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Lesson 1: Introduction to Biology
Today, students learned about the tree of life, taxonomy, and directed evolution.
Homework: https://forms.gle/wMDwmZ2xZt8teEVQ8
Ppt:
https://vmwedu.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Biology-1-Introduction-to-Life-1.pdf
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Summary for Lesson 2
In today’s lesson we completed our work on plot development, thinking about the different ways in which we can think about, inspire and workshop story arcs and plot points. We spoke about several different approaches to plot in writing, beginning with discussing the notion of the plot pyramid (Freytag’s pyramid) and whether it is structurally necessary to writing, then moving on to thinking about the seven archetypes of plot and finishing with an exercise involving working with inciting incidents, characters and classic story-lines in order to create fresh and exciting plotlines. We touched on the role and importance of the inciting incident and the students articulated their thoughts brilliantly throughout the lesson, sharing some excellent ideas and analysing their own writing styles and approaches beautifully. They came up with very creative story ideas and used the different plotlines fantastically throughout the lesson, building on their ideas with wonderful energy. Great work everyone 🙂
Homework link: https://blog.reedsy.com/guide/elements-of-plot/
Inciting incident video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKBsZS846o8
Homework
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The marks for week 110 are attached below, well done everyone!
The top 5, in no particular order, are: Evelyn, Yutong, Julia L, Jasmine, Gordon
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1B3q8gCCXeI2hhbbbQVrxoloudVfqKLN8
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The marks for week 109 are attached below, well done everyone!
The top 5, in no particular order, are: Evelyn, sophy, zimo, DZ, edward
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15zPO4gJid-rNde3gG_Z3qrrkjBc5yosW
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Here are those ICAS papers that are good for practicing multiple choice (and speedy comprehension in general). Have a look at them, the answers are always on the final page of the PDF. It’s 7-10 mins per comprehension text + answers so you have to do around an answer per minute (if not less when you factor in reading time)! Don’t worry, the 11+ is never that tight on time but can be really good practice to try some of these out in timed conditions 🙂
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Here are those ICAS papers that are good for practicing multiple choice (and speedy comprehension in general). Have a look at them, the answers are always on the final page of the PDF. It’s 7-10 mins per comprehension text + answers so you have to do around an answer per minute (if not less when you factor in reading time)! Don’t worry, the 11+ is never that tight on time but can be really good practice to try some of these out in timed conditions 🙂
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For Week 76,you should try your best to recite and write down the selected piece from Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee(Adapted from Highgate’s 11+ Entry Examination Exemplar)
Laurie Lee was a British writer who, in 1959, wrote an account of his childhood in a
country village.
In this extract, he is only three years old. He is arriving with his family at the village
for the first time. At the start of this extract he has accidentally fallen from the cart in
which they are travelling into a field of high grass.
I was set down from the cart at the age of three, and there with a sense of
bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.
The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never
been so close to grass before. It towered above me and all around me, each blade
tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight. It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green,
thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leapt
through the air like monkeys.
I was lost and didn’t know where to move. A tropic heat oozed up from the ground,
rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles. Snow-clouds of elder-blossom banked in
the sky, showering upon me the fumes and flakes of their sweet and giddy
suffocation. High overhead ran frenzied larks, screaming, as though the sky were
tearing apart.
For the first time in my life, I was out of the sight of humans. For the first time in my
life I was alone in a world whose behaviour I could neither predict nor fathom: a
world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without
warning. I was lost and did not expect to be found again. I put back my head and
howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face, like a bully.
From this daylight nightmare I was awakened, as from many other, by the appearance
of my sisters. They came scrambling and calling up the steep rough bank, and parting
the long grass found me. Faces of rose, familiar, living; huge shining faces hung up
like shields between me and the sky; faces with grins and white teeth, bashing off
terror with their broad scoldings and affections. They leaned over me – one, two,
three – their mouths smeared with red currents and their hands dripping with juice.
“There, there, it’s all right, don’t you wail any more. Come down ‘ome and we’ll stuff
you with currents.”
And Marjorie, the eldest, lifted me into her long brown hair and ran me jogging down
the path and through the steep rose-filled garden, and set me down on the cottage
doorstep, which was our home, though I couldn’t believe it. -
Well done this week! Top 5: Yao, Dudu, Zimo, Johnny and Eva.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1LDmsvYQfAT5NRoKFc-diubS73lRDjRwO
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For Week 66, you should try your best to recite and write down the selected piece from
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say, “This is he” or “This is she.” Sometimes a hand was raised as if to clutch something or ward off something, or somebody groaned, or somebody laughed aloud as if sharing a joke with nothingness.
Nothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the dining-room or on the staircase. Only through the rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened woodwork certain airs, detached from the body of the wind (the house was ramshackle after all) crept round corners and ventured indoors. Almost one might imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room questioning and wondering, toying with the flap of hanging wall-paper, asking, would it hang much longer, when would it fall? Then smoothly brushing the walls, they passed on musingly as if asking the red and yellow roses on the wall-paper whether they would fade, and questioning (gently, for there was time at their disposal) the torn letters in the wastepaper basket, the flowers, the books, all of which were now open to them and asking, Were they allies? Were they enemies? How long would they endure?
So some random light directing them with its pale footfall upon stair and mat, from some uncovered star, or wandering ship, or the Lighthouse even, with its pale footfall upon stair and mat, the little airs mounted the staircase and nosed round bedroom doors. But here surely, they must cease. Whatever else may perish and disappear, what lies here is steadfast.
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For Week 61, you should try your best to recite and write down the selected piece from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
“He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. There warn’t no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl – a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes – just rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on t’other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor – an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.”
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