Year 8 Sets 1-3
English Literature
Home Learning Booklet
Name
Tutor Group
Teacher
Given out:
Monday 12 December
Parent/Carer Comment
Staff Comment
Target
Hand in: Tuesday 3 January
1. Which book are you reading in class?
(Please tick the box)
‘Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” by Mildred D. Taylor
‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell
‘War Horse’ by Michael Morpurgo
a) I am enjoying reading this book in class.
b) I feel I can relate to the characters and /or
events in this book.
c) I think this book is appropriate for my reading
age.
d) I am enjoying the variety of work we have
done so far in connection to the book.
e) I feel I am making progress in understanding
how to write about books and the characters,
events and themes within the books.
Totally
disagree
Not really
It’s OK
Yes
Totally
agree
All the following questions in this homework booklet relate to this book.
2. What do you think and feel about the book so far?
(Tick the boxes that sum up your thoughts and feelings)
3. Write three sentences, in your own words, about what you have learnt so far whilst
reading this book. (You could write about the author, characters, action, historical context
or the skills in writing and analysing.)
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4. Name one of the characters in the book you are reading in class.
(Make sure it is a character you know quite a lot about so that you can answer the next four
questions.)
Name of character:
5. Write a bullet point list of 5 things that you know about this character.
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6. Either explain why you sympathise with the character or why you find this
character dislikeable.
(Please refer to incidents in the text to support your answer- use an extra sheet of paper
if necessary.)
7. Draw a picture of this character and add adjectives (descriptive words) around
the picture as labels to explain their characteristics. (Please note your English teacher
is more interested in the adjectives you use to describe this character than your drawing
skills. Feel free to use ICT if you wish.)
8. Write a diary or journal entry, as if you were the character. Explain your
thoughts and feelings about the other characters and events in the book. You may
decide to choose a particular moment in the novel or write the diary as a response at the
end of the novel. (You can word process this on the computer if you wish but remember
to hand in with the booklet.)
9. Find the passage from the book you are studying in class (it is
attached at the back of this booklet). Then answer this question:
Use the lined paper or word process the answer on a computer.
‘Roll of Thunder,
Hear My Cry’
‘Animal Farm’
‘War Horse’
What impressions do we, the readers, get of Uncle
Hammer from this passage?
What impressions do we, the readers, get of Mollie,
from this passage?
What impressions do we, the readers, get about the
gun-horse teams from this passage?
(Your answer should be at least one side of A4 and not more than two sides of A4.
Ensure you use PEE to answer. )
10. What do you think is the author’s message to the reader? How effective do
you think the book is at getting this message across to the reader?
Write an answer the length of one side of A4 referring, as you do so, to incidents,
events and characters in the text.
(Although you do not have the book, you still need to refer to incidents in the book and
justify your ideas.)
(Use the lined paper or word process the answer on a computer.)
EXTRACT FROM “ROLL OF THUNDER, HEAR MY CRY”
“Stacey, go bring me your coat,” Mama said a few days later as we gathered around the fire after supper.
“I’ve got time to take up the sleeves now.”
“Uh-oh!” exclaimed Christopher-John, then immediately opened his reader as Mama looked down at
him.
Little Man cupped his hand and whispered to me, “Boy, now he’s gonna get it!”
“Uh…th-that’s all right, Mama,” stuttered Stacey. “The coat’s alright like it is.”
Mama opened her sewing box. “It’s not alright. Now go get it for me.”
Stacey stood up and started slowly towards his room. Little Man, Christopher-John, and I watched
him closely, wondering what he was going to do. He actually went into the room, but was only gone a
moment before he reappeared and nervously clutched the back of his chair. “I ain’t got the coat, Mama,” he
said.
“Not got the coat!” cried Big Ma. Uncle Hammer looked up sharply from his paper, but remained
silent.
“Stacey,” said Mama irritably, “bring me that coat, boy.”
“But, Mama! I really ain’t got it! I gave it to T.J.”
“T.J.!” Mama exclaimed.
