminism. Everything was up for being rethought - families, bodies, education, science, medicine, class, racism, money, sex.

When feminism first appeared, I hadn't much understood it. At school, we were encouraged to compete with boys for Oxbridge places while soaking in knowledge which would, when the time came for marriage, delight and please our husbands. It seemed ever so dull. Then, suddenly the Sixties spoke to women about their own experience. There was a spectacular protest at the Miss America beauty contest in New Jersey in 1968. There, a woman's body was marked up as a cow ready for butchering, while a "freedom" trash can was ready for women to dump in bras and hair rollers, and pots and pans. It was the first hint that the way we personally felt about (and suffered) beauty, bodies and caring was a social issue. It looked like the world was changing. And when I published Fat Is A Feminist Issue, the message was taken to a wide audience through women's magazines such as Woman's Own, aimed mainly at working-class mothers.

Fat Is A Feminist Issue talked about our lived experience: how preoccupied we could become with eating, not eating and avoiding fat. Emotionally schooled to see our value as both sexual beings for others and midwives to their desires, we found ourselves often depleted and empty, and caught up in a kind of compulsive giving. Eating became our source of soothing. We stopped our mouths with food, and I proposed we could learn to exchange food - when we weren't hungry - for words.

So far so good. Many of us started challenging the homogeneity of what constituted beauty. We stopped worrying and dared to live from our bodies. But we never saw the backlash coming, or the ingenious forms it would take, from the now rather innocent ("Because you're worth it") to the downright nefarious practices of industries that were growing rich on the making of body insecurity. And that was way before social media and the beauty bloggers with their, yes, millions of followers, would begin to reap money as daily beauty labour got instituted in a way that before then perhaps only a Hollywood makeup artist would recognise. Beauty work became relentless and, with it, the ubiquity of judgment and failure. Judgments and failures which, once internalised, destabilised girls' relationship to their bodies and - as if that wasn't enough - created an insecurity that hurt their minds.

The story of the past 40 years is grim. It's a story of malice, of greed and of mendacity. Not content with destabilising the eating of many western women and exporting body hatred all over the world as a sign of modernity, the combined forces of what investigative health reporter Alicia Mundy so aptly termed "Obesity Inc" set about to create new so-called disease entities; these would medicalise and pathologise people's relationship to food and bodies so successfully that vast industries would grow up to treat problems that these industries had themselves instigated.

In January we learned that one in three women in the UK won't go for their smear tests. Why? Is it because they don't know about them? No, they are invited by their doctors by text, email and letter. Why then? Because they feel so bad about their bodies.

This should alarm us. And yet sadly it doesn't, because we know how ubiquitous bad body feeling is. It is constantly stoked by visual images which invade us, by pronouncements disguised as health directives, by blandishments to do, be, brand, mark ourselves in ways that reward not the human body as a place we dwell in but as an object to enhance the profits of the beauty, fashion, diet, cosmetic surgery, food and exercise industries, no matter one's age.

So what has changed? Go back 20 years. The porn industry is being mainstreamed. Fashion magazines are normalising pornographic images of girls. Pre-teen girls with legs spread wide apart are looking to camera with a combination of allure, innocence and nonchalance. The girls who read them start going for Brazilian waxes. They don't learn about labias and clitorises in school, they learn about how to put on a condom. Their genitals are not to be in view for themselves. And when they are in view, they are presented as inadequate and available for labiaplasty.

The search for 'likes' is an often desperate search for approval, for safety, for body acceptance

If we go back four years, we see the development of cosmetic surgery apps, games marketed to little girls in which they prepare for the surgery they will have when they are old enough. Already at six they will have been targeted with make-up and fashion and bras. Hourly vigilance is yet to come but the notion of a body ready and available for reconstruction is firmly planted. Indeed, many a girl will already have seen baby pictures of herself that have been digitally altered, so that the idea of "perfecting" and "fixing" becomes part of just what is. It is as normalised as the troubled eating she can expect in her journey through life.

By the time they become preteens, girls have been living on their smartphones. That is where life happens and the saturation of the screen with images and likes, with its constant entreaty to be approved of, should give us pause. Beauty labour has become part of girls' and women's lives and now that feminism is back on the agenda we can say, once again, part of our oppression. But, of course, it isn't experienced like that. It is felt as the expression of personal agency, with the promise that looking good is doing good. But I know from the young women I work with that the search for likes is rather more troubling than that. It is an often desperate search for approval, for safety, for body acceptance - a frequently elusive quest.

If that young woman comes to parenting, frantic body preoccupation may have so invaded and insinuated itself into her that she will have schemes for managing food and managing appearance. Midwives and health professionals tell me they have noticed a dramatic change. Today pre- and postpartum mums can show considerable anxiety about their body self, so much so that the rhythm of early bonding is interrupted by rules and regulations, rather than the getting to know of one's own body's capacities and the wishes of the baby. For many, the parenting websites with their contradictory and commercially led "advice", from recommendations for tummy tucks after your C-section to making a bespoke spreadsheet to track your feeding schedule, have turned postpartum into a straitjacket in which getting into pre-pregnancy jeans is the goal. And the anxiety the mothering person might well feel will be inadvertently transmitted to their baby, who will journey through life frightened of food and confused about their body self. A further tragedy.

