Some Summer Ideas

2014

Year 6 (2013-14) becoming Y7 (2014-15)

Remember from last year how helpful it was to work through some summer exercises. This is new version for this year but along the same lines.

First, read through the booklet.Please do what follows each piece whether that is typing in definitions, looking at hyperlinks, finding visual images etc. With each article, you should look up the highlighted words and define them and, wheninstructed, in the tables. In some cases, you are also again asked to find suitable visual images to help fix and explore the meaning in your mind. Do talk to your family and discuss the reading with them. There is plenty to chew on. Make sure that you try to complete the definition and image tables.You must complete this document as an electronic Word document and give it to me at the beginning of term. Please remember to SAVE as you go along. When you e-mail it, please make sure you label it as follows:

SURNAME Form

Rooney 7J

This makes it easier for us to save and look at. These booklets are then printed off at school and we use them in enrichment lessons and mock interviews.

First, read through the review of the Lego Movie. You will be asked to discuss this and the other passages/poems on your return in your English Enrichment Comprehension classes with me. Make sure that you have looked up the words you do not know! There is no excuse for saying you cannot do this! Ask your friends; prod your family and ask the dog. But, do not leave this blank or scrawled in biro/pencil and say in September, with tears in your eyes: ‘It is just like last year in Year Five, I cannot believe it: Once again, we didn’t have a dictionary or Wi-Fi at any point in the summer and my dad’s office blew up and mum dropped her Mac in the sea when we were in Nice!’ & then I sprained my typing wrist water-skiing. Honestly, Paul; Why are you laughing?’

Just do it! You will actually enjoy learning these new things! All the stuff is worth reading

‘They can, because they think they can!’ Virgil

1

Review of Lego Movie by By Robbie Collin, Chief Film Critic The Telegraph

Andy Warhol would have been knocked sideways by The Lego Movie. The new animation from Warner Bros. takes art and commerce and clicks them together as naturally and satisfyingly as a pair of plastic bricks on their way to becoming a castle or spaceship. Never before have I felt less like a film was selling me a product, and then left the cinema more desperate to fill my house with the product it wasn’t selling.

That’s largely because The Lego Movie is swooningly in love with the Lego brick itself: its look, its feel, its clutchable there-ness. The film is computer-generated, but it looks like an old-fashioned stop-motion production. Individual bricks and figures come scratched, scuffed and smeared with fingerprints. The Lego world looks lived-in. No, even better: played-with.

And playfulness is the prevailing sprit. At ground level, The Lego Movie is an uproariously funny family adventure – a Star Wars-Matrix hybrid with jokes, that bound along with a kind of crazed, caffeinated energy. Dig down a little, though, and you realise that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the film’s two-man writing and directing team, are telling a classic quest story precisely because those stories are so Lego-ish at heart.

Two sides in the Lego world are vying for supremacy. One is led by Lord Business (Will Ferrell), the ruler of Bricksburg, a bustling city where the cars and buildings are all assembled, and lives are lived, in line with the instructions. The other is made up of the Master Builders; visionaries and outlaws who see new, exciting ways to connect the blocks Lord Business would rather remain in place.

The security of order versus the thrill of working outside it: that’s the struggle at the heart of any number of classic adventure films, but it’s also a choice made by every seven-year-old who’s ever unwrapped a brand new Lego set. Do you follow the instructions, and end up with the model on the box? Or do you set themanual aside, click the pieces together at random, and see what chance produces?

This decision also faces Emmet (Chris Pratt), a Bricksburg builder whose life, when we first encounter it, is one never-ending routine. Wake up, exercise, work, eat, relax, sleep, repeat. He does this every day, in order, and fits in because of it. His favourite song is everyone’s favourite song: a pop track called ‘Everything Is Awesome’ that’s catchier than Velcro.

But unbeknownst to him, Emmet is also The Chosen: a saviour foretold in a prophesy by a Morgan Freeman-like sage – who is, brilliantly, voiced by Morgan Freeman. The hooded freedom-fighter Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) finds him and whisks him out of the city and into new, unexplored parts of the Lego universe, where they plot Lord Business’s downfall, with help from Wyldstyle’s celebrity boyfriend, Lego Batman (Will

Each dimension is home to a particular range of Lego kits, and the long-standing favourites like pirates, Wild West and space are where most of the action takes place. Less-successful Lego sub-brands, meanwhile, such as the unloved Fabuland and Galidor ranges, are hastily covered in a self-deprecatingmontage.

