SCC ENGLISH

TY Extended Essay: Stockett, Oyeyemi, Martin

2012-01-25T09:21:00.001Z

Here is the first of the Extended Essays written last term by Transition Year pupils, this excellent one being by Alex Owens. She writes:-

"The theme which I have chosen for my extended essay is Racism and Relationships. The three books that I choose for the essay are The Help by Kathryn Stockett, Jupiter Williams by S.I Martin and The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi. I have chosen racism as my theme purely because of one book I read over the summer which was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I loved this book because of the way the author herself wrote it and the plot behind it. How these young boys see their father defending a black man for alleged rape towards a white women. You see their views on it and what they think of it even as young boys. The way in which black people were associated back then interests me a lot. It is the first book which I really got a taste of what life was like for coloured people and how they really were treated. I decided to build my essay around the theme of racism because I enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird so much and I want to explore other books like it."

Read Alex's full essay here.

Genres in story-telling

2012-01-23T21:04:00.002Z

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

This 10-minute video by Red Giant should prompt good discussions in class about genres. It's also witty and just good fun.

(Spotted on Twitter by Tom Barrett)

Noel Coldrick's book selection

2012-01-21T11:38:00.000Z

Open publication - Free publishing - More books

Our Library continues to highlight favourite book selections by members of staff, and is currently featuring one from Mathematics teacher Mr Noel Coldrick, which can be seen above via Issuu (click once for closer view, again for full view).

Challengingly he recommends Joyce's Finnegans Wake (the borrowing statistics for this from the Library are probably fairly low), and other novels such as Pat Barker's Border Crossing and D.M. Thomas's The White Hotel.

Visual Writing Prompts

2012-01-19T09:34:00.002Z

For English teachers: here is a list (it will be updated every now and then) of fine photographs and images which could be used fruitfully for writing prompts. Any more ideas? Do put them in the Comments section, or tweet them to @sccenglish.

(Above, 'Entertainers on the Aran Islands' from Imagebank, copyright Maxwell Photograph)

The Writing Prompts Tumblr blog by Luke Neff is an excellent source of ideas for writing, with lots of striking visual material, and well-designed text.
Amazing, entertaining and often beautiful black and white photographs, collated by Matt Stopera.
World Press Photo: press photos are often dynamic, interesting, and really good prompts. This is the best site of all (warning: some such photos can also be disturbing - check them out first).
Some of history's most famous photographs, in both original black and white, and colour.
The Guardian site is particularly strong in terms of photographs. If you have an iPad, download the superb free Eyewitness app, and project the images onto the board.
Library of Congress photographs of the Great Depression. Memorable if often depressing images.
The National Geographic photo of the day. The standard here is of course very high. Here's the Best of 2011.
The Wikimedia list of images of public domain images on the Web.

Writing Prompts

2012-01-18T08:18:00.000Z

The Writing Prompts Tumblr blog by Luke Neff is an excellent source of ideas for writing, with lots of striking visual material, and well-designed text. One example here : this might work well for a teenager - describe an 'inward event'.

Check out our full list of sites for English teaching here.