“Yes, ma’am, Mama,” Stacey answered, then went on hurriedly as Mama’s eyes glittered with rising
anger. “The coat was too big for me and . . . and T.J. said it made me look like . . . like a preacher . . . and he
said since it fit him just right, he’d . . . he’d take it off my hands till I grow into it, then thataway all the guys
would stop laughing at me and calling me a preacher.” He paused, waiting for someone to speak; but the
only sound was a heavy breathing and the crackle of burning hickory. Then, seeming more afraid of the
silence than putting his neck further into the noose, he added, “But I didn’t give it to him for good, Mamajust lent it to him till I get big enough for it and then . . .”
Stacey’s voice faded into an inaudible whisper as Mama slowly put the sewing box on the table
behind her. I thought she was headed for the wide leather strap hanging in the kitchen, but she did not rise. In
quiet anger she glared at Stacey and admonished, “In this house we do not give away what loved ones give to
us. Now go bring me that coat.”
Backing away from her anger, Stacey turned to leave, but Uncle Hammer stopped him. “No,” he
said, “leave the coat where it is.”
Mama turned bewildered toward Uncle Hammer. “Hammer, what’re you saying? That’s the best
coat Stacey’s ever had and probably ever will have as long as he lives in this house. David and I can’t afford
a coat like that.”
Uncle Hammer leaned back in his chair, his eyes cold on Stacey. “Seems to me is Stacey’s not smart
enough to hold on to a good coat, he don’t deserve it. As far as I’m concerned, T.J. can just keep that coat
permanently. At least he knows a good thing when he sees it.”
“Hammer,” Big Ma said, “let the boy go get the coat. That T.J. probably done told him all sorts – “
“Well, ain’t Stacey got a brain? What the devil should he care what T.J. thinks or T.J. says? Who is
this T.J. anyway? Does he put clothes on Stacey’s back or food in front of him?” Uncle Hammer stood and
walked over to Stacey as Little Man, Christopher-John and I followed him fearfully with our eyes. “I
suppose if T.J. told you it was summertime out there and you should run buck naked down the road because
everybody else was doing it, you’d do that too, huh?”
“N-no sir,” Stacey replied, looking at the floor.
“Now you hear me good on this – look at me when I talk to you, boy!” Immediately Stacey raised
his head and looked at Uncle Hammer. “If you ain’t got the brains of a flea to see that this T.J. fellow made a
fool of you, then you’ll never get anywhere in this world. It’s tough out there, boy, and as long as there are
people, there’s gonna be somebody trying to take what you got and trying to drag you down. It’s up to you
whether you let them or not. Now it seems to me you wanted that coat when I gave it to you, ain’t that
right?”
Stacey managed a shaky “Yessir.”
“And anybody with any sense would know it’s a good thing, ain’t that right?”
This time Stacey could only nod.
“Then if you want something enough and you got it in the right way, you better hand on to it and
don’t let nobody talk you out of it. You care what a lot of useless people say ‘bout you you’ll never get
anywhere, ‘cause there’s a lotta folks don’t want you to make it. You understand what I’m telling you?”
“Y-yessir, Uncle Hammer,” Stacey stammered. Uncle Hammer turned then and went back to his
paper without having laid a hand on Stacey, but Stacey shook visibly from the encounter.
EXTRACT FROM “ANIMAL FARM”
CHAPTER V
AS WINTER DREW ON Mollie became more and more troublesome. She was late for work every
morning and excused herself by saying that she had overslept, and she complained of mysterious
pains, although her appetite was excellent. On every kind of pretext she would run away from work
and go to the drinking pool, where she would stand foolishly gazing at her own reflection in the
water. But there were also rumours of something more serious. One day as Mollie strolled blithely
into the yard, flirting her long tail and chewing at a stalk of hay, Clover took her aside.
‘Mollie,’ she said, ‘I have something very serious to say to you. This morning I saw you
looking over the hedge that divides Animal Farm from Foxwood. One of Mr Pilkington’s men was
standing on the other side of the hedge. And – I was a long way away, but I am almost certain I
saw this – he was talking to you and you were allowing him to stroke your nose. What does that
mean, Mollie?’
