Miss Swarbrick's English Tutoring

07/05/2022

The Destruction of Sennacherib is a fantastic poem to practise your Unseen Poetry techniques with!

Question: How does the poet present ideas about religion in The Destruction of Sennacherib?

Step 1: Read the poem twice
Step 2: Top & Tail (annotate the title, the first line and the last line)
Step 2: Think 3-2-1 (3 explicit details, 2 inferences and 1 question)
Step 3: Section (add two lines in the poem to create three sections, these lines should indicate a change in tone, mood or focus, you should then title these sections)
Step 4: Punctuation (highlight all of the punctuation so you get to grips with the structure of the poem, pay close attention to the effect of caesura and enjambment)

If you follow all of these steps in the Unseen Poetry exam you will be guaranteed to form an understanding of the poem and find some golden nuggets of analysis! :)

07/05/2022

Quotation Quiz 2 answers! The first AQA & EDUQAS Literature exam is only 18 days away now.

The first Language exam is in 11 days!

25/04/2022

Here is the second Quotation Quiz! How many do you know?!

Remember: you should ideally be revising for 2 hours each night! 🧠

However, it is equally important to give yourself breaks, and if you feel the stress is getting overwhelming then take a step back!

Your mental health is important during the exam season. ☀️

25/04/2022

Here are the results for yesterday's Quotation Quiz! How many did you get right?

It's extremely important that as a GCSE student you are revising quotations from all of your literature texts as knowing these is a key component in being successful!

24/04/2022

This is my first post in a while! I have been a busy bee since September, tutoring three lovely GCSE students to get them prepared for their examinations and a year 6 student with their creative writing!

I am proud of all my students and would like to share a snapshot of the creative writing the year 6 student has been doing.

We've been writing all about the Harry Potter world and described the Forbidden Forest this week with a close focus on including a sophisticated vocabulary, similes and metaphors!

24/04/2022

GCSE English examinations start in as little as three weeks! Can any GCSE students complete these literature quotations? The answers will be revealed tomorrow!

I will start to post daily quotation quizzes to help aid with revision!

19/01/2021

Chapter 4 for your reading pleasure! (That is a bit of a mouthful!)

https://youtu.be/3vxbNL5FWsg

Two chapters a week are being uploaded 🙂

In this chapter Alice is causing a lot of havoc once again in Wonderland!

15/01/2021

Chapters 1-3 of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ have now been uploaded. 😊

Join me to read Chapter 3 'A Caucus Race and a Very Long Tale', in which we meet all sorts of strange creatures!

08/01/2021

As we are at the start of another national lockdown I have started reading children’s literature again! This time I am reading ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ by the marvellous Lewis Carroll.

The novel will be on screen for these readings as it has been proven reading along helps with comprehension and retaining the array of wonderful new words the children may learn!

If your child’s school partakes in Accelerated Reader but due to the current circumstances they don’t have access to any reading books, then this novel is on AR and can be taken as a quiz!

I will upload one chapter of this wonderful (don’t mind the pun) book every Tuesday and Friday. 🙂

https://youtu.be/AqU3DRUpHiM

06/09/2020

I’ve been working on some creative writing with one of my students and we have based it on Dracula’s vampire sisters!

I had to share her work with you all, as it is fabulous and wonderfully descriptive! For this particular segment we focused on creating atmosphere through the setting and tying it to characters. She has used “show don’t tell” techniques, matched with an upgraded vocabulary and advanced metaphors!

“Withering candles flickered rapidly in the dim room, slowly melting away into the midnight darkness. A shredded velvet rug lined the creaky floor, regally leading up to a mantlepiece with a flaking portrait, hand-painted but with dust framing it.

A flash of scarlet red then burst from the far corner of the room, I was then to notice three women sitting at a small ebony table in a dark unlit spot. They just stared, their almost unearthly eyes glaring straight into my soul, but I was intrigued. They turned to face each other, as if communicating in some way through their facial expressions...”

05/08/2020

I've just completed the first session with my little group of students where we learned about Freytag's Pyramid and gothic conventions.

The homework I have set them is based on vocabulary from The Tell-Tale Heart, a great way to get to grips with new and challenging vocabulary is to complete these four little activities surrounding the main word!

If you would like the plain worksheet for your child to use or for yourself to use as revision then just send me a message and I will send it on over to you. :)

03/08/2020

I am getting ready to teach a lovely group of students (who are going into year 7, 8 and 9 in September) creative writing and analysis based on gothic short stories!

Gothic literature is a huge passion of mine, I get so excited when I have the chance to base my teaching around it. 😀

The first story is 'The Tell-Tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe, a gem of a short story that is just as effective as longer novels!

Here is the link if you're interested in reading it:https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Poe/Tell-Tale_Heart.pdf