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Some Summer Ideas

2015

Year 7 becoming Y8 (Sept. 2015)

Paul’s Learning Enrichment Pack Y7 2015 1

Remember from last two years how helpful it was to work through some summer exercises. This is new version for this year but along the same lines.

First, read through the booklet. Please do what follows each piece, whether that is typing in definitions, looking at hyperlinks, finding visual images etc. With each article, you should look up the highlighted words and define them and, when instructed, in the tables. In some cases, you are also again asked to find suitable visual images to help fix and explore the meaning in your mind. Do talk to your family and discuss the reading with them. There is plenty to chew on. Make sure that you try to complete the definition and image tables. You must complete this document as an electronic Word document and give it to me at the beginning of term. Please remember to SAVE as you go along. When you e-mail it, please make sure you label it as follows:

Surname Form (The form you will be in Sept 2015) LED e.g., Einstein 7P LED

This makes it easier for us to save and look at. These booklets will then printed off at school and we use them in enrichment lessons and mock interviews.


Read through the reviews of Wimbledon, the various films, and please do the exercises. You will be asked to discuss this and the other passages/poems on your return in your English Enrichment Comprehension (and possible scholarship classes) and with the Head and others. Make sure that you have looked up the words you do not know!

There is no excuse for saying you cannot do this! Ask your friends; prod your family and ask the budgie. But, do not leave this blank or scrawled in biro/pencil and say in September, with tears in your eyes: ‘It is just like last year, in Year Six: OMG, I cannot believe it: Once again, we didn’t have a dictionary or Wi-Fi at any point in the summer and my dad’s office blew up and mum dropped her Mac in the sea when we were in St. Tropez & then I sprained my typing wrist water-skiing. Honestly, Paul! Why are you laughing?’ My uncle will back me up (and he is our family lawyer.) Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that I suffered temporary paralysis of the hands in August too.’

Just do it! You will actually enjoy learning these new things! All the stuff is worth reading!

‘It had a big impact ‘I owe my election success to on my development.’ reading last year’s booklets.’

‘I bitterly regret not looking more seriously Perhaps, next season I can win the Championship at Paul’s booklet!’ if I really work on the booklet?’


‘I read it religiously every summer!’

‘Me too!’


Wimbledon Final 2015


Martin Samuel 13 July 2015

Read this article on the Wimbledon final and complete the exercises as directed.

Ultimately, Novak Djokovic was just too good to be denied. Centre Court made it plain who they wanted to be Wimbledon champion this year, but their wishes went unheeded.

There would be no eighth title for Roger Federer, no Muhammad Ali-style return to the pinnacle of his sport. History was bunk, romance too, ruthlessly dispatched by a reigning champion who was unfazed by emotion or the desires of the multitude.

Djokovic stood in the way of the nation’s sweetheart and, as such, was cast in the role of villain. He shrugged it off. The loudest cheers were for Federer, even at the post-match victory parade. Sue Barker seemed to place greater emphasis on Federer’s name as she called him up for the consolation prize.

Djokovic was unconcerned. 'I expected that support coming into the match,' he said. 'Roger is a very likable guy, a champion on and off the court – he has done all the right things to get that backing. More or less anywhere I play against Roger it’s the same.' He made it sound as if he was cheering for Roger, too, right up until that moment when he had to take him down. Then, Djokovic was alone in resisting the pressure to be crowd pleaser. He battered Federer into submission over three hours and four sets, immune to the quiet


disappointment felt at his victory. Centre Court is rarely less than polite, but this was not the result they had hoped for. No matter, though. The best man won.

It is three Wimbledon titles in the last five for Djokovic now, and nine Grand Slams overall. On Sunday he moved past Fred Perry, Ken Rosewall, Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi and Ivan Lendl.

He is closing in on Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver. This is a great champion, have no doubt of that. Anyone who saw Federer’s straight sets win over Andy Murray on Friday knows the form he has been in at this tournament. It is some of the best of his life – and the best of Federer’s life means, quite simply, some of the greatest tennis ever played.

So that is what Djokovic was up against, plus the fervour of the crowd. Tennis is gladiatorial. It is also very lonely if a player lacks support. It wasn’t as if Djokovic was jeered but, clearly, the locals were rooting for his opponent, and not hiding that allegiance.

In the second set, tied at 5-5, Federer had a break point on Djokovic’s serve and found the net. Collectively, Centre Court exhaled and rocked in its pricey seats, emitting a mighty groan of frustration.

Later, when Federer somehow saved three set points in the tiebreak – he saved seven overall, before winning the set – the place was in uproar. The greatest testament to Djokovic’s brilliance is


that he recovered from the pandemonium of a 22 point tiebreak, and the missed opportunity to lead by two sets, to win the third in almost routine fashion.

A break up early, and the match then delayed 15 minutes by rain, the last four games of the set were played out to love, routinely plodding to the inevitable 6-4 Djokovic win. He never looked back from there.

