Hello S2!

Your homework is to redraft your Hero stories for 29th September.

National 5 Creative Writing Homework

Just a reminder: your first drafts of adventure stories are due (no excuses!) on Monday 14th September. This is an absolute must, as you will be working with your stories in class.

Great Big Scary World

Here is the link to Great Big Scary World (http://www.greatbigscaryworld.com/), which we spoke about in classes yesterday and today.

Check it out!

The Lottery

Here are the links to The Lottery on YouTube:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIm93Xuij7k
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMhV3fwx5Sg

The same thing on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/65266252

Lessons from Auschwitz

Hi S6,

Mrs Cormack drew the names, so without further ado:

Emily
Eilidh

Congratulations (and sorry to the other two! Wish we could have sent all of you).

Edinburgh dates:

Sun 20 Sept 1-5pm Seminar
Wed 30 Sept all day visit to Auschwitz
Tues 6th Oct 3-6:30pm Seminar

You must be able to do all three dates.

I'll meet with you next week.

£5000 to be won for Dingwall Academy!

Hi everyone,

I'd really appreciate it if you could have a go at entering this prize draw: £5000 of National Book Tokens, which could see our school library much boosted with the authors you love to read. It only takes a moment to enter, and it's free.

Even better, you could win £100 of book tokens for yourself! What's not to like!?

Thanks very much  for entering :)

Nat 5 Homework... TRY AGAIN!

Some of you slipped up with your homework this week... or didn't do it at all. Just to remind you: National 5 is tough. You do need to put in the work, and any homework issued is not just for the sake of giving you homework. Think of it as directed study. This directed study follows on from, and leads on to, work in the classroom, and it's compulsory for success. The more work you put into it, the better your grade at the end of the year (and trust me... it matters!).

So to recap: see your homework below. If you haven't done it/ the dog ate it/ you succumbed to an isolated freak outbreak of alien flu... do it now, and have it done for Monday's class.

National 5 RUAE Homework

Find a newspaper article on a topic of your choice. It should be from a quality newspaper such as The Guardian, Independent, Scotsman, Herald, Times etc.

Read the article (of course!).

Highlight any unfamiliar words.

Put 3 sentences into your own words.

Due Thursday (tomorrow!)

National 5 Homework

First, welcome to National 5! I am so pleased with how well you are all doing so far. Keep up the good work, and you will all succeed.

Now to the realities of National 5: there is a lot of hard work; there is homework; there are exams and assessments. There are also a lot of exciting things to discover--new poems and stories, discussions, talks, vocabulary... and much more.

First homework:

Complete the first (likely very rough) draft of your personal reflective piece. If you wish, you may type this out now, as it could save you time in the future. 

Due: Monday--no excuses!

N5 8 Mark Question

S2 and S3 Holiday Homework

Hurray! It's the holidays (nearly)!

You have ONE job to do for English over the holidays. To wrap up our work on The Machine Gunners, you need to research and prepare a short talk (3 minutes-ish) on any aspect of the Second World War which interests you.

The possibilities are nearly endless:

• How the war began and ended
• Medals and honours
• Women at war
• Allies and Axis
• Collective efforts on the Home Front
• Children's experiences
• Hitler
• Soldiers' experiences
• Dig for Victory
• Home Guard
• Gas masks
• Any aspect of Army/Navy/Air Force
• Holocaust
• WW2 fashion
• Atomic bomb
• Shelters
• How people in Scotland experienced the war...

The list could go on and on...

If you don't have PowerPoint at home for pictures, that's fine. You are mainly being assessed on your ability to speak to a group. If you are more comfortable working with pictures (remember, there should not be a lot of text up there!), you could try using Prezi (prezi.com), which is just as easy, but a step up from a PowerPoint.

So in summary: prepare a talk which you will be able to deliver from 20th April.

I'm really looking forward to what you all come up with!

Have a lovely holiday :)

National 5 Holiday Revision

Hi everyone,

The next two weeks (and beyond) are crucial to your success. Don't let it slip now! It's important that you remember to have plenty of rest and to eat and sleep healthily, but it's also important that you revise. Little and often is probably best here. Remember that we have spent the past year working on a vast number of skills and a great deal of content. These all need to be revised, and trying to do it the night before the exam just won't give you the results you're looking for.

To that end:

1. Revise all of Duffy's poetry. You have the responsibility to present one of these to your group when you return, and of course you will have further help revising from me and the other members of your group. But you still need to know them all. Click HERE for a very useful PowerPoint which goes through all of the poems apart from Valentine. Below are the tasks (you are doing Task 1 now in preparation for Tasks 2 and 3 when you come back on the 20th. You can access the Prezi HERE):

2. Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth! Remember him? Gather your notes together, re-read the play. You can look at Shmoop for a little help, and you might consider watching one of the versions available on YouTube. Be careful with these, however, as they do not follow the plotlines exactly, and aren't a substitute for actually reading and knowing the play thoroughly.

3. The Lottery. Revise this by re-reading and reorganising your notes. You might also find it of use to work with the prose questions, taking time to plan responses. You will receive your essays back on the 20th. You already have some of the material, but you can Shmoop it too. There is also a version on YouTube (again, be careful with this, as any essay you write must be based on the text, not the film).

4. RUAE (Close Reading). Take some time to read the newspaper. Use your Nat4/5 textbook, which has that excellent section on Close Reading.

5. Finally, spend some time on BBC Bitesize. It's a fantastic resource--very clear--and has help for all aspects of the course and exam.

And that's about it!

I am so proud of how far you have all come this year, and I know you can achieve very well on the exam in May.

Have a lovely (and useful!) holiday, everyone. I will look forward to seeing you all back on the 20th, and hearing you present your poems to your groups. Work hard. It's worth it.

S1 Wall-E Persuasive Letter Task

Hi all,

HERE is the link to where we are so far with the task.

As promised, here is the link to the Persuasion Map:  CLICK ME!

Remember, you only need to do the paper version, but if you would like to use the online version and print it out, that's fine. Just don't forget to bring it with you!

And below are the Success Criteria:

Your piece should show that you can:

Use persuasive techniques to create specific effects

Use punctuation to communicate clearly

Use sentence structure to communicate clearly

Use connectives to link your paragraphs

Spell most of the words you use accurately

Review and edit your work while writing to ensure meaning and purpose

Write independently, to a length which suits your purpose and audience

N5 Creative work

At the moment we are working on folios. More specifically, we are exploring the creative piece, working from a variety of prompts. We have spent some time working from a quotation, and have now moved to working from music. Next we will use images as prompts.

A number of the songs we have listened to (we have mostly worked with snippets) would benefit from more private listening. All of the songs we have accessed so far, including some of your suggestions (more on the way) are in my wittily titled YouTube playlist 'Writing Prompt Playlist'. You can find the channel in the bar to the right. Have a listen.

Whilst listening, you are listening out for thoughts, feelings, ideas, themes, characters, settings, moods, atmospheres, tones and symbols (not to mention imagery in general!) which might inspire your writing. This piece may be either poetry or prose, unlike the previous, which was to be prose.

Happy listening, everyone!

N5 War Photographer

We finished our initial study of Duffy's 'War Photographer' today, and looked at a short interview with Don McCullin, one of the photographers from whom Duffy drew inspiration when writing her poem.

Here is another documentary about Don McCullin and war photography--it is absolutely fantastic and will help consolidate understanding of the poem and its message:

BBC Imagine: McCullin

Great work so far, everyone!

S3 Talking Turkeys

Today we talked about turkeys!

Benjamin Zephaniah, 'Talking Turkeys'

We then went on to examine the poem independently. Great fun!

We Are Writers--Last Chance to Order!

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your hard work in making the school book possible. I'm sure you are all as impressed as I am by the quality and breadth of the work in our beautiful publication. Remember that it's in the Library and anyone can take a look at the sample copy. Nearly 500 of you, yes, FIVE HUNDRED (!) contributed, and you each have your own chapter.

It's your LAST CHANCE to get your order in--orders are due tomorrow, Wednesday 3rd December. We need to order right away so that the books will arrive in time for Christmas. Be a part of the action!

You can find a copy of the order form here: http://images.scholastic.co.uk/assets/books/5758.f.pdf

If you don't have a printer, don't worry! You can always bring your £5.99 in and fill in the order form at school.

Thank you,
Mr Green

S3 'The Last Laugh'--over to you!

Today we turned to more creative tasks after having spent some time on a critical essay examining Owen's 'The Last Laugh'.

Your task was to create a poem on the subject of war which uses personification to give power to the war machinery. The aim was three stanzas' worth of fine poetry, and some of you are there already, and in the redrafting stages.

One big thing we learned about was how poets break sentences for effect (remember: no paragraphs in poetry!).

S1 Stargazing 2

Today, along with checking in on Learning and Reading Logs (keep up the good work, everyone!), we took a little look at constellations, which are an important part of the storyline of Underground to Canada, and to the escape of slaves in general.

After examining where and how the Little Dipper/Plough looks in the night sky at the moment, and where the North Star (Polaris) is from there, we learned that what we see in the sky when we think we're looking at the North Star is actually three stars!

We then looked at the first part of this documentary (History Channel), which we found rather challenging at first, and learned a little more about Polaris and how we see stars in the sky. What interesting fact did you write down?

S1 Stargazing

This week, you're all looking out for the Big Dipper (Plough), part of Ursa Major.

Here's a wee spotting guide to help you: Virgin: how to spot star constellations

If you have an app, or another site which is helping you, feel free to tell us all what it is in the comments below!