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Summer Homework

The long summer break is a chance to relax and is also a great opportunity to to read!

Research shows that those who read widely and regularly achieve better outcomes and so we encourage everyone to read for a minimum of 20 minutes a day and ask you to encourage those around you to do so too.  Summer is the perfect time to read – for both adults and young people - and our English Faculty have set a reading homework task for pupils in (new) Years 8, 9 and 10 to complete during the Summer holiday; (new) Year 11 pupils have specific English homework too. See below.

It is important to keep your brain active over the holiday. We recognise that the very best thing that your child can do to retain and build upon their Maths understanding is to spend regular time at home recapping topics that have previously been covered at school, so accessing MyMaths or MathsWatch would be good preparation for our return to school in September. All pupils also have Maths homework to do over the holiday.

In much the same way, Science can be recapped in small quantities and we recommend that Key Stage 4 pupils in particular make the most of the opportunity and time that the long holiday offers by using their books, revision guide and online resources such using Kerboodle, BBC Bitesize or S-cool. Our (new) Year 11 Combined Science GCSE pupils will be sitting a mock exam in September - pupils should have brought home a letter with more information. We encourage our GCSE pupils to make revision notes to keep until the end of Year 11 to ease their burden next year; Separate Science pupils will have 45 modules to revise, Combined will have about 40. 

Individual faculties may have set specific tasks for our pupils to complete before returning to school in September. All parents should now have received a PIN number to enable them to log in to their own Show My Homework account, where they will be able to view their child(ren)'s homework. Find out more about SMHW...

The Radio 4 Today programme broadcasts a Puzzle for Today shortly before 7am each weekday morning and you can access previous puzzles (and answers) on the Today website if you want to test your skills!

 

 

English Reading Task for (new) Years 8/9/10

Read at least one book from the list their teacher has given them.

Write a review of this book – use ideas from the plan provided.

 

The drop down lists below include some of the recommended books from our English Faculty, plus suggestions from the Maths Faculty.

 Bronze Award

  1. Scorpia - Anthony Horowitz
  2. Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters - Rick Riordan
  3. Set in Stone - Linda Newberry
  4. There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom - Louis Sachar
  5. Devil You Know - Linda Macail
  6. The Eagle Trail - Robert Rigby
  7. Hagurosan - Darren Shan
  8. The Dead are Rising - Jeff Norton
  9. Call of the Deep - Beverly Naidoo
  10. Harold Hardnut - Tony Bradman
  11. Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
  12. Shadow of the Minotaur - Andy Gibbons
  13. Hatchet - Gary Paulson
  14. Martyn Pig - Kevin Brooks
  15. The Great Cycle Challenge - Chris Hoy
  16. House of Robots - Chris Patterson
  17. Danger is Still Everywhere - David O’Doherty
  18. Shadow Warriors - Chris Bradford
  19. Aquila - Andrew Norriss
  20. The Girl with the Sunshine Smile - Karen McCombie
  21. Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy – A.F. Harrold
  22. Mad Iris - Jeremy Strong
  23. Tom Gates - Liz Pichon
  24. Fox Friend - Michael Morpurgo
  25. Young Bond: Silverfin - Charlie Higson
  26. The Iron Man - Ted Hughes
  27. The Demon Headmaster - Gillian Cross
  28. Carrie’s War – Nina Bawden
  29. Two Weeks with the Queen - Morris Gleitzman
  30. Charlotte’s Web - E.B White
  31. Brock - Anthony McGowan
  32. Timepiece series - Anne Perry
  33. Deadline - John Townsend
  34. Mathmagicians - Johnny Ball
  35. Story of Maths - Anne Rooney
  36. Murderous Maths of Everything - Kiartan Poskitt
  37. Awesome Arithmetricks - Kiartin Poskitt

 Silver Award

  1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
  2. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
  3. How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff
  4. I am David - Anne Holm
  5. Maggot Moon - Sally Gardner
  6. Stone Cold - Robert Swindells
  7. Refugee Boy - Benjamin Zephaniah
  8. The Tulip Touch - Anne Fine
  9. Gamer - Chris Bradford
  10. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
  11. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
  12. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd
  13. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
  14. Silverfin - Charlie Higson
  15. The Alex Rider series - Anthony Horowitz
  16. The Outsiders - S.E Hinton
  17. The Coral Island - R.M Ballantyne
  18. Coram Boy - Jamila Gavin
  19. The Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham
  20. Flambards - K.M Peyton
  21. Goggle Eyes - Anne Fine
  22. Small Steps - Louis Sachar
  23. Holes - Louis Sachar
  24. Journey to the River Sea - Eva Ibbotson
  25. Wolf Brother from the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
  26.  Dragon Rider - Cornelia Funke
  27. Vampire Blood Trilogy - Darren Shan
  28. The Scarecrows - Robert Westall
  29. Shadow of the Minotaur - Alan Gibbons
  30. Hatchet - Gary Paulsen
  31. (Un)Arranged Marriage - Bali Rai
  32. Gatty’s Tale - Kevin Crossley Holland
  33.  At the Sign of the Sugared Plum - Mary Hooper
  34. Apache: Girl Warrior - Tanya Landman
  35. A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
  36. The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
  37.  Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
  38. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
  39. The Chronicles of Narnia Charles - C.S. Lewis
  40.  Treasure Island - R. L. Stevenson
  41. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
  42.  Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein
  43. Watership Down - Richard Adams
  44. Goodnight Mr Tom - Michelle Magorian
  45. 50 Mathematical Ideas You Really Need To Know - Tony Crilly
  46. How long is a piece of string? - Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham
  47. How many socks make a pair? - Rob Eastaway
  48. The secret lives of numbers - Michael Millar