Of course, it is easy to see why Federer has such appeal. It is more than just his magnificent play, his easy charm or his record number of Grand Slams. He has a style that transcends the greats, that makes other players appear ugly, even a competitor as fearsome as Djokovic. Federer glides, he barely seems to sweat, he is elegance, poise personified. He wins apparently without effort. Nothing looks hurried, no stress, no strain. By comparison, Djokovic puts himself through the wringer.

His athleticism is enormous, the physical demand all-consuming. On several occasions he slipped on a surface that looked bare and bone dry, ending up in an unsightly heap or spread-eagled. One cannot imagine any situation that would allow Federer to appear ungainly. Give him roller skates on ice and he would somehow find a way to come out like John Curry. Some of his shots were just exquisite. Each time Djokovic served up a lob it was misjudged and returned as a smash. Yet in the third set, the game after the rain fell, Federer spooned the ball up into the air so delicately yet with such precision, Djokovic had no chance. In the first set there was a faultlessly disguised drop shot that should have its own show in Las Vegas, so clever was the sleight of hand. Djokovic,


meanwhile, was all about power and precision, hitting the ball relentlessly deep, finding slivers of space, terrifyingly acute angles. It is not always a beautiful game, but it's a mightily impressive one, and it was too much for Federer, whose serve was broken regularly for the first time in this tournament.


Tricky WordTricky Phrase

Can you define it?

Maybe think of a synonym too!

Can you make another sentence with the word, thus showing that you REALLY know the meaning?

unheeded.pinnaclebunk, bunk2/bʌŋk/

noun. nonsense.

bunk3/bʌŋk/verb1. abscond or play truant from school or work.

ruthlessly dispatchedunfazedmultitude.consolation prize.unconcerned.batteredsubmissionthe formfervourgladiatorial.jeeredallegiance.emitting


pandemonium nounwild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar.

routine fashion.ploddinginevitabletranscendsfearsomepoise personified.The wringerathleticismall-consuming.unsightlyungainly.exquisite.precision,relentlesslyslivers of spaceacute angles


Read the article below and fill in the grids.

Martin Samuel On Jose Mourinho 24 th February 2010

Why Jose Mourinho is so specialIt seems strange that, all these years on, we should still be debating what precisely makes Jose Mourinho special. The 'self-proclaimed' special one, as he is often called; 'His Specialness' as Carlo Ancelotti, coach of Chelsea, brands him, mockingly. So, is Mourinho all that special? Of course he is. Mourinho is the figure against which all Chelsea managers are judged: and not just Chelsea managers, but the Premier League's foreign managers, too.

Nobody has delivered in English football quite like Mourinho. Not Rafael Benitez, whose astonishing success, winning the Champions League in his first season, could not be sustained; not even Arsene Wenger, who altered the culture of his club, Arsenal. Benitez has been on a downward trajectory since that night in Istanbul, while the nature of Wenger's work is now shown to be entirely different from that required of Mourinho.

From the beginning, Wenger was involved in a long-term project, not a short-term glory hunt. He had the unquestioning support of his employers, through the former vice-chairman David Dein, and was given time and freedom to reshape Arsenal top to toe. He did this, until recently, while consistently winning trophies, which was an outstanding accomplishment but does not compare to the instant pressure Mourinho faced when arriving at Stamford Bridge in 2004.


The fact is no Chelsea manager could survive five years without winning a trophy as Wenger has done; indeed, until Manchester City's owners found their trigger finger with Mark Hughes, Chelsea were unique in demanding an immediate dividend from their senior employees.

This gives Mourinho his special status. He delivers on demand. For all the reverence with which Wenger is held, there are many Arsenal fans who believe the title might have been won this season, or at least recently, had the steelier Mourinho been in charge.

Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea owner, was not interested in planning when he took Mourinho from Porto. He wanted the league title that season. Fail and Mourinho would have got the sack; start slowly and experience suggests he might not have seen Christmas. In the circumstances, then, it was a stunning achievement to ride that pressure, no matter the financial advantage. Manchester City have thrown money at the problem, too, but are yet to find a manager who can hit the ground running as spectacularly as Mourinho did. That is what sets him apart. It was the same at Inter Milan: nothing less than the title in his first season would do, and he provided.

Now holes are being picked in his record because he did not also win the Champions League, as if every manager does that in year one. Sir Alex Ferguson had 13 years at Manchester United before claiming it as his; Wenger is 13 years at Arsenal and still waiting. Abramovich 's front men play down the ruthlessness of his regime but the bottom line is: Win the league or get the sack. Mourinho won the league, stayed a second season, retained the league, was given a third season, didn't win the league and failed to make it out of September in his fourth campaign


Avram Grant, his successor, did not win the league and went that summer; Luis Felipe Scolari did not last to the end of his first season once his team lost its way; Guus Hiddink quickly made his excuses after landing the FA Cup, but no league title. Now there is Ancelotti, who is in a strong position at the top of the table. He will need to be there on May 10, however, to turn his time in England into something more than a sabbatical. Fail and he will come up short when compared, inevitably, to The Special One. Mourinho's critics say his success was down to Abramovich's money, as if he should have won the league in his first year and been financially disadvantaged in order to be judged a success. Yet Roberto Mancini is finding it hard to propel a lavishly assembled squad into the top four, let alone to the title. It is testament to Mourinho that he made it look so very straightforward that it was felt any coach with a few quid could walk in his shoes. As has been shown subsequently, they can't.

