Edutronic 2.0
If you have been a faithful follower of this blog over the last 12 months, I thank and salute you – It is continuing into the future in a new form, and via a new address:
Just like this one, there you can sign up for email updates, or simply visit it on occasion. You can syndicate it using RSS or if you want to, you can print and read it. This old journal will stay here indefinitely and you continue to be welcome to access the information and materials and use them as you see fit.
In other news:
- Edutronic has grown into a much larger domain with sites for other classes and an increasingly sophisticated set of resources and materials. Via Edutronic you can also access the English Department site where you can accesss moderated exemplars of student work, year plans, policies and information about the research and new learning initiatives the London Nautical School Department of English are engaged in.
- Student Personal Journal 2.0 – it has gone public: This year, the students’ online journals have been developed and now you have the facility to publish, on your own page with its own address, any work you’d like to make available to the wider world. The control is now yours, and the publish/private choice is entirely yours too. We’re in the frontline of education with this initiative and I’m sure it will be of real interest to many people as it gets going
- GCSE Results for last year’s Year 11 cohort exceeded our expectations and in the English Language paper, our over-all result for students who gained at least a C grade, shot up by 14% to 73% over-all. We are tremendously proud of those boys and we’ve got our work cut out for us to embed and improve on that this year, but I couldn’t be more optimistic that we’ve got what it takes to maintain this meteoric improvement.
If you’re leaving us at this stage of our journey, then we thank you for flying with us, and wish you a very good day
Debate One is Coming
Students from the London Nautical School Year 8 English programme debated the use of mobile phones in the classroom – here is a preview of debate one.
Hello from Ms Lindsay
Hello Year 8!
I am wondering how you are all doing and what you are up to this term. I am really sorry that I have disappeared again but one of my check up scans showed another nodule on my left lung so they decided to take it out as quicky as possible so as you started your term I was in hospital having an operation.
I was in the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea as they specialise in lung surgery. From my ward window I could see the local church called St Luke’s. I discovered that Charles Dickens was married in the this church so when I went for a check up to the hospital yesterday I went into the church and had a look at the small exhibition in the church about Dickens. What was interesting is that they had a time line showing other things happening at various points in time during his life time – like the start of the first underground railway in London (what we now know as the tube) and the lay out of Trafalgar Square the way we know it today. While Dickens was working in a factory he would have walked across Blackfriars bridge on a daily basis.
I am making good progress and hope to be back with you soon. I feel much better and am trying to use my time to get more reading done. I have just read a very interesting book about the author Angela Carter. When she was living or travelling abroad she sent post cards to a friend. What her friend, Susannah Clapp has done is to write a book called A Post Card from Angela Carter and she uses the post cards as links to give the reader an insight into Carter’s ideas, thoughts and personality. So it is not a conventional biography but gives you an idea of the person and her life. I found it interesting therefore because of the style of writing and the idea of how to put the book together as well as giving me some insight into what Angela Carter was like.
I hope you are using all these rainy days to keep up with your own reading! Enjoy school and I am looking forward to hearing about what you are currently learning in English.
Best wishes,
Ms Lindsay
An Example Introduction
Everyone has almost reached the conclusion of their analytical essay on “Once” and today spent some time developing an introduction to bind their essays together with persuasion and impact. Attached is an example I wrote while everyone was working.
Some people might wonder why the introduction has been left to the end of the process – the rationale for this is that since the introduction should demonstrate the scope of the essay’s whole, it is better to have clarity about its shape before trying to construct the intro. All signs are that this has worked well. The final pieces will be finished by everyone next week. Good times.
The First Body Paragraph
As a class we have embarked on the process of writing the first body paragraph for the essay. We chose to write about the first person viewpoint as our narrative technique and all the students are writing their own version. Attached is Mr Waugh’s version of a Point and Example. On Monday the students will continue their paragraphs by writing an explanation and link to the question. There was some brilliant work done!
The Structure of a Literary Essay
As a class, in preparation for our essay in response to “Once” the boys have developed a structure to follow – the notes are to follow:
The Nautical 8 