English

Virtual Travel!

Fancy a writing challenge? Then try this…

Try designing a postcard from a place you’d like to visit (real or fictional). Draw or design an image for the front, then write a message to a friend or family member on the back. Describe your imagined experiences and explain why it would be a fantastic place to visit.

Send us your postcard (or alternatively, bring it into school during your first week), and the most imaginative will receive a prize!

Send your postcard to:

The English Department Kingston Grammar School 70 London Road Kingston upon Thames KT2 6PY

Read up!

Some books are harder to “get into” than others, but don’t judge a book by its cover or its title and have a good attempt at reading something a little different from your usual choice. Some are fiction, some are non-fiction. You will have received a copy of our reading list but see below for some of our favourite books.

Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott

Following the lives of the four March sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy - the novel details their passage from childhood to womanhood and is loosely based on the author and her three sisters.

Wonder

by R.J. Palacio

I know I’m not an ordinary kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I ride my bike. I play ball. I have an Xbox. Stuff like that makes me ordinary. I guess. And I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don’t make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don’t get stared at wherever they go.

Holes

by Louis Sachar

The book centres around an unlucky teenage boy named Stanley Yelnats, who is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile corrections facility in a desert in Texas, after being falsely accused of theft. The plot explores the history of the area and how the actions of several characters in the past have affected Stanley’s life in the present..

The Diary of Anne Frank

by Anne Frank

In July 1942, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years, Anne vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such close quarters, and her thoughts, feelings and longings as she grows up.

Boy

by Roald Dahl

As a boy, all sorts of unusual things happened to Roald Dahl. There was the time he and four school friends got their revenge on beastly Mrs Prachett in her sweet shop. There are stories of holidays in fishing boats, African adventures and the days of tasting chocolate for Cadbury. Roald Dahl vividly shares his memories; some are some are funny, some are painful, some are unpleasant. All are true.

When Hitler Stole The Pink Rabbit

by Judith Kerr

Suppose your country began to change. Suppose that without your noticing, it became dangerous for some people to live in Germany any longer. Suppose you found, to your complete surprise, that your own father was one of those people.

That is what happened to Anna in 1933. She was nine years old when it began, too busy to take much notice of political posters, but out of them glared the face of Adolf Hitler, the man who would soon change the whole of Europe – starting with her own small life.

One day, Anna’s father went missing. Then she herself and her brother Max were being rushed by their mother, in alarming secrecy, away from everything they knew – home and schoolmates and well-loved toys – right out of Germany...