It is also tribute to the man that, four managers on, his methods still define a certain type of Chelsea victory. In the matches in which Arsenal were swept aside this season, many compared the compelling physicality and forcefulness of the performances to the most memorable displays under Mourinho. There is no way of winning that evokes Grant or Scolari, even Hiddink, but when Didier Drogba is battering down the defensive wall, epitomising the brutality and beauty of Chelsea at their best, thoughts turn to Mourinho. He will know Drogba is the Chelsea player to stop if Inter Milan are to win tonight. Chelsea still have a powerhouse midfield and John Terry remains a rock at the back


but, on his game, Drogba is as near to unplayable as any striker in Europe. Whatever Mourinho has in store for Chelsea, Plan A will include provision for the visiting striker.

Mourinho is often associated with brute force or stifling tactics, but rival coaches most admire his ability to influence matches from the bench with substitutions. For a pragmatist, he can be cavalier, bringing on a raft of attacking players if he fears a tactic is not working. In Chelsea's second championship season, losing 1-0 at home to Bolton Wanderers, he introduced Eidur Gudjohnsen at half-time for left-back Asier Del Horno and overwhelmed the opposition with five goals in 29 minutes. It may not be a trait he is willing to display in the San Siro tonight, but his risk-taking is an undervalued quality. The Special One was, indeed, Mourinho's own description, but revisiting that speech in the light of his achievements, it seems almost understated. I'm not a defender of old or new managers,' he said, on his first day at Chelsea. 'I believe in good ones and bad ones, those that achieve success and those that don't. Please don't call me arrogant, but I'm European champion and I think I'm a special one.'

There will always be those who disagree, who sneer, who despise the hint of vanity; but to dispute he is in that first category these days is merely obtuse. If Ancelotti wants to remain Chelsea manager next season, the task is very plain: he simply has to be half as good as Jose Mourinho.



Can you define it?



'self-proclaimed'mockingly.deliveredsustainedculturedownward trajectoryglory hunt.trigger fingerdividendreverencesteelierride that pressurehit the ground runningsabbatical.lavishlyswept asidecompelling physicalityepitomising thebrute forcestifling tactics,


pragmatist,cavalier,overwhelmedarrogant,sneerdespisevanity;obtuse.



Can you find a really good picture, image, diagram or even cartoon which shows the meaning?

Can you find a really good picture, image, diagram or even, cartoon which shows the meaning??

glory hunt.

trigger finger

reverence

steelier

ride that pressure


hit the ground running

Lavishly

compelling physicality

brute force


stifling tactics,

cavalier,

overwhelmed

arrogant,

Sneer

despise

vanity;

obtuse.


Read these reviews and then fill in the grids as asked!


THE INDEPENDENT - 26/06/2015

There is a haphazard quality to the latest animated feature from the team behind Despicable Me.

The Minions are the little, yellow, lemming-like creatures with balloon-ish, -shaped bodies. The beginning of the film traces in their early history. Their aim is to serve the most despicable of masters. Nothing gives them more pleasure than to follow blindly some despotic dinosaur or caveman. Their problem is that their leaders keep on dying.

A few, very random plot twists see three of the rubbery varmints heading first to late-1960s New York, then to Florida and, finally, to not-so-swinging, tea-drinking London, where they are part of a plot cooked up by super-villainess Scarlet Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock) to steal the crown jewels. Queen Elizabeth II (Jennifer Saunders) is portrayed as a good-time girl with a mischievous sense of humour and an unlikely knack for arm wrestling.

The Minions are sometimes very funny. They have a winning way of gargling out dialogue. The problem is a plot that is as indeterminate as their body shapes. There is a sense that the film-makers have taken a lot of random ideas, gleefully mixed them all together in a big yellow gloop and then hurled them at the canvas to see what will stick.


THE TELEGRAPH - 23 June 2015

The tiny Despicable Me henchmen deserve better than this fourth-rate spin-off!

We could argue about the artistic merits of the Despicable Me franchise until long past its target audience’s bedtime, but one thing is beyond question: it's seriously popular. The first film was released in the UK as an October half-term frolic but went on to play for three months, while the 2013 sequel, which was accorded a more prestigious June release, ran for six.

In terms of looks and brains, the films had nothing on Pixar, but they shared two magic ingredients that helped make them endurable hits.

One was a chart-friendly soul number from Pharrell Williams on the soundtrack (Happy, the theme from Despicable Me 2, went on to become the most-downloaded song in British chart history). And the other was the Minions: a horde of linguistically impaired, marzipan-coloured cylinder people in the service of the films’ nefarious anti-hero Gru, who provided a steady stream of slapstick relief.

The appearance of a Minions-only spin-off film in the gap between the second and impending third Despicable Mes, therefore, makes perfect business sense: in fact, Penguins of Madagascar pulled a similar stunt only last December, with mostly successful results.

But what’s surprising about Minions is that it squanders these yellow oddballs’ new-found freedom: in fact, it yokes them to a permanent supervillain gig almost as soon as it possibly can, as if


directors Kyle Balda and Pierre Coffin and screenwriter Brian Lynch were terrified of skittering too far off-piste.

Before it cops out, though, the film’s a delight. It opens with a hand-drawn prologue, in which we see the Minions evolving from a shoal of plankton-like parasites. As they scramble up the food-chain – in the wakes of progressively bigger and nastier boss fish, naturally – they finally bob to the ocean’s surface and, like a self-inflating life-raft, the film suddenly plumps out into rubbery CGI. Then follows a string of miniature skits, in which the small yellow types serve various historical brutes, from Tyrannosaurus Rex to the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Frustratingly, what seems like the set-up for an internship with Richard Nixon (the Minions bob into New York Harbor in 1968, under a grinning poster of the US president) comes to nothing. Instead, three Minion emissaries, called Kevin, Bob and Stuart, make for a villain convention in Florida, where they throw in their lot with Scarlett Overkill (voiced by Sandra Bullock), a rising star on the bad-guy circuit. (Jon Hamm gives what will surely be the most negligible voice performance of the year as Herb, her husband-slash-kit man.)

And it’s here the film’s spark is snuffed out for good: the focus shifts to Scarlett’s convoluted plan to overthrow the Queen of England, and the film becomes a fourth-rate Despicable Me clone.

You sense a shuddering apprehension in every creative choice – as if one false move, or even an overly brazen one, would destabilise the formula. The Sixties setting, for instance, seems to have been chosen largely so the plot can dovetail with what we should probably now call The


Despicable Me Expanded Universe, rather than for its unique look or specific comic potential. Most of the film could be taking place anywhere, and the period detail doesn’t extend much further than hippies, teapots and songs by Donovan and The Kinks – real souvenir-shop stuff.

In the same way, there’s no attempt to give the Minions material that might better play to their preverbal, indestructible strengths. Had Balda and Coffin drawn inspiration from silent comedy – as Aardman Animations did for their intricately funny Shaun the Sheep movie – you suspect the film might have been better equipped to sustain the energy of those giddy early minutes. But instead, it soon becomes one barely choreographed, weightless action sequence flailing into the next.

On paper, Minions adds up: as, no doubt, will its box-office takings. But making films for a young audience isn’t – or at least shouldn’t be – the same thing as maths.



Can you define it?



Franchisefrolicprestigiousendurable hits.linguistically impaired,nefarious anti-heroslapstickimpendingstunt squandersyokesskittering too far off-piste.prologue,shoalplankton-progressivelyFrustratingly,emissaries,villainthrow in their lot


snuffed out clone.shuddering apprehension inbrazendestabilise dovetailcomic potential.preverbalindestructible strengths.intricatelygiddychoreographed,



Can you define it?



haphazardlemming-likedespoticrandom plot twistsmischievousknack forgarglingindeterminaterandomgleefullygloopcanvas


Tricky Word

Tricky Phrase

Can you find a really good picture, image, diagram or even, cartoon which shows the meaning??

prestigious

slapstick

squanders

yokes

Frustratingly,


emissaries,

snuffed out

destabilise

indestructible strengths.

intricately

giddy



Can you find a really good picture, image, diagram or even, cartoon which shows the meaning?

haphazard

despotic

mischievous

random


Robbie Collin Daily Telegraph

Adventure and emotion combine beautifully in one of the most visually extravagant animations yet, says Robbie Collin

If science were ever able to blend Monsieur Hulot with an orthopaedic mattress, the result would be something like Baymax. The indisputable star of Big Hero 6, the latest film from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is a ten-foot-tall inflatable robot who’s impeccably well-mannered at all times, even though he and the world at large are not quite mutually compatible.


Squeezing through human-sized spaces involves much careful shuffling and stooping, and sometimes a partial deflation. In one scene, while edging through his 14-year-old owner’s bedroom, his bottom sweeps the bookshelf clean.

It’s this kind of old-fashioned physical comedy – unfussily staged, meticulously timed, and, crucially, uproariously funny – that underpins what’s probably the most visually extravagant and hi-tech animation Disney has produced to date. Big Hero 6, which is based very loosely on a defunct Marvel Comics series, is pitched as a cymbal-clash of eastern and western pop cultures – a rainbow-toned, up-to-the-microsecond story of superheroes and robots, set in a shimmering hybrid city called San Fransokyo. But it’s also a melding of old and new modes of animation, in which the tactile artistry of the past co-exists with the hyper-detailed, computer-generated present.

“ Big Hero 6 is a useful reminder that pop culture isn’t only an escape from reality, but a way of facing up to it, head-on and reinvigorated ”

Take Baymax’s face: a white oval with two small eyes in the middle, connected by a stripe. It’s basically inert, bordering on featureless, but as Aardman continue to demonstrate with Gromit’s two blinking eyes and prehensile brow, great animators can say almost anything with next to nothing. The art-form has become so caught up in the race to photo-realness that basing an entire film around a character this pared-down feels like a radical statement.


(The animated short that screens before Big Hero 6, called Feast, is even more of a boundary-pusher: it’s the story of a cute little dog’s relationship with its master, composed entirely from shots of the food they eat together. It’s conceptually brilliant, adorable, and completely heartbreaking.)

Beside all this, Big Hero 6’s plot looks more conventional. Baymax and his human pal, a 14-year-old engineering whiz called Hiro Hamada, investigate the suspicious death of Hiro’s elder brother and Baymax’s creator, Tadashi, in a laboratory fire.

A strange man in a black cloak and red-and-white kabuki mask is involved somehow, as is a swarm of hypnotically animated drone ‘microbots’, each one no bigger than a split-pin, created by Hiro and somehow stolen during the blaze that killed Tadashi. While the story centres on Hiro and Baymax’s friendship – a classic Disney surrogate-big-brother relationship in the Baloo-Mowgli style – as the title suggests, four more heroes end up helping out.

The third, fourth and fifth are Gogo, Wasabi and Honey Lemon, Tadashi’s former lab partners, each of whom has an engineering specialism (electromagnets, lasers and plastics respectively) to bring to the fight. The sixth is Fred, a self-professed comic-book geek whose crime-fighting costume is a rubber daikaiju suit, and who, during various elaborate battles with the team’s masked nemesis, gleefully shouts out whatever special move he’s about to pull off – “Super jump!”, “Fire breath!”, and so on – like an eight-year-old playing with an action figure. It’s no more than a throwaway gag in a film teeming with them, but it’s a completely delightful touch.


It’s also entirely of a piece with a film whose characters’ childlike enthusiasm, for science and super-heroism alike, is the source of their strength and grit. Hiro’s response to the death of his brother is to surround himself with robots and adventure – a vital reminder that pop-culture isn’t only an escape from reality, but a way of facing up to it, head-on and reinvigorated. Big Hero 6 counts itself as part of that honourable tradition, and as you soar with Hiro and Baymax through the clear San Fransokyo sky, you feel like you can take on anything.



Can you define it?



visually extravagantorthopaedic mattressindisputableimpeccably well-manneredpartial deflation.meticulouslyuproariouslyvisuallydefunctshimmeringmeldingreinvigorated ”inert,featureless,prehensile brow,pared-downconceptually brilliant,suspicious


surrogate-elaboratenemesisgleefullythrowaway gagteemingvital



Can you find a really good picture, image, diagram or even, cartoon which shows the meaning?

visually extravagant

impeccably well-mannered

meticulously

defunct


shimmering

reinvigorated ”

inert,

featureless,

prehensile brow,


conceptually brilliant,

suspicious

elaborate


Nemesis

gleefully

throwaway gag

teeming


vital


THE GUARDIAN – 14/06/2015

The trailer for this belated dinosaur sequel features a massive mosasaurus swallowing a dangling shark whole. The cheeky implication is clear: Jurassic World could eat Jaws for breakfast. Certainly, like the “Indominus rex” at the centre of its genetically spliced action, this cinematic theme park ride is bigger, louder, and has more teeth than either Jaws or Jurassic Park. Yet what it gains in size it loses in terms of dramatic logic and, more importantly, character chemistry. While the 3D beasts are undeniably impressive, their human counterparts remain resolutely two-


dimensional thanks to a script that mistakes tone-deaf jumps and starts for emotional arcs. The result is a spectacular summer blockbuster that will doubtless eat the box office alive, but that remains all bark and no bite.

Twenty-two years after the events of Jurassic Park, Isla Nublar has become a fully functioning dinosaur playground, attracting boatloads of tourists. But with “de-extinction” yesterday’s news and raptors and T rexes no longer a draw, modified hybrids are needed to scare up new business.

Having learned nothing from the previous three movies (The Lost World and Jurassic Park III are essentially sidestepped), nor from Michael Crichton’s gene-pool text Westworld, the owners again find themselves running an amusement park in which the attractions eat the guests. As Bryce Dallas Howard’s operations manager struggles to locate her awol nephews, dino-trainer Chris Pratt attempts to prevent his unscrupulous security chief from weaponising the velociraptors with whom he has formed an interspecies bond.

Emerging from more than a decade of development hell, this unwieldy beast of a film cobbles together elements variously cooked up over the years by umpteen writers (including executive producer Steven Spielberg, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes scriptwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver) with a final draft by director Colin Trevorrow and his Safety Not Guaranteed screenwriter, Derek Connolly. This convoluted evolution has produced a story riddled with plot holes big enough for a mosasaurus to leap through with ease.


