Parent/Guardian Copy!
Dear Parents {/ Guardians/ Fellow Citizens/Kind nannies/ Au Pairs/Childminders}, this has been e-mailed and hard copies have been sent (this one for you, and one for your son.)} Please do encourage him to read through it. I hope you enjoy the extracts too. N.B.:It is on the website, under curriculum, if there is any glitch downloading the file.
Happy Christmas! Paul
Dear Beloved Year Six,
Please try to work through these sheets before term.They will be used in our extension lessons and for interview discussions. I have chosen extracts which should interest and challenge you, and flex up your mental muscles for interviews and other comprehension-type exercises. Do discuss them with your family too. These sheets complement the materials given by Paul C , Joe J and Janet. Such materials help you as you face the possible exams in January and beyond. The three poems at the end are pretty demanding and I am going to let you wrestle with them. I will give you a Crunchie if you can memorise ‘The Darkling Thrush’: it is one of the greatest poems ever written. I have provided some stimulus material to help you grapple with it. Understanding, and wanting to understand a great poem can be much more useful than reading a mediocre novel!
We want you all to have a good holiday and although this looks like work, you know it isn’t really! It is a Christmas Gift to stimulate you when you are bored of TV silliness. X- factor, Transformers 7 and your presents!
Please download the electronic version of this booklet to your computer. It is on the St. Anthony’s website, under Curriculum, and has been sent to your family’s e-mail addresses.
Turn over for your first treat: another stocking, full of of simply execrable puns. Can you divide them into TYPES of pun? How many types can you spot or define? They are from the brillaint comedian Tim Vine.
Please get into the habit of looking up words you don’t know.
Execrable (/ˈɛksɪkrəb(ə)l/)
adjective: execrable
extremely bad or unpleasant.
"execrable cheap wine"…… synonyms: appalling, awful, dreadful, terrible, frightful, atrocious, very bad, lamentable;
Pun /pʌn/
noun
plural noun: puns
1.
a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.
"the Railway Society reception was an informal party of people of all stations (excuse the pun) in life"
synonyms: play on words, wordplay, double entendre, double meaning, innuendo, witticism, quip; bon mot, jeu de mots;
verb
3rd person present: puns
1.
make a pun.
"Freeth adopted the nickname Free in punning allusion to his beliefs"
These are what are commonly thought of as his 10 Best Jokes!
Puns and jokes like this are a good test of your sense/grasp of the various meaning of words.
1. Exit signs? They're on the way out!
2. Black Beauty? Now there's a dark horse!
3. Velcro? What a rip-off!
4. Crime in multi-storey car parks. That is wrong on so many different levels.
5. Eric Bristow asked me why I put superglue on one of his darts. I said you just can't let it go can you?
6. I saw this advert in a window that said: “Television for sale, £1, volume stuck on full.” I thought, “I can’t turn that down.”
7. I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again
8. Conjunctivitis.com – that’s a site for sore eyes
.
9. So I said to a Scottsman 'did you have terrible spots as a kid?' He said 'ac ne'
10. Do you ever get that when you're half way through eating a horse and you think to yourself, 'I'm not as hungry as I thought I was'
Pun: a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.
Can you explain these jokes? Where you are not sure, check with a friend or member of your family: this is fun and painless way to test your comprehension and vocabulary.
I phoned the local gym and I asked if they could teach me how to do the splits. He said, "How flexible are you?" I said, "I can't make Tuesdays.""He said 'I'm going to chop off the bottom of one of your trouser legs and put it in a library'. I thought 'That's a turn-up for the books.'"
"So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me "Can you give me a lift?" I said "Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it.'"
"You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.' So that was nice."
" I was stealing things in the supermarket today while balanced on the shoulders of vampires. I was charged with shoplifting on three counts.
I bought some Armageddon cheese today, and it said on the packet 'Best Before End...'
So I went to buy a watch, and the man in the shop said "Analogue." I said "No, just a watch."
I went to the doctor. I said to him "I'm frightened of lapels." He said, "You've got cholera."
So this bloke says to me, "Can I come in your house and talk about your carpets?" I thought "That's all I need, a Je-hoover's witness".
"You know, I'm not very good at magic - I can only do half of a trick. Yes - I'm a member of the Magic Semi-circle"
You see I'm against hunting, in fact I'm a hunt saboteur. I go out the night before and shoot the fox.
You see my next door neighbour worships exhaust pipes, he's a catholic converter.
So I went to the dentist. He said "Say Aaah." I said "Why?" He said "My dog's died.'"
"So I got home, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up, and said 'Who's speaking please?' And a voice said 'You are.'"
"So I rang up a local building firm, I said 'I want a skip outside my house.' He said 'I'm not stopping you.'
I have spent the afternoon re-arranging the furniture in Dracula’s house… I was doing a bit of Fang-Shui
I want to tell you a bit about myself.. I’m a very quiet and secretive person, and that’s it really.
"So I was in my car, and I was driving along, and my boss rang up, and he said 'You've been promoted.' And I swerved. And then he rang up a second time and said "You've been promoted again.' And I swerved again. He rang up a third time and said 'You're managing director.' And I went into a tree. And a policeman came up and said 'What happened to you?' And I said 'I careered off the road.'
This policeman came up to me with a pencil and a piece of very thin paper. He said, "I want you to trace someone for me."
So this lorry full of tortoises collided with a van full of terrapins. It was a turtle disaster.
So I told my girlfriend I had a job in a bowling alley. She said "Tenpin?" I said, "No, it's a permanent job."
So I told my mum that I'd opened a theatre. She said, "Are you having me on?" I said, "Well I'll give you an audition, but I'm not promising you anything."
So this cowboy walks in to a German car showroom and he says "Audi!"
So I fancied a game of darts with my mate. He said, "Nearest the bull goes first" He went "Baah" and I went "Moo" He said "You're closest"
So I met this bloke with a didgeridoo and he was playing Dancing Queen on it. I thought, that's aboriginal.
I visited the offices of the RSPCA today. It's tiny, you couldn't swing a cat in there.
A friend of mine always wanted to be run over by a steam train. When it happened, he was chuffed to bits!
So I went to the record shop and I said “What have you got by The Doors?” He said: “A bucket of sand and a fire blanket!”
I was in the army once and the Sergeant said to me: “What does surrender mean?” I said: “I give up!”
Practice Good Punmanship
· The secret to writing good puns is using a puncil instead of a pen.
· If your writing becomes infected by puns, go to the nearest writer’s clinic for a shot of punicillin.
Look carefully at this picture and then read the article below.
Behold, the River Thames is frozen o’er,
Which lately ships of mighty burdens bore!
Now different acts and pastimes here you see Anonymous, 1814
In late December of 1813, London experienced a severe frost. Already known for its tendency toward fog, the city was encased in thick clouds for eight days. The fog became so dense that “the usual lamps appeared through the haze not larger than small candles;” when the fog finally lifted, “a tremendous fall of snow” descended upon the city blocking the Northern and Western roads, the two main roads into London.Sealed off from communication with the outside world, Londoners turned to the Thames, the city’s waterway, only to discover that the river itself was frozen. While the freezing of the Thames was not unknown to Londoners, the relatively temperate climate of London meant that the river froze only rarely.
When the river did freeze solid, as it did in January of 1814, Londoners often promoted “frost fairs” upon the ice. The first of these fairs dates back to at least 695 AD when booths selling goods were built upon the river after it had frozen. By the sixteenth century, a period when the weather was colder than it is today, the freezing of the Thames brought out revelers in full force.
In 1564, Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers joined the city’s residents at what many scholars agree was “the first really notable frost fair.” That winter, boys “plaied at the football as boldlie there as if it had been on the drie land; divers [courtiers]...shot dailie at [targets] set upon the Thames and the people, both men and women, went on the Thames in greater numbers than in anie street of the City of London.” The revelries came to a halt only when the river thawed in January. Just over forty years later, in 1608, the Thames froze again. According to one contemporary, “The Thames began to put on his Freeze-coate about a week before Christmas and hath kept it on til now this latter end of January.” As had been true of the Thames in 1564, “the river shows not now...like a river, but like a field where archers shoot while others play at football...It is an alley to walk upon without dread.”
All was not fun and games, however, as cold temperatures and the city’s isolation led to food scarcities and rising prices across the city. The frozen river also presented dangers, as holes appeared when the ice froze, thawed, and froze again. As a result, “one [boy who was playing on the ice] stumbled forward, his head slipt into a deepe hole, and there was hee drownd.” Cautionary tales abounded. Those who were tempted to engage in heavy drinking on the ice, for example, had only to remember the “poor fellow...[who] having heated his body with drinke, thought belike to coole it on the water, but comming to walke on the Ice, his head was too heavy for his heeles, so that downe he fell and there presently died.”
The seventeenth century actually witnessed repeated ice fairs, with one of the most famous of these occurring in December of 1683. Between December and February, when the Thames iced over, Londoners brought out their sleds and went “sliding with skeetes [skates].” As they ran, or in some cases rode up and down the frozen river, they could see “bull-baiting, horse and coach races, [and] puppet-plays.” Noting with some disapproval the “tipling” and other “lewd” activities occurring on the ice, John Evelyn described the fair as “a bacchanalian triumph or carnival on the water.”
In many ways, the revelry in which these Londoners engaged during that frost fair may have stemmed as much from the temper of the times as it did from the freezing of the river. After decades of civil war and religious-political tensions, the English had achieved an uneasy peace. While Charles II was not universally popular throughout his reign, the early 1680s did see a resurgence of popularity for the king.
John Forde clearly made a habit of purchasing printed cards at Frost Fairs, photo courtesy Univ. of Cambridge.
If nothing else, the placement of a printing press on the ice, which operated without any real oversight, signaled that Britain was a very different society than it had been previously.The printer who brought his press onto the ice knew, however, that Londoners were not eager to buy anything overtly political. Instead, recognizing that the “people and ladyes tooke a fancy to have their names printed, and the day and yeare set down when [it was] printed on the Thames,” this printer cranked out what we today would regard as souvenir cards which he then