This is then exacerbated by a rapacious food industry - from the diet promoters to the so-called clean eating movement to the manufacturers of non-food foods. The sole aim of the latter is to produce replicas masquerading as potato chips or cheese for children's lunchboxes but whose chemical composition strives to stimulate their bliss point: the umami, sweet, crispy feel that means taste buds are stimulated rather than hunger addressed. Appetite, desire, is being undermined by the smells and tastes which beckon all day and yet often don't deliver the nourishment we crave.

When you grow up absorbing the idea that food is quasi-dangerous, it is hard to know how to handle it. There are no end of experts selling their wares whose books and products end up generating enormous profits, and Weight Watchers' newest push into the teen market has been criticised for potentially leading to teenagers becoming fixated on dieting. So, too, with other food and diet fads. The desperation that exists to be at peace and dwell in our bodies clashes with the knowledge that such schemas promote or reinforce confusion about appetite and desire. They don't deliver peace. They deliver confusion. They deliver hurt.

If we weren't continually assaulted by the merchants of body hatred, we would not be as vulnerable to the assaults

Another huge industry is the world fashion market, worth $2.4tn. The UK market alone is worth £26bn a year, with a £1,000 spend per inhabitant. I love clothes but how have we been persuaded to buy that much? The penetration of visual culture says how we look is so essential to our existence that we must spend, spend, spend. And that spend doesn't include the cost of the clean-up from the fashion industry, the toxins in the water and the sweatshop conditions here and in China and Bangladesh. If the industry continues at its current rate, it will be using a staggering 26% of the carbon budget in 2050. I mention these statistics because it is sometimes possible to feel that when we are talking of bodies we aren't engaging in serious economic and social issues, but we are. We are talking of large industries and excessive hours spent in persuading us to labour over transforming while attempting to live from our bodies.

It's hard to get the figures that big pharma makes from products aimed at our bodily transformations. They guard them. But we do know that when they launch a diet drug, they spend a fortune marketing and defending it even when it doesn't work or causes medical damage. I could go on. There is the cosmetic industry, the cosmetic surgery industry, the doll market, the role of internet beauty bloggers who have followers in their millions and of course the horror for youngsters of living online and being continually scrutinised. But I want us to think for a moment about #MeToo and Time's Up, where we can see a line, not such a wiggly line, from pervasive bad body feeling to the compromising positions women have been put into in all the spaces where they work and love. If we weren't continually assaulted by the merchants of body hatred, we would not be as vulnerable to the assaults. I'm not saying they wouldn't happen; misogyny ensures that. But the shame, the hiding, the confusions that beset us would diminish and we would be stronger in our fightback and our fight to control our own bodies.

The body has become a political project. From rape as a weapon of war to the internal belief that we must be constantly wary about our appetites, to limiting ourselves individually and collectively because so much of our energy is misemployed, we have to act together to find ways through these minefields. The energy from #MeToo, with its reinvigoration of feminism, can help us say enough is enough. There's just too much anguish, too much sorrow. We need more rage, more refusal and more love.

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Forty years since Fat Is A Feminist Issue

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hen I sat down to write Fat Is A Feminist Issue 40 years ago I never dreamed, or feared, it would still be in print today. I naively hoped my book would change the world. By analysing and suggesting solutions to body and eating problems, I imagined they would disappear.

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13/10/20 Change and Transformation in WWS and Diet

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13/10/20 Change and Transformation in WWS and Diet

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13/10/20 Comparing Ideas in WWS and Diet

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13/10/20 Comparing Ideas in WWS and Diet

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Extension - Why is thinness the ultimate female ambition

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Extension - Why is thinness the ultimate female ambition

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13/10/20 Questions on The Woman Who Shopped

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13/10/20 Questions on The Woman Who Shopped

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13/10/20                          Unseen Poetry Yr 1 Assessment Feedback           

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13/10/20                          Unseen Poetry Yr 1 Assessment Feedback           

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2019 Now that I am Forever and The Victory

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Approach and structuring an answer using Wordsworth and Cope comparison

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A-level English Student Responses to 2017 exam booklet

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13/10/20                               Men Controlling Women Question         

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13/10/20                               Men Controlling Women Question         

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12/10/20                         Worship and Despise Question                

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12/10/20                         Worship and Despise Question                

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13/10/20 Feedback and indicative content -  Worship and Despise

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13/10/20 Feedback and indicative content -  Worship and Despise

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Year 1 Assessment Feedback worship despise

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A View - worship or despise

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Y 2 g Duffy's Feminine Gospels: The Collection Written in 2002, Duffy dedicates her 21 poems to her brothers "Frank, Adrian, Eugene and Tim". Although all poems in Feminine Gospels come from a female perspective, Duffy includes men into this collection as a warning to not adopt A

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Feminine Gospels
by Carol Ann Duffy
80pp, Picador, £12.99

Carol Ann Duffy likes the play of words. The truths of her scripture may be drawn from female experience, but she prefers games to gospel, her stories are closer to surreal cartoon than fairytale, and all are told with the pace of a quick-cutting TV ad, collapsing whole narratives into a couple of lines:

wanted a wedding, a wedding dress, groom
Married him, wanted a honeymoon, went on one...

Quite as much as her gambler, in a poem of that name from this collection, she "goes for the sound of the words"; making use of ebullient street talk, off-rhythm rhymes and internal echoes, all the tricks of the trade, indeed, and always with a child's relish in discovery:

When language came, it glittered like a river
silver, clever with fish.

This book is not bound by a theme like The World's Wife, which trained an idiosyncratic eye on the women at the side of historical or legendary men. Yet, rather as the Long Queen - in the poem that opens this collection - rules over a female population of "wetnurses/witches, widows, wives, mothers of all these", Duffy too knows her constituency.

There is nothing cosy about her vision, however. This is a dark book, for all the jokes, exposing equally the trash of our aspirations and the crumbling urban landscape around us. As she thinks of history, she imagines an old woman, who with

not a tooth
in her head, half dead shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her night dress
smelling of pee...

The world this creature inhabits is apocalyptic, with the old alone and vulnerable to thieves in the night:

When they rang on her bell
there was nobody there, fresh graffiti sprayed
to her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted
on to the floor.

Out of this ugliness women metamorphose under our eye. A shopaholic becomes a shop. In "Beautiful", a series of women appear to be manifestations of the same being, defined only by the ability to excite the desire of men. Helen of Troy changes into Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe puts Sinatra on her record player before going off to sing "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy. The dubious gift of beauty passes to Princess Diana, who obediently widens her eyes for the flashbulbs of the press. Helen and Cleopatra elude us with a certain dignity - well, they are essentially myths - but in our latterday world, to be desired brings more danger than privilege and has precious little to do with magic. Diana is insulted even as she smiles, and will soon feel "History's stinking breath in her face".

Duffy likes to take a familiar psychological reality and extend it as an outrageous metaphor. In "The Map Woman", for instance, an A-to-Z street map of the town in which a woman has grown up is tattooed over the skin of her whole body. Wherever she goes, and whatever she becomes, that geography remains an indelible pattern she cannot escape; until, that is, almost accidentally, she hits on the remedy. She decides to return to the real town that haunts her. In the intervening years, the place she remembers has become almost unrecognisable under newly built arcades and shopping malls. Bewildered by these changes, she retreats to her hotel room. There, she sloughs her skin like a snake. In the last verse, Duffy escapes from the metaphor to close the poem with a resonance that recalls some of Larkin's memorable conclusions:

She woke and spread out the map on the floor. What
was she looking for? Her skin was her own small ghost,
a shroud to be dead in, a newspaper for old news
to be read in, gift wrapping, litter, a suicide letter.

She left it there, dressed, checked out, got in the car.

As she drove, the town in the morning sun glittered
behind her. She ate up the miles. Her skin itched,
like a rash, like a slow burn, felt stretched, as though
it belonged to someone else. Deep in the bone
old streets tunnelled and burrowed, hunting for home.

Not all the fantasies carry the same charge. "Work" takes a single mum, working her fingers to the bone to fill her larder, and develops her problem through a rhetoric of absurdity that leaves her at the heart of the capitalist internet trying to feed a planet. Sometimes the gritty details make a familiar point surprising. An anorexic shrivels like Alice until she is blown away as a seed, to nestle at length in the stomach of a gloriously self-indulgent eater. She has become literally that thin woman notoriously found inside every fat one, except in this version, she has no wish to get out .

The longest poem in the book is "The Laughter of Stafford Girls' High" and Duffy clearly enjoyed writing it. At one level the poem is a tour de force of sparkle and fizz. A mysterious giggle grows ineluctably into an all-consuming merriment that destroys the whole structure of grammar school propriety. Those who went to such a grammar school, as I did, will recognise the discipline and the drudgery, and recall the passionate longing to escape shared by teachers and students alike. At the same time it is hard to keep out of mind Searle's St Trinian's, or even the hearty attachments of Angela Brazil's captains and head girls. I found the poetry lay mainly in the asides: a teacher on a cold night, watching her own breath, a moment of loving abandon, an evocation of "The world like Quink outside". For all its accomplishment, this was not my favourite poem in the collection.

When she wants to, Duffy can write with lyric intensity, noticing "where the lights from the shop ran like paint in the rain", observing a child's beauty in the glow under the skin of her hands, or watching the same child sleeping "with the whole moon held in your arms".

The poems near the end of the book - which are closer to prayers or love poems - have that kind of intensity in abundance, particularly those that lament the dead, and tease the living with the hope that after all

Nobody died. Nobody
wept. Nobody slept who couldn't be woken
by the light...

Are these poems placed at the end to the book to signal a movement or development? We shall have to wait for the next book to know. For the moment Duffy prefers to wear a tougher face, and to keep her voice jaunty. She moves through the lives she invents with a kind of casual confidence which her characters sometimes briefly share, like the shopaholic who

purchased a hat with a brim
walked with a suitor under its shadow, ditched him...

It is hard not to find that assumption of freedom heady. Even if, in this particular poem, the character is hardly given Duffy's approval, that readiness to move on is intoxicating. It teaches an odd, contemporary post-feminist courage; and perhaps that is the source of Duffy's huge popularity.

· Elaine Feinstein's Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet is published by Phoenix, and her Collected Poems and Translations by Carcanet.

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Review: Feminine Gospels by Carol Ann Duffy

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Feminine Gospels by Carol Ann Duffy 80pp, Picador, £12.99 Carol Ann Duffy likes the play of words. The truths of her scripture may be drawn from female experience, but she prefers games to gospel, her stories are closer to surreal cartoon than fairytale, and all are told with the pace of a quick-cutting TV ad, collapsing whole narratives into a couple of lines: wanted a wedding, a wedding dress, groom Married him, wanted a honeymoon, went on one...

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06/10/20                       Women's Bodies and Diet discussion points      

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06/10/20                       Women's Bodies and Diet discussion points      

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06/10/20                                 Intro to Duffy and The woman who shopped         

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06/10/20                                 Intro to Duffy and The woman who shopped         

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06/10/20 Lesson / Homework / Remote work

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06/10/20 Lesson / Homework / Remote work

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All Power Points on Feminine Gospels Column

In summary…

Today we talked about the events depicted on the Modern Times 2020 Power Point and thought of key events from 2000-2020.

We watched the doc from the link in the Power Point Intro to Modern Times and considered the questions on the power point.

We looked at typical modern times concerns and questions.

We thought about the meaning and associations we make with the words Feminine and Gospels and talked about what we thought the concerns of this collection of poetry will be (see Power Point The Woman Who Shopped questions)

We read and discussed the first half of The woman who shopped – see questions 1-4 on The woman who shopped questions Power point.

We discussed the 1st half of the poem, recognising that a transformation takes place, and that at first it seems confusing or unsettling. However, transformation is a part of narrative and we can accept it happens, and read it figuratively (look at what Duffy says about Tall Tales on the Power Point The woman who shopped questions.)

Homework (3-4 hours)

Read Handmaid’s Tale. Deadline – first lesson after half term. There will be a test to check you have read it.

I recommend that you write down the key event/idea from each chapter as you read.

Remote Lesson work (for Thursday 08/10/20) 2 hours 20 mins

Consolidate any notes from today’s lesson on the first half of The woman who shopped.

Write a paragraph of analysis in response to this question

How has Duffy used language to present the woman’s growing addiction to shopping in the first half of The woman who shopped?

Bring to next week’s lesson (13/10/20)

Research Carol Ann Duffy – get an overview of who she is, other works, her concerns, her work as poet laureate etc (don’t spend ages on this)

Think about the debate statements given out – Women’s Bodies and Diet ready to discuss some of these issues on Tuesday 13/10/20

I think that’s everything.

You will also get your first year assessments back next week, so it will be a packed lesson 😊

Please email with any questions.

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Morning,

Just a quick email to remind you that you should be drafting now.

I sent emails on Friday which summarized the Zoom and included the handbook again – please refer to them.

I will schedule another Zoom lesson for Friday, and send a doc about the Chorus soon, but remember the intro to your text has a section on the chorus on pages xxiv – xxvi

Remember, you can submit BEFORE the deadline 😊 and email questions. We cannot read sections of your essay though, as the exam board rules only allow one draft, feedback and one redraft.

Take care,

Kerstin

Reminder – this  excellent series of short lectures is very useful, and can be used to find critical material you may use in your essay.

https://remote.colchsfc.ac.uk/portal/webclient/index.html#/desktop

If the link doesn’t work you should

Go on Remote Access

Moodle

Library

Research button

On-line services and ebook platforms

M

Massolit

Search for Antigone and pick the lectures by Prof Edith Hall.

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19/06/20

Lovely to see you as always 😊

1. We started with some discussion of the PLANNING we would like to see from you – a list of your topic areas. I shared an exemplar (attached here) to show that we aren’t looking for detailed notes, just that the shape of the essay has been considered, with an awareness of how the sections are going to build a coherent response to the title.

2. We suggest you start thinking about the CONTEXT of the text in relation to your specific thematic focus.

Eg: if you are exploring power – who has it in the society represented in each text? What conflicts does that cause? How do powerless individuals rebel?

If you are exploring ideas of loyalty – what does the world of the text generally consider loyalty to be? Do individuals challenge those ideas of loyalty? How? Does that cause conflict?

This helps you to form key comparisons about attitudes and values across time, which is a crucial consideration, and on foregrounded by this particular exam board (The NEA is called Texts across time.)

As you can see above, thinking about the context first, leads to a series of questions, you can use to shape the different areas of your essay.

3. Another aspect of context is GENRE.

It is crucial that you compare the different ways the themes are explored by the writers in their different genres – how does Antigone present the theme dramatically, and specifically as a Greek Tragedy, and how does the writer of your partner text present the theme differently because they have written a novel – crucially you must consider narrative viewpoint, or a different type of drama (Shakespearean tragedy or Realism)

4. We looked at the examples of comparative writing that Alison sent this week and discussed how they were drawing together similarities, and acknowledging differences. You can compare and contrast themes, and writers’ methods.

A number of you shared your initial drafts of comparative writing, and it is very pleasing to see you linking the texts confidently – you are all ready to go on to explore how the writers have communicated the ideas you introduced in the paragraph to follow. Thank you to all of you who shared your work 😊

5. DRAFTING

You can start with drafting an introduction, or start with your first point of comparison. You can always add your introduction at the end. If you like to start with the intro, then look at it again once you have finished, as ideas often evolve (or change) in the drafting process.

You will not be able to draft this in one go.

Take one section at a time, and draft each section. Sometimes this involves wrestling with the ideas! This is a normal part of the process as you have to synthesise your thoughts, form comparisons and evaluate writers’ methods (how they have communicated the their themes.)

Give yourself time to work on it in stages. Write a section and put it away. When you come back to it, read over what you have written so far and see if you want to make any changes before moving on to the next section.

The word count is a MAXIMUM of 2,500 words without quotations.

Please save your work twice labelling your main copy  “with quotations” and the other “Without quotations”

You can delete the quotations on the “without quotations copy” and use it to add a word count at the bottom of your “with quotations” copy.

Mathilda said she was going to use  different font colour for her quotations to make this process of deleting them easier – you may want to do the same.

It is time to get writing now – the deadline for the first draft is 2 weeks today (3rd July) This is your set work for class and homework time. Of-course, do ask us questions if you need some guidance as you draft.

You can submit your draft before the final deadline.

We will send a list of ideas about how you can write about the Chorus, ad we will have another Zoom lesson next Friday at 10.30 again, to talk about using critics in your work. You have to find some critical material to use, either to support an idea or to argue against.

I hope covered everything is covered.

See you soon,

Kerstin and Alison

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Hello everyone,

Hope you are all well.

Progressing with your NEA.

We should have your plans by now – a bullet point list of topics from which will form your paragraphs. Please send if you haven’t already done so.

Your titles need to be formalised by Wednesday – please respond to individual emails you receive about tiles

You should start writing your draft by the end of this week. The deadline is the 3rd July and but is important that you use the time available well in order to produce your best work for this deadline. Time can quickly trickle away if you don’t organise yourself.

There will be a Zoom lesson in the normal lesson time on Friday, discussing writing comparatively and addressing writers’ methods. Alison will send some materials and a task for you to prepare for that lesson.

Looking forward to seeing you all on Zoom again soon (review or lesson 😊)

Kerstin and Alison.

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Hi

Hope you are all well.

This is quick reminder that your work is to

1. Send a plan of your ideas to either me or Alison by the 9th June. ( I emailed a list of which of us is supervising you last week)

2. Please send your partner text notes too, if you haven’t already done so.

3. We also need an email about the focus of your essay, so we can work on titles.

4. You will have a one-to-one zoom review with me or Alison either later this week, or early next week. You will get an individual invitation to the meeting, with the password.

Please let us know if there is an issue with Zoom.

Hope this is all clear – please do email if you have any questions.

Kerstin

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03/06/20 Reverse Planning using a Band 5 essay

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03/06/20 Reverse Planning using a Band 5 essay

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Hello again.

Firstly, don’t forget to send the notes on your partner text, and ideas you have about your title. We will be emailing you to chase these if we don’t hear from you SOON.

Secondly, here is the strong NEA I promised. It is a bit blurry because it is scanned, but I think it is legible.

The task will be easiest if you can print it out and use highlighters.

If you can’t print, then read it and complete 1. Re-read it making notes for 2. Re-read paying careful attention to where you find evidence of the bullet pointed elements of 3.

1. Identify the key idea of each paragraph.

Jot each point down in note form – you should end up with a bullet point summary of the key ideas of the essay.

1. Underline any comparative language.

Look carefully at how the essay finds similarities and differences, sometimes writing about the texts together, and sometimes writing about a single text

1. Using different coloured highlighters, highlight the following

Quotation

Evaluation of writers’ methods

Reference and evaluation of context

Inclusion and evaluation of critical viewpoint

Look carefully at how the essay blends these elements to ensure that all of the assessment objectives are covered.

We will send a planning proforma for you to produce your plan for the deadline of the 9th June.

Kerstin and Alison

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ZOOM Lesson @2.50pm

Here is the promised summary of today’s Zoom meeting

1. Alison passed on her praise regarding your Antigone essays – well done. She has sent feedback notes to you.

2. Evaluation of WRITERS’ METHODS is crucial in your essays – to explain HOW writers communicate their ideas, or create settings, or characters with distinct attitudes and values etc. Therefore, you must write about the text as drama, and consider the role of the CHORUS somewhere. We will send a lesson specifically focussing on the role and function of the  Chorus.

3. All the Assessment Objectives are the same as previous essays you have done, and they are applied in the same way. Make sure you are familiar with them, so you can think about how to include them all in your writing. Remember to keep referring to your NEA Guide.

4. Context – The NEA is titled Texts across Time, so you must think about when and where your 2 texts were written, and how these factors shape ideas.

A context detail regarding Antigone It is set in a pre-Christian context, therefore there is no Hell ( a place for punishment) There is only the Afterlife , the underworld, Hades. An appropriate burial allowed you to rest with heroes in Hades. The Gods are important, because characters’ hubris is to mistakenly believe they are equal to the Gods. The Gods ensure this error of judgment is rectified. Creon is an example of this, whereas Antigone wishes to do the will of the Gods, and honour her family.

WHAT NEXT?

1. I will send a complete NEA on 2 texts no one in the group is using. Your task will be to read it carefully, highlight it using the AO’s as your guide, and to write a summary of the essay to reveal its structure. This will help you to see how to plan your own work, and give you the chance to read a clearly organised, well-written NEA response, which covers all the AO’s. I will send this tomorrow, with clear instructions.

2. You must email me or Alison with your emerging ideas for a question, and we will work with you on the final wording of that question. The question must be comparative, involve a discussion (WHAT the writers communicate/explore), and include a focus on HOW writers create meaning. We will email you back, unless a conversation is needed, in which case we will organise a quick 1:1 Zoom meeting with you individually.

3. We will send a pro-forma A4 planning sheet for you to complete by 09 06 20

4. We will also send material on dramatic and prose methods.

5. Starting from 1/06/20 we will have 1:1 Zoom tutorials to discuss your plan before you draft your essay.

6. Before you draft, you must read materials we will send on plagiarism.

7. Draft your essay, and submit by Friday 03/07/20

Word limit = 2,500 words without quotes. This is a maximum word count

MAKE YOUR FIRST DRAFT YOUR BEST WORK 😊

That’s it (phew!)

Kerstin and Alison 😊

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01/06/20

Hello Everyone,

Hope you are all well and have been able to enjoy the lovely half term weather 😊

Quick reminder – notes on partner text are due in by tomorrow – thanks for those already sent.

We have divided you between us for NEA supervision, so you can send your notes to just one of us.

Kerstin                                                 Alison

Kelsey                                                   Chloe

Jack                                                        Laura

Niamh H                                               Lucy C

Jordan                                                  Ellie

Mathilda                                              Elva

Alex                                                       Niamh W

Shannon                                              Mina

Jakia                                                      Toby

Lithasa                                                  Lucy B

So, we are moving on to the next stages of the NEA – writing the title / planning /drafting / tutorial

We will have a whole class ZOOM lesson tomorrow, at 2.50, when you would normally be in class.

Alison will send the invite out later in a separate email. On Zoom you have to wait in a waiting room until you are invited to enter, so please be punctual so this can be quickly done. 😊

Once you have finished and sent your notes, you can start thinking about a possible title, which can be part of our discussion tomorrow.

You can email us ideas for your title too. You don’t have to come up with the perfectly worded title on your own – we will discuss it and shape it together.

You should also read the NEA document which I have attached again to this email.

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow.

Kerstin and Alison

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Hello Everyone,

Hope you are all well and able to enjoy the lovely weather now it has returned.

Please read the following carefully as it includes a lot of detail, and some deadline dates for you to respond to.

1. Exciting news – we would like the lesson on Friday to be a Zoom lesson. It will be at 10.35am – when we would normally have a class.

Can you email me if that will be a problem. We will email later with the technical details.

Please email us with any questions you have about Antigone or the NEA by Wednesday 4pm

We are moving on this week to focus on your chosen partner text.

Please remember to email us both today with your final decision – thanks for emails already received 😊

1. I have attached the Power Point we started with again, for you to have a reminder of the plot, some suggested themes explored by Antigone, and some exemplar questions. Have a look at it.

2. Alison has written an excellent document guiding your note making on your partner text – also attached.

Please start making careful notes today, and continue over this week,  as classwork, and homework

(this amounts to about 9 hours work.)

Please send your notes to both of us by 4 pm on Tuesday 02/05/20

Outlined below is a suggested order of work.

Monday 18/05/20 and homework time

THEMES

1. What are the text’s dominant ideas?

2. Identify the links with Antigone.

3. Compare and contrast the presentation these shared themes.

FIVE KEY EPISODES/CHAPTERS –

ie moments where characters/ideas /your chosen theme are especially prominent.

For each choice comment on its significance:  (character/plot development/themes/use of symbol/language etc)

Tuesday 19/05/20 and homework time

Make your notes on STRUCTURE and NARRATIVE VIEWPOINT

A useful exercise for getting to grips with the structure, is to retell the plot chronologically in no more than 10 bullet points. This really reveals how the plot is structured, because often you do not learn about key events in a straightforwardly chronological way. There may be shifts in time, the past may be revealed in dialogue, there may be reference by the narrator to events to come (prolepsis), events may be returned to several times from different characters’ perspectives etc, etc.

The choice of narrative viewpoint is always a crucial structural decision. It is important you have a clear understanding of the narrative position, and how it affects the reader’s understanding of events / characters / themes

Thursday 21/05/20 and homework time

Complete the sections on GENRE, CONEXT, SOCIETY and SETTING

Friday 22/05/20 ZOOM lesson 10.35 am and homework time continue note making on all remaining sections - MAIN CHARACTER(S), OTHER CHARACTERS, SYMBOLS/MOTIFS, ROLE OF DIALOGUE, LANGUAGE, ANYTHING ELSE?

Monday 01/0520 and homework time

Complete note making on all remaining sections - MAIN CHARACTER(S), OTHER CHARACTERS, SYMBOLS/MOTIFS, ROLE OF DIALOGUE, LANGUAGE, ANYTHING ELSE?

Please email if you have any questions.

Kerstin

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Hello Everyone,

Firstly, Alison and I were talking yesterday, and we both agree that you are working very well in these extremely unusual circumstances.

We are both incredibly impressed with you all.

You all seem to be getting on well with reading independently too – which always warms English teachers’ hearts 😊

On to the work…

Attached is a document with questions and instruction to guide you through a close reading of the Interpretations section of the Introduction to Antigone

Please send me a copy of your notes by 22 nd May 2020.

Extension - Additionally, if you want to read more critical interpretations, there is a second doc – Critical Views that has a range of views. Some are short quotes, some longer passages, and some whole articles/essays.

Hope you are all well, and looking forward to the return of some good weather.

Take care,

Kerstin

PS: The National Theatre At Home is streaming A Streetcar Named Desire on its You Tube Channel starting on next Thursday (21st May) for one week.

If you visit this link beforehand, you can read a synopsis. http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/ntlout7-a-streetcar-named-desire

Alternatively, you could watch it without knowing what ids to come, and let the drama unfold!!

I really recommend that you watch it – it is a great play 😊

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Complete the notes on the next Stasimon 4 and episode 5 - posted on The Antigone column. Due to me on Monday 04/05/20

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In a text response essay, you will be assessed on your ability to develop an argument/discussion relating to a prompt, your ability to analyse themes, issues and characters in an insightful way, your ability to identity an author's intentions and unpack their narrative devices.

It is important to "analyse" not "summarise". This means you must analyse the author's narrative "storytelling" devices and think about how they reflect or reinforce the author's intentions. Our newest workbook, " Analyse! Not Summarise: The Language of Analysis" enables you to rapidly expand your analytical vocabulary and analyse an author's narrative devices.

Remember, the reason you are studying your particular text is because it contains complex and thoughtful themes. You must discuss the text's complexity, but in a systematic way. Start with the simple and obvious points and then show a progression of thoughts.

If you are getting around a mid-range C-B, you may need to work on:

Topic sentences

Sharper and more analytical topic sentences. Make sure they directly answer the question and set up a paragraph that will develop the main theme in a thoughtful and profound way.

Make sure that each topic sentence has a different focus so as to avoid repetition. In a B-range essay there is often considerable repetition of ideas.

Evidence

Evidence: you must be as analytical as possible and avoid general statements. Show an insightful knowledge of the text by choosing key evidence/insightful/ ambivalent examples in the text to support the topic sentence.

Build your discussion around the author's intentions, purpose, narrative devices. These will keep the focus on analysis rather than summary.

Be sure to show readers/assessors that you are capable of precise and accurate analysis of characters, themes and significant moments/turning points in a text's narrative.

The flow of ideas throughout the paragraph

Take each topic sentence and brainstorm the points/quotes/insights that you must include in the paragraph. Group together similar ideas and then delve deeper.

Make sure that your paragraph flows. Do not just cobble together a list of statements or quotes. Make sure that each point follows and adds to the previous point.

Make sure you give priority to the narrative devices.

Do not just add irrelevant details in order to pad the paragraph; or if there are two perspectives/views on the statement, include them separately.

Please see sample paras on Romeo and Juliet.

Expression

Awkward phrases: work on sophistication of expression. Avoid clumsy verb phrases. Use nominals. Work at incorporating quotes into the grammatical construction of your sentence. Use a combination of short, snappy sentences and longer sentences. Do not lose control of the subject. See Notes on Improving Expression.

Quick Tip

Write a 1-2 page summary of the "most important" or key points/issues in the text. Ask yourself, if you had to write a response on this text, what could you absolutely not leave out, or omit to mention (taking into account that given the prompt, you may make a short or longer reference to this key piece of evidence/quote/views/values.)

1. See Writing a Comparative Essay

2. See Romeo and Juliet : Study Page

3. See Macbeth: Study Page

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Writing a text response essay: notes, tips and sample paras - English Works

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In a text response essay, you will be assessed on your ability to develop an argument/discussion relating to a prompt, your ability to analyse themes, issues and characters in an insightful way, your ability to identity an author's intentions and unpack their narrative devices. It is important to "analyse" not "summarise".

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Alison and I would like to give you a couple of lessons to make sure you have completed all wok we have already set on Antigone, and focus on your reading of a partner text.

Notes on Stasimon 2 and Episode 3 should be with me already, and notes on Stasimon 3 and Episode 4 are due to Alison by Wed 29/04/20

Many of you may have already chosen your partner text to compare to Antigone. Others may want to read a few texts before deciding. However, you do need to be moving towards a final choice now.

You should be reading your novel being alert to possible links you could make – I have attached the PP Intro to Antigone which has a list of possible thematic links you could explore between the 2 texts

You can begin making notes on your partner text – (we will be asking for notes in before you start drafting your NEA)

Which themes apply to your text?

Is there a theme/cluster of themes that is really grabbing your interest? What are the interesting ideas yur text raises/explores?

Which characters from your text could you compare with characters in Antigone?

What is the context (historical/social/cultural/political) of you text and how important is it to the reader’s understanding of the text’s concerns?

I will email again on Thursday with the work on Stasimon 4 and Episode 5, and Alison will set the work next week.

I am hoping to get a Year 1 Lit Crossword to you later today – for a bit of fun 😊

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21/04/20 Questions on Stasimon 2 and Episode 3

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21/04/20 Questions on Stasimon 2 and Episode 3

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Complete the work on Stasimon 2 and Episode 3, posted on the Antigone column. Send me your notes by Friday 24/04/20

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Hello,

Welcome back – hope you have had a good Easter and are well.

Before the holiday, Alison and I set a lot of work on Antigone, and asked you to send notes to us so we can see you are keeping up-to-date.

We want to give you today’s lesson time to check over the work we have already set, and make sure you have sent everything we have asked for.

Go back over previous emails from us to check you have completed everything. I will email tomorrow with new work 😊

Also, Alison asked for us to share favourite poems. This is something Colchester Arts Centre has been doing since lockdown on social media – if you like their page you can enjoy a poem a day. My choice was read on Easter Monday – I love it, but it is very sad. It was written for the poet Edward Thomas who was killed in the Battle of Arras. Hope you like it too.

Easter Monday (In Memoriam E.T.) (1917)

Eleanor Farjeon

In the last letter that I had from France
You thanked me for the silver Easter egg
Which I had hidden in the box of apples
You liked to munch beyond all other fruit.
You found the egg the Monday before Easter,
And said, ‘I will praise Easter Monday now –
It was such a lovely morning’. Then you spoke
Of the coming battle and said, ‘This is the eve.
Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon.’

That Easter Monday was a day for praise,
It was such a lovely morning. In our garden
We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard
The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve.
There are three letters that you will not get.

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30/03/20 Questions On Episode 1 and Stasimon 1

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30/03/20 Questions On Episode 1 and Stasimon 1

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1. Read the attached PP – it covers a lot of what you have already researched and adds some detail.

Don’t worry about learning terminology – much of it is not necessary for your writing,  but is interesting to know about.

1. Watch the embedded video summary of the plot – you  can’t be reminded too often of what happens :) Pay particular attention to slide 5 Burial Rites and  Religious  Beliefs

2. Complete the tasks on the attached worksheet on Episode 1 and Stasimon 1 (to page 18) - send me your notes by Friday 3 rd April

3. Watch the Massolit Clips 1, 2 and 3

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Complete the research on Greek Theatre and Geek Tragedy posted on the Antigone column.
Send notes to me by Mon 30th March. Also, watch the intro to Antigone, and the play itself - links all in email and in doc.

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Introduction to Greek Theatre and Greek Tragedy

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Follow this link for the first part and then move on to each next section.

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An Introduction to Greek Tragedy | National Theatre

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An Introduction to Greek Theatre | National Theatre

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Antigone | An Introduction | National Theatre at Home

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16/03/20 Lesson - Revision - Aspects of love Mind Mapping 

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16/03/20 Lesson - Revision - Aspects of love Mind Mapping 

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Complete the activities on the second slide. This is an introduction to a way of revising love in Othello - complete it at home.

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Read along with this excellent audio production.

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Log in to PlayShakespeare.com to view this and other great content.

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Essay on Othello as a victim.
Only use the second bullet point as your question.
Deadline Friday 20/03/20

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Revision                                                                                      Act 1 scene 1 Interpretations

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Revision                                                                                      Act 1 scene 1 Interpretations

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Revision                           Articles on women

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Revision                           Articles on women

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Revision                                                                                                                         EMC article - representation of women

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Revision                                                                                                                         EMC article - representation of women