Worse, the thumbnail-sketch characters – endangered kids, parenthood-unready adults, kooky tech guys etc – remind us how much more fully fledged were their progenitors in the 1993 Crichton/David Koepp-scripted original. Only Irrfan Khan’s billionaire owner has something of the cracked charisma of Jeff Goldblum’s chaos theorist, but even this promising potential is thrown away in one of the plot’s most disappointingly lazy dead-ends.

Such shortcomings rankle, considering Trevorrow’s previous work. Like Godzilla director Gareth Edwards, he cut his teeth on a low-budget, fantasy-inflected oddity before graduating to this effects-heavy blockbuster. But while traces of Monsters remained in Godzilla, Jurassic World lacks the off-kilter interpersonal charm of the time-travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed. Instead, Trevorrow simply tips his hat knowingly toward Spielberg’s back catalogue, reprising the dinosaur-eye-seen-by-terrorised-kids from Jurassic Park, evoking the pathos of ET as a placid herbivore lies wounded (“Ouch!”), even riffing on Susan Backlinie’s violent demise in Jaws (Michael Giacchino’s score comes close to quoting John Williams’s sharky terror theme). This is a dangerous game to play; I kept expecting Pratt to turn toward the camera and quip: “We’re gonna need a better script…”

On the plus side, Jurassic World doesn’t skimp on spectacle, compensating for its storytelling shortcomings with a superfluity of on-screen action. Viewed in Imax with the sound turned up to 11, the film fulfils its popcorn promise, offering a menagerie of dinosaurs (motion-capture CG, with a sprinkling of animatronics) that sweep majestically across land, sea and air. Once again, the velociraptors are the stars, proving that size isn’t everything. But there’s nothing here to match the


nail-biting raptor raid of the original, despite advances in technology that continue to push the boundaries of cinematic sight and sound.

And therein lies the rub. Forty years ago, Spielberg all but invented the summer blockbuster with nothing more than a smart script, a perfectly chosen cast and a malfunctioning rubber shark. Today, Trevorrow can bring his dinosaurs to life in ways never before imaginable, but he can’t make us believe in or care about his characters. Like Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, this serves more as a reminder of glories past than of futures new. It has scales but no soul.



Can you define it?



Belatedcheeky implicationspliceddramatic logiccharacter chemistrytwo-dimensionalemotional arcs.all bark and no bite.hybridsawolunscrupulous interspecies bond.Unwieldyumpteenconvoluted evolutionriddledthumbnail-sketchendangeredkooky


fully fledgedprogenitorsTricky WordTricky Phrase

Can you define it?



charismarankle,off-kilterknowinglypathosplacid herbivoreriffingskimpcompensatingmenageriemajesticallythe rub.scales


THE TELEGRAPH – 10/06/2015

Poor Tyrannosaurus Rex, you find yourself thinking, when the creature finally makes her appearance in Jurassic World. The old girl never had to deal with this nonsense 22 years ago. A crowd of brightly dressed holidaymakers is standing inside a viewing gallery that’s been decorated to look like a fallen tree trunk, and they’re staring down expectantly at a goat that’s been tethered to a feeding platform.

From the depths of the surrounding jungle comes the thoom-thoom-thoom of giant claws on mud – and then, with a sinew-tightening shriek, the creature bursts into shot in all her prehistoric glory. Or at least, a leg does, and a bit of flank, and possibly a flash of teeth. Because for us T-Rex remains somewhere behind the clamour of cameraphones and flailing arms; an ageing tourist attraction, just agonisingly out of sight.

Teenager Zach (Nick Robinson), one of the film’s small herd of main characters, isn’t even looking: he’s engrossed in his mobile, and doesn’t so much as deign to turn his head. The first Jurassic Park film, directed by Steven Spielberg and adapted from the best-selling Michael Crichton novel, was released in the summer of 1993 – which in blockbuster terms might as well be the late Cretaceous.


Hollywood can’t just put photorealistic dinosaurs in cinemas and expect audiences to be wowed any more. Jurassic World acknowledges that shift in expectations, and asks what it might mean for our sanity and souls. It must be the first $150 million monster movie to question whether bigger is always better.

Even more than its intensely likeable central performances and convincingly solid visual effects, it’s this supple self-reflexiveness that makes Colin Trevorrow’s film a worthy sequel to Spielberg’s industry-changing original. It also immediately relegates the other entries in the franchise – Spielberg’s own, frustratingly uneven 1997 follow-up, The Lost World, and Joe Johnson’s slight 2001 take, Jurassic Park 3 – to footnote status.

What those two earlier, free-range sequels missed was that the source of Jurassic Park’s appeal had always been the animals’ status as attractions: children (and, let’s be honest, adults) who watched the 1993 film could go home and imagine packing a suitcase for Isla Nublar, climbing into one of those green-and-red-striped Land Cruisers at the visitor centre doors, and seeing dinosaurs themselves.

But Jurassic World understands that, and as such, it takes place in a park that’s not just fully stocked, but already open for business. There are rides, feeding shows and souvenirs, not to mention brands everywhere: Imax, Samsung, Starbucks, and more. As science fiction goes, it’s all very familiar.


Which is, ingeniously, part of the problem. “Twenty years ago, de-extinction was up there with magic,” sighs Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), Jurassic World’s capable operations manager, as she gives a trio of investors the grand tour. “Now kids look at a stegosaurus like it’s an elephant at the zoo.” Customer focus groups have revealed the public want bigger, scarier beasts, and aren’t too concerned about their paleontological legitimacy.

Accordingly, Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong, the only returning cast member from the previous films) and his team of genetic engineers have spliced together a new, hybrid creature, the Indominus Rex, from the deadliest bits of T-Rex and various other predators and nasties. The result is being raised in a fortified concrete pen in the island’s thickly forested north, though naturally that arrangement doesn’t last, and she breaks free, eats her handlers and makes straight for the tourists.

Trevorrow stages the escape with a bravura double bluff, allowing tension to build organically while a full account of what’s going on drops slowly into place. It’s a heart-stopping sequence, methodically paced and shot with an awestruck visual sense that’s pure Spielberg.

Trevorrow is 38, with only one previous feature to his name, the time-travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed – but along with Gareth Edwards, the 39-year-old director of last summer’s Godzilla reboot, he’s part of the generation that experienced Spielberg’s Eighties and early Nineties family films as children, and the older director’s influence casts a brachiosaur-sized shadow.


One human who survives the break-out is Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), the park’s most experienced dino-wrangler, who’s been seconded from the US Navy to train velociraptors – the darting, cheetah-quick pack hunters who almost stole the original film from under T-Rex’s snout. There is a slightly unconvincing subplot about the raptors being trained for military use in active combat (“Just imagine these bad boys in Tora Bora,” drools Vincent D’Onofrio’s security chief), but it’s only there to allow Owen to buff his compassionate credentials.

Most of the film is taken up with Claire and Owen’s quest to rescue her two nephews, Zach and his younger brother Gray (Ty Simpkins), who are stranded in the park when disaster strikes. Howard and Pratt have a playful Princess Leia/Han Solo-ish chemistry, and the script allows each their fair share of heroic moments, which both actors seize on with a breezy sense of showmanship.

Some supporting characters feel significantly less well-formed: Omar Sy seems to have mainly been hired for his ability to swear in French, while Irrfan Khan’s eccentric park mogul is a feeble proxy for Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond, whose indelible presence is memorialised here in statue form.

It’s a rare instance of Jurassic World courting comparison with Spielberg’s film and coming off badly. For the most part, comparison is part of the fun, and most of the point. Two decades after dinosaurs ruled the Earth’s cinemas, are we still capable of putting our phones away for two hours and being honestly amazed by them, without a glaze of cynicism or irony to keep us stuck?


Trevorrow, his cast and crew would clearly like to think so. And in light of their efforts, you’d have to grinningly agree.


Can you define it?



expectantlytetheredsinew-tighteningclamourengrossedCretaceous.shift in expectations,suppleself-reflexivenessrelegates thebrandsingeniously,focus groupspaleontological legitimacy.


spliced togetherfortifiedbravura double bluff,build organicallymethodically pacedreboot,darting,breezywell-formed:eccentricfeeble proxyindeliblecourting comparisonglazecynicismirony


Please read the following poems and be ready to discuss them next term in our enrichment lessons.

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of battle I escapedDown some profound dull tunnel, long since scoopedThrough granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.Then ,as I probed them, one sprang up, and staredWith piteous recognition in fixed eyes,Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.''None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,Was my life also; I went hunting wildAfter the wildest beauty in the world,Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,But mocks the steady running of the hour,And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.For by my glee might many men have laughed,And of my weeping something had been left,Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,The pity of war, the pity war distilled.Now men will go content with what we spoiled,Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.Courage was mine, and I had mystery,Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:To miss the march of this retreating worldInto vain citadels that are not walled.


Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.I would have poured my spirit without stintBut not through wounds; not on the cess of war.Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.I knew you in this dark: for so you frownedYesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.Let us sleep now...'

Wilfred Owen

Please make sure that you look at the following You Tube extract.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06a7sspY3c


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O06a7sspY3c

An Irish Airman foresees his Death

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, 5My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public man, nor cheering crowds, 10A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind 15In balance with this life, this death.

W B Yeats

Please look at these links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLvHTDa1fkE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPuVbhv_bm4


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPuVbhv_bm4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLvHTDa1fkE

There's a breathless hush in the Close tonight –Ten to make and the match to win –A bumping pitch and a blinding light,An hour to play and the last man in.And it's not for the sake of the ribboned coat,Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote –'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'The sand of the Desert is sodden red –Red with the wreck of a square that broke; –The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel's dead,And the regiment's blind with dust and smoke.The river of death has brimmed its banks,And England's far, and Honour a name,But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'This is the world that year by year,While in her place the school is set,Every one of her sons must hear,And none that hears it dare forget.This they all with joyful mindBear through life like a torch in flame,And falling fling to the host behind –'Play up ! play up ! and play the game !'

Henry Newbolt


Check this link!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oWiZsvhgjY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oWiZsvhgjY

The Soldier Rupert Brooke. IF I should die, think only this of me; That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 5 Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 10 Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. Please check these readings and song version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKEQO0gZUcQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiBkje_VQxg

Did you really look up the words you did not know in the poems: if not, do so now!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiBkje_VQxg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKEQO0gZUcQ

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate.Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date.Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed;And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKKGMozN0-IAn actor reads

A member of Pink Floyd Sings it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Osse7w9fs


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Osse7w9fs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKKGMozN0-I

Some Logic & Reasoning Puzzles To Play With!

You do NOT have to provide answers on these sheets, but do attempt them for fun. See if your family can answer them! We will try some on your return! Joe B and I will run through them with you.

The technological singularity is the hypothetical advent of artificial general intelligence (also known as "strong AI"). Such a computer, computer network, or robot would theoretically be capable of recursive self-improvement (redesigning itself), or of designing and building computers or robots better than itself. Repetitions of this cycle would likely result in a runaway effect — an intelligence explosion— where smart machines design successive generations of increasingly powerful machines, creating intelligence far exceeding human intellectual capacity and control. Because the capabilities of such a super-intelligence may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is an occurrence beyond which events may become unpredictable, unfavorable, or even unfathomable.


YOU ARE THE SOLUTION! FILL UP THIS BOOKLET AND BE ONE STEP AHEAD!!!!!

Puzzle 1

Below are thirteen 5 lettered, everyday words, each of which has had two of its letters removed.

In total these 26 letters are A-Z. The remaining letters in each word are in the correct order.

There are no words which are spelled differently based upon location (favour/favor, etc) and there are no plurals.

Can you determine the original words?

APEBAEBODANCROEELLRAYBUCORAUMBSUALOLGES


Puzzle 2

Complete these common words by using all of the letters A to Z, each exactly once.

*e*er**eue**oma**p*a*e**erso****k*am*on*ouse*a**ur****igent

Puzzle 3

What shape completes the bottom line?

triangle pentagon squaresquare hexagon hexagon squarepentagon hexagon hexagon hexagon square trianglehexagon octagon octagon octagon octagon ==?==


Puzzle 4

At you future university, the science department has three disciplines.

In total, 280 students study chemistry, 254 students study physics and 280 students study biology.

97 students study both chemistry and physics, 138 students study both physics and biology, 152 students study both chemistry and biology.

73 students study all three disciplines.

Can you determine how many students there are in the science department? The answer is well below 814.


Puzzle 5

Hidden in the grid below are eight, 7 letter words. Each word begins with the central P and you can move one letter in any direction to the next letter. All of the letters are used exactly once each. What are the words?

Puzzle 6

Which of the five black shapes is identical to the red one? There may be more than one which is exactly the same.


Puzzle 7

Hidden in each of the sentences are the numbers 1 to 10 in words.

A number might appear in more than one sentence, but there is only one way to find all ten numbers.

For example 'My parents told me to never cross the road without looking.' contains the number 1: 'My parents told me to never cross the road without looking.'

The robins love hiding amongst the smooth reeds.

It's always worth looking after your friends, even if they've upset you.

Even heavyweight boxers like using soft tissues when they have a cold.

To avoid the calf, I veered sharply to the left.

The eggs were boxed thirteen instead of a dozen in each baker's delivery box.

Having salmon every day for lunch gets a little boring after a while.

The attendance at the local football match exceeded last weeks by many thousands.

We need to waterproof our boots to make sure we don't get wet.

Meeting friends after work allows executives to network effectively.

The orchestra sounded magnificent with the three virtuosi xylophonists.


Puzzle 8

Each empty white square in the grid contains one of the numbers 1, 2, 3,..., 8. Each of the horizontal and vertical equations must be true and each number must be used exactly once.

Puzzle 9

Two friends were driving from their home to Manchester, Paul drove the first 90 miles, and Daniel took over the remainder of the journey.On the way back, Kevin drove to begin with, and Daniel took over for the last 100 miles.

Who drove the most?

Puzzle 10

During a recent police investigation, Chief Inspector Stone was interviewing five local villains to try and identify who stole Mrs Archer's cake from the mid-summers fayre. Below is a summary of their statements:

Arnold: it wasn't Edward it was Brian

Brian: it wasn't Charles it wasn't Edward

Charles: it was Edward it wasn't Arnold

Derek: it was Charles it was Brian

Edward: it was Derek it wasn't Arnold

It was well known that each suspect told exactly one lie. Can you determine who stole the cake?


Summertime!


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