TheCityTimes February 2014
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Key Stage 4 book review Aaron Owusu, 10 LGL This term our Key Stage 4 students have been writing book reviews of the books they have chosen to read. Year 10 student, Aaron Owusu, reviews his chosen book, Animal Farm by George Orwell:
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George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm is based around the Russian Revolution, and demonstrates the dilemmas a country encounters when controlled by an incompetent dictator. The allegorical novel begins with Old Major, a matured pig, giving a speech to the farm animals. During this thought-provoking speech he talks about a dream he had where all animals are equal, and how he believes that the animals should strive for rebellion against the human race. He ends his speech with ‘Beast of England’, a song intended to motivate and persuade all the animals to overthrow the humans...
An audience with Chris Bradford, author This half term, The City Times focuses on reading as we look ahead to World Book Day on Thursday 6 March with a series of literature-related articles including a book review and our students’ top 10 books, but first... Every term, our library invites an author to visit the academy and talk to our students about their work, their writing, their inspiration. This term the visit was a little more action packed.
For his new Bodyguard series, Chris embarked on an intensive close protection course to become a qualified professional bodyguard. With this in mind, Chris guided our year 7 students through a passage from one of his books, interjecting with combat training, bodyguard techniques and he even found time to chop a paper ninja in two with his samurai sword, bravely held by Melissa and Stanley.
... I recommend this novel to anyone who has a passion for learning about the past, and would also like to develop their vocabulary at the same time...
Enter self-proclaimed “method- For more information visit, www. writer” Chris Bradford. For his chrisbradford.co.uk award-winning Young Samurai series, he trained in iaido (samurai swordmanship), karate, ninjutsu and earned his black belt in Zen Kyu Shin Taijutsu.
To read Aaron’s review in full and for more of our Key Stage 4 students’ book reviews visit the award winning, student-led blog sharpmag.wordpress.com.
Top 10 books of 2013 Literacy Every student knows that spending time reading is an important part of life at the academy, and every student knows that this half term they should have achieved 50% of their Accelerated Reader target, but what books are our students reading? Series are clearly very popular; five of the top 10 have prequels and sequels including the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series that tops our chart for 2013. Also featuring in our top 10: The Dirty South by Alex Wheatle who visited the academy, and actor David Walliams’ The Boy in the Dress. Number of loans (Jan ‘12 - Jan ‘13)
59
42
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38
36
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30