‘He didn’t! I wasn’t! It isn’t true!’ cried Mollie, beginning to prance about and paw the
ground.
‘Mollie! Look me in the face. Do you give me your word of honour that that man was not
stroking your nose?’
‘It isn’t true!’ repeated Mollie, but she could not look Clover in the face, and the next
moment she took to her heels and galloped away into the field.
A thought struck Clover. Without saying anything to the others she went to Mollie’s stall
and turned over the straw with her hoof. Hidden under the straw was a little pile of lump sugar and
several bunches of ribbon of different colours.
Three days later Mollie disappeared. For some weeks nothing was known of her
whereabouts, then the pigeons reported that they had seen her on the other side of Willingdon. She
was between the shafts of a smart dogcart painted red and black, which was standing outside a
public house. A fat red-faced man in check breeches and gaiters, who looked like a publican, was
stroking her nose and feeding her with sugar. Her coat was newly clipped and she wore a scarlet
ribbon round her forelock. She appeared to be enjoying herself, so the pigeons said. None of the
animals ever mentioned Mollie again.
In January there came bitterly hard weather. The earth was like iron, and nothing could be
done in the fields. Many meetings were held in the big barn, and the pigs occupied themselves with
planning out the work of the coming season. It had come to be accepted that the pigs, who were
manifestly cleverer than the other animals, should decide all questions of farm policy, though their
decisions had to be ratified by a majority vote. This arrangement would have worked well enough
if it had not been for the disputes between Snowball and Napoleon. These two disagreed at every
point where disagreement was possible. If one of them suggested sowing a bigger acreage with
barley the other was certain to demand a bigger acreage of oats, and if one of them said that such
and such a field was just right for cabbages, the other would declare that it was useless for anything
except roots. Each had his own following, and there were some violent debates. At the Meetings
Snowball often won over the majority by his brilliant speeches, but Napoleon was better at
canvassing support for himself in between times. He was especially successful with the sheep.
EXTRACT FROM “WAR HORSE”
Suddenly the war was no longer distant. We were back amongst the fearful noise and stench of
battle, hauling our gun through the mud, urged on and sometimes whipped on by men who
displayed little care or interest in our welfare just so long as we got the guns where they had to go.
It was not that they were cruel men, but just that they seemed to be driven now by a fearful
compulsion that left no room and no time for pleasantness or consideration either for each other or
for us.
Food was scarcer now. We received our corn ration only spasmodically as winter came on
again and there was only a meagre hay ration for each of us. One by one we began to lose weight
and condition. At the same time the battles seemed to become more furious and prolonged and we
worked longer and harder hours pulling in front of the gun; we were permanently sore and
permanently cold. We ended every day covered in a layer of cold, dripping mud that seemed to
seep through and chill us to the bones.
The gun team was a motley collection of six horses. Of the four we joined only one had the
height and the strength to pull as a gun horse should, a great hulk of a horse they called Heinie who
seemed quite unperturbed by all that was going on around him. The rest of the team tried to live up
to his example, but only Topthorn succeeded. Heinie and Topthorn were the leading pair, and I
found myself in the traces behind Topthorn next to a thin, wiry little horse they called Coco. He
had a display of white patch-marks over his face that often caused amusement amongst the soldiers
as we passed by. But there was nothing funny about Coco – he had the nastiest temper of any horse
I had ever met, either before or since. When Coco was eating no one, neither horse nor man,
ventured within biting or kicking distance. Behind us was a perfectly matched pair of smaller duncoloured ponies with flaxen manes and tails. No one could tell them apart, even the soldiers
referred to them not by name but merely as ‘the two golden Haflingers’. Because they were pretty
and invariably friendly they received much attention and even a little affection from the gunners.
They must have been an incongruous but cheering sight to the tired soldiers as we trotted through
the ruined villages up to the front.
Self Evaluation of my Homework
I am a R____________________ learner.
I know this because:
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I believe that my effort and attitude to learning for this booklet is a:
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I know this because:
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