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Showing posts with the label dreaming spires home learning

A Descriptive Winner

In my year-long writing course at Dreaming Spires Home Learning , we held a contest to see who wrote the best descriptive piece based on the topic of going on safari. Here is our winner's response: strong in atmosphere but lacking just that bit of consistency for top marks. "The safari truck trundles along the dirt road, the soft hum of the engine the only sign of civilisation. The dirt road that it travels is smooth and worn from many long years of use. Around the open-backed vehicle, the long, waving fronds of grass roll past like tiny waves in the wind, flowing like a stream. The jeep seems to be floating, sailing along the yellow-green sea. Trees stand out against the sky, a fishbowl of brightest blue above our heads. The sun shines down on us, and a drowsy heat sets in. The whole world, rippling like the grass below us, seems to be slowly drifting beneath the far away sky. Animals move in the distance, blurred shapes in the heat. The tall neck of a giraffe can be...

August Crammer -- au revoir -- next one is Easter

I've just closed the window on the last live webinar for the August crammer course. The students have been inundated with Dos and Don'ts from examiner's reports, mark schemes, and my own experience on "the other side". Even before the week had ended, people were asking when I'm next offering the course. That would be the Easter holidays next year, 2017. Easter is really late this year, so a crammer at that point will really be the final polishing before exams start in May. If you want to get a head start on what to study, then buy my revision guide: there are plenty of examples there of good practice, tips for revision, and ways to improve your writing in advance of taking the crammer. Buy it here from Amazon, either as a Kindle book or paperback:  http://tinyurl.com/hr8bmyl What would it add to your child's study to attend the crammer if you've got the book? New examples, for one. A chance to have homework and questions marked by me, with my e...

Crammer Goes Weekly in 2016

All right, all right ... you've twisted my arm! I have now cleared space in my diary to teach the Dreaming Spires Revision course on a weekly basis starting 19th January, 2016, rather than a 2-week crammer over the Easter holidays. The live webinar will take at noon to 1 pm GMT on Tuesdays, starting the 19th of January, 2016. Space is limited to 15 students, so be sure to sign up while there are spaces. Go to the registration page on this website and provide details to reserve your place today.

English Language Exam Tips -- Question 1 of Paper 2 (the "reading" paper)

Sometimes, students get worried that the CIE syllabus for Question 1 the Reading Paper (known as Paper 2) will test whether they can do magazine articles, interviews, reports, letters, and journals, but this isn't really what the exam is testing at all! The exam board basically wants to know four things: Do you know what the Reading Insert selection is saying -- just the facts, the details, the basic idea? Do you know what the Reading Insert selection is implying -- what's between the lines, behind the details? Can you take the point of view and style of the Reading Insert selection, and modify it to a different point of view and style? For example, if Pete is shopping with Veronica at the garden centre and complains about it throughout the text, can you take on the point of view of Veronica, and write a journal entry about Pete's behaviour instead? Can you write this journal entry in competent English -- meaning good vocabulary, variety of sentence structures, dec...

Twenty Get the Tips

Dreaming Spires Revision topped out at twenty student this year! Dreaming Spires hit the maximum this year! Dr Patrick taught the twenty iGCSE students from her home-town of Texas over the fortnight of Easter holidays, using the break from her other tutorial classes to visit her ailing father at the same time. However, the internet allows people to attend from all over -- Austria was on the list, too! Except for the threat of a thunderstorm and a powercut, the ten daily lessons went without a hitch. Dr Patrick even worked out how to record each class and load it onto the unlisted YouTube channel. (It helped that the house where she was staying had super-fast broadband.) Some of the famous sayings from the course were "Rolling on the Bed Laughing", "That's just the say it is," and "I know! That's bonkers!!!". ROTBL Now all the students have taken their mock exams and Dr P has returned them. Some really great work, including two per...