 Gold Award

  1. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
  2. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
  3. Jackdaw Summer - David Almond
  4. The Star of Kazan - Eva Ibbotson
  5. Nicholas Nickleby - Charles Dickens
  6. Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
  7. Gulliver’s Travels - John Swift
  8. The Hound of the Baskervilles - Arthur Conan Doyle
  9. Thief of Time - Terry Pratchett
  10. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
  11. The History of Nearly Everything  - Bill Bryson
  12. Life of Pi - Yan Martel
  13. Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein
  14. The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank
  15. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
  16. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
  17. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
  18. The Railway Children - E. Nesbit
  19. The Secret Garden - F.N Burnett
  20. Dracula -  Bram Stoker
  21. Where I Belong - Gillian Cross
  22. Fortunately the Milk - Neil Gaiman
  23. Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy - Andy Briggs
  24. We Can Be Heroes - Catherine Bruton
  25.  The Girl Who Walks On Air - Emma Carroll
  26.  Anthem for Jackson Dawes - Celia Bryce
  27. Mortal Chaos - Matt Dickinson
  28. Swim the Fly - Don Calame
  29. Monkey and Me - David Gilman
  30. Searching for Sky - Jillian Cantor
  31.  Paper Towns - John Green
  32.  Inside my Head - Jim Carrington
  33.  Sky Hawk - Gill Lewis
  34. The Boy on the Porch - Sharon Creech
  35.  The Accidental Time Traveller - Janice Mackay
  36. The Weight of Water - Sarah Crossan
  37. Shadowmancer - G.P. Taylor
  38. Buried Thunder - Tim Bowler
  39. Finding Jennifer Jones - Anne Cassidy
  40. Tyme’s End - B.R. Collins
  41. Say Her Name - James Dawson 
  42. Twelve Minutes to Midnight - Christopher Edge
  43. After You’ve Gone - Joan Lingard
  44.  The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
  45. The Call of the Wild - Jack London
  46.  The History of Tom - Jones Henry Fielding
  47. The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling
  48. The Apothecary - Maile Meloy
  49.  Whisper - Chrissie Keighery
  50. The River Singers -Tom Moorhouse
  51. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
  52. The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak
  53. Chinese Cinderella - Adeline Yen Mah
  54. I am David - Anne Holm
  55. 1984 - George Orwell
  56. Great Mathematical Problems - Ian Stewart
  57. Why do buses always come in threes? - Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham
  58. Professor Stewart’s cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities - Ian Stewart
  59. Professor Stewart’s hoard of Mathematical Treasures -  Ian Stewart

 Key Stage 4 Reading List

  1. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
  2. 1984 – George Orwell
  3. All Quiet on the Western Front – E M Remarque
  4. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
  5. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown
  6. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
  7. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
  8. Chavs – Owen Jones
  9. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
  10. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemmingway
  11. Frankenstein – Mary　Shelley
  12. Freakonomics – S D Levitt & S J Dubner
  13. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
  14. Into the Wild – Jan Krakauer
  15. Tell me No Lies – John Pilger
  16. Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
  17. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
  18. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
  19. The Regeneration Trilogy – Pat Barker
  20. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
  21. Catcher in the Rye – J. D Salinger
  22. The Crucible – Arthur Miller
  23. A Doll’s House – Henrik Ibsen
  24. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
  25. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
  26. Atonement – Ian McEwan
  27. Dracula – Bram Stoker
  28. Room – Emma Donaghue
  29. A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
  30. The Girl with a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
  31. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
  32. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
  33. Go Set a Watchmen – Harper Lee
  34. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stephenson
  35. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
  36. The War of the Worlds – H G Wells
  37. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
  38. Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury
  39. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
  40. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
  41. Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  42. Purple Hibiscus – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  43. The Colour Purple – Alice Walker
  44. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
  45. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
  46. The Martian – Andy Werr
  47. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
  48.  The Time Machine – H G Wells
  49.  The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy – Douglas Adams
  50. Small Island – Andrea Levy
  51. The Collector – John Fowles
  52. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
  53. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
  54. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
  55. he Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
  56. White Teeth – Zadie Smith

Among the books that our English Faculty are planning on reading this Summer are:

  • Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

  • The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

  • Man Walks into a Pub: A Sociable History of Beer by Pete Brown

  • The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

  • Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier 

Do share pieces of descriptive narrative that you read with your children or items you think will interest them. Happy Summer reading!

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