There are so many blink-and-miss-them moments to appreciate: in another wonderful detail, a 1980s-vintage spaceman character, voiced by Charlie Day, has a helmet that has snapped in exactly the place where all the 1980s Lego spacemen figures’ helmets used to snap.

Parents who themselves grew up with Lego in their toy-boxes will almost certainly feel the prickle of nostalgia, and a sweet, witty passage late in the film acknowledges that for fathers, in particular, a son or daughter’s plastic bricks can spirit them back to a childhood long-past.

Lord and Miller, both former sitcom writers, have arrived here via two unexpected hits: the 3D animation Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and their comic reboot of the teen police drama 21 Jump Street. Those films didn’t have to be particularly inventive or thoughtful or witty to turn a profit, but they were. The Lego Movie is too, but it reaches even further. For a shot of pure forward-leaping, backward-dreaming animated pleasure, pick brick.

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Now think about these words/phrases too!

  • knocked sideways
  • satisfyingly
  • swooningly in love
  • clutchable
  • Vying
  • Supremacy.
  • Bustling
  • Visionaries
  • Outlaws
  • Security
  • themanual
  • Awesome’
  • Unbeknownst
  • Foretold
  • Prophesy
  • Sage
  • Whisks
  • Dimension
  • self-deprecating
  • montage.
  • vintage
  • prickle
  • nostalgia,
  • inventive

Tricky Word
Tricky Phrase / Can you define it?
Maybe think of a synonym too! / Can you make another sentence with the word, thus showing that you REALLY know the meaning?
knocked sideways
satisfyingly
swooningly in love
clutchable
Vying / verb
Word forms: vies, vying, vied
1.(intransitive; followed by with or for) to contend for superiority or victory (with) or strive in competition (for)
2.(transitive) (archaic) to offer, exchange, or display in rivalry / Paul K was vying in vain with Paul C in the marathon.
Supremacy.
Bustling / verb
gerund or present participle: bustling
move in an energetic and busy manner.
"people clutching clipboards bustled about"
synonyms: rush, dash, scurry, scuttle, scamper, scramble, flutter, fuss; More
hurry, hasten, make haste, race, run, sprint, tear, shoot, charge, chase, career;
"people clutching clipboards bustled about"
•(of a place) be full of activity.
"the streets bustled with people"
Visionaries
Outlaws
Security
the manual
Awesome’
Unbeknownst / happening or existing without the knowledge of someone specified —usually used with to : Unbeknownst to us, rumors were flying!
Foretold
Prophesy
Sage
Whisks
Dimension
self-deprecating
montage.
vintage
prickle / Prickle noun:prickle; plural noun: prickles
1. a short pointed outgrowth on the bark or epidermis of a plant; a small thorn."the prickles of the gorse bushes"
.
a small spine or pointed outgrowth on the skin of certain animals.
a tingling sensation on a person's skin, typically caused by strong emotion." Bob felt a prickle of excitement"
synonyms: / tingle, tingling sensation, tingling, prickling sensation, chill, thrill, itching, creeping sensation, gooseflesh, goose pimples, pins and needles;
verb: prickle; 3rd person present: prickles; past tense: prickled; past participle: prickled; gerund or present participle: prickling
1. (of a part of the body) experience a tingling sensation, especially as a result of strong emotion."the sound made her skin prickle with horror"
synonyms: / tingle, itch, have a creeping sensation, have goose pimples, have gooseflesh, have goosebumps, have pins and needles
nostalgia,
inventive
Tricky Word
Tricky Phrase / Can you Google image/picture/cartoon which helps show the meaning of some key words?
knocked sideways
satisfyingly
swooningly in love
clutchable
Vying
Supremacy.
Bustling
Visionaries
Outlaws
Security /
the manual
Awesome’
Unbeknownst
Foretold
Prophesy
Sage /
Whisks
Dimension
self-deprecating
montage.
vintage
prickle
Nostalgia, /
inventive

1

Now look at these interestingly contrasting reviews/evaluations of the World Cup & Test Match.

Barnaby RonayThe Guardian

Thank you Brazil, and goodbye. It’s been … emotional. After 32 days, 64 matches, 171 goals, 182 yellow cards, 48,706 passes, 2,124 tackles, $4bn in revenue for Fifa, plus of course an unceasing spume of digital opinion, a tsunami of public weeping and a mountain of deep-fried cheese pasties, the 2014 World Cup has now left the building.

Quite a bit has happened along the way. A European nation has become world champion on Latin American soil for the first time. Germany joined Italy as Brazil’s nearest all-time World Cup challengers. MiroslavKlose has dethroned Ronaldo as the most doggedlydevastatinggoalscorