Well, we made it to the end of Y12!
There's no live lesson on Friday, but I'll be asking you to do a couple of jobs for me. You will also find plenty of revision resources below.
Next year, we'll aim to get the coursework and Death of a Salesman done before the end of January, then there's one more Keats poem
in February, before a good few months of solid revision and exam practice.
Your tasks:
1) Make the
summer reading pledge. I know that many of you have told
me what you’re thinking about reading, but I need a record of what you intend
to read over the summer as a starting point for our coursework discussions in
September.
So, I’d like you to copy and
paste the following pledge into an email, add the texts that you’re going to
read, and then send it to me before the
end of the week:
I solemnly
declare that I will undertake the following reading over the summer break in
preparation for my A Level English Literature coursework:
1)
2)
3)
4)
I understand that failure to do independent reading will mean that I am
not ready to recommence the course in Year 13.
(Your name)
As I receive your emails, I’ll
paste them into one document, which I’ll bring to the first lesson in
September. Have a look at my tips for your summer of coursework reading:
2) Tidy up and organise your notes and folder. This will be a good starting point for your revision too...
3) Fight that
forgetting curve by doing
some Othello and Keats revision.
Don’t forget, Paper 1 is
closed book. If you put these texts to the back of your mind and don’t
revise them until February, a lot of your hard work from Y12 will be gone.
Here are my revision suggestions:
- Revise your key quotes on Quizlet.
- Learn the stuff on this Keats Knowledge Organiser.
- Brainstorm revision topics for each text (see my suggestions on the images below).
- For each revision topic, create notes pages or revision cards, with key quotations.
- Test your knowledge of aspects of tragedy by randomly selecting one from the star sheet (use this!), putting it in the middle of a blank piece of paper and brainstorming how that idea relates to Keats and Othello (with quotations). Start by doing it from memory, then add more ideas using your texts/notes.
- There's a great podcast on Othello which you can find here. It's also available to download on iTunes (search 'Lend Me Your Ears'). It starts off with a gentle intro and plot summary (the first 12 minutes), but gets into some interesting discussions around key themes: race, identity, outsiders, storytelling etc. I'll try to remind you about this again next year.
- There's another Othello podcast (this time from acclaimed author Emma Smith at the University of Oxford) here.
You can also find a load of
resources than we’ve used recently (including pdf versions of the above images, a past paper, model answers and
all my Keats notes) in this folder.
Optional extra:
Prep for
September by watching the 1985 movie adaptation of Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman and John
Malkovich. It’s brilliant.
That’s it. We’re done. After you’ve sent me your email, you are free to
go into holiday mode. But don’t forget to keep dipping your toe into the sea of
revision every now and again to keep all that hard-earned knowledge fresh in
your brain. And don't forget to get hold of a copy of Death of a Salesman for September.
Have a fantastic summer holiday!
Mr M
