KS3 Sydenham School
2014 Year 9 Summer Homework
Next half term you will be studying one of three modern novels. Over the summer you will need to
1) Research each of the three novelists
2) Practise some of the analytical skills you will be using for your first assessment
3) Read another modern novel and complete a task related to it
You should hand in your summer homework to your new English teacher during your first lesson
back. There will be prizes for the best homework tasks!
Task 1: Research
Next half term you will read a novel by either Harper Lee, Mildred D. Taylor or Malorie Blackman. You need to research
each of these novelists and find out:
a) Some biographical information – when and where did they live? Were they educated? When did
they begin writing?
b) The names of some of the novels they wrote – are any particularly famous? Have they won prizes?
c) What kinds of things they write about – do the three novelists share any similar themes or ideas?
You should present your work as:
a) a poster (if you’re mostly confident)
b) a Powerpoint presentation (if you’re very confident)
c) a page from a textbook with a mixture of information and tasks for
students to complete (if you’re super confident)
The best work will go on display, so it is important that you take time to present
your work neatly and attractively.
Remember that you need to put information you find out from the internet or
books in your own words – otherwise you are plagiarising, which is illegal!
1
KS3 Sydenham School
Task 2: Analysis
For this task you have a poem to read and a choice of three activities. Choose the one with the right level of challenge for
you.
Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our
boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
2
KS3 Sydenham School
a) Mostly confident
Answer the questions below:
- What do you think is happening in the poem?
- Who do you think the narrator is? Why?
- Highlight six words you think are most significant. Write the words in a list and put a comment next to each to
explain what the word makes the reader feel.
b) Very confident
Write two PEEZ paragraphs to answer the question What are the thoughts and feelings of the speaker in the poem
‘Blackberry-Picking? If you can, you should identify poetic techniques (similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia etc) and
comment on their effect.
c) Super confident
Write two PEEZ paragraphs to answer the question What message does Heaney convey to the reader in the poem
‘Blackberry-Picking’? If you can, you should identify poetic techniques (similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia etc) and
comment on their effect; you should also aim to comment on Heaney’s structure and style.
3
KS3 Sydenham School
Task 3: Reading and responding
For this task you should read another novel that was written in the 20th or 21st centuries. There are some
suggestions for novels below, but you can choose anything you think you will enjoy.
Title
Before I Die
Out of
Shadows
Author
Jenny
Downham
Jason
Wallace
The Help
(more
challenging)
Kathryn
Stockett
The Traitor
Game
B.R Collins
How I Live
Now
Uglies
Meg Rosoff
Girl, Missing
Blood Red,
Snow White
Scott
Westerfield
Sophie
McKenzie
Marcus
Sedgwick
Synopsis
With only a short time left to survive, sixteen year old Tessa makes a list of all the things she wants to do. But
completing her list isn’t easy for anyone, least of all her family and friends. A moving and life affirming novel.
It is Zimbabwe in the 1980s. The civil war is over, independence has been won, and Robert Mugabe has come to
power, offering hope, land and freedom to black Africans. For Robert Jacklin, it's all new too as he gets used to a
new continent, a new country, a new school. But he is quickly forced to realise that for many of his fellow pupils,
the battle for their old country rages on.
This story starts 30 years later than ‘Roll of Thunder’ but is also set in Mississippi. The novel follows the lives of black
maids working for white families in the 1960s. This is the era of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and President
Kennedy. Aibileen is raising her 17th white child and nursing the hurt caused by her son’s tragic death; Minny’s
cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from college, wants to know why her beloved maid
has disappeared.
Michael and his best friend Francis create a secret fantasy world called Evgard. But when Michael believes that Francis has
betrayed him, events take a frightening turn. Interweaving the gripping story of Evgard with the boys’ school life, this is a
powerful novel about friendship.
Fifteen year old New Yorker Daisy is sent to the English countryside to stay with her cousins. There she falls in love, but when
war comes, a perfect summer explodes into a million bewildering pieces.
Tally can’t wait to turn sixteen when she will move from boring Uglyville to New Pretty Town. But Tally is about to learn there
is a different side to the Pretty world, that isn’t very pretty, and it will change her life forever.
Lauren has always known she was adopted but when a little research turns up the possibility that she was snatched from an
American family as a baby, suddenly Lauren's life seems like a sham. How can she find her biological parents? And are her
adoptive parents really responsible for kidnapping her? She manages to wangle a trip across the Atlantic where she runs away
to try and find the truth. But the circumstances of her disappearance are murky and Lauren's kidnappers are still at large and
willing to do anything to keep her silent.
Leaving his unhappy marriage behind in England, Ransome moves to Russia for a job as a journalist for the Daily News. Little
does he realise a bloody revolution will soon erupt before his eyes.
4
KS3 Sydenham School
When you have finished reading, write a response to your chosen novel. Choose one of the options below or create your
own:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
Poem that focuses on the themes of the novel
A letter to the author explaining your reaction to the novel
The blurb for a film version of the novel
Board game based on the novel’s themes and characters
Film yourself in role as the author talking about the reason you wrote this novel
Comic strip to illustrate one of the key scenes from the novel
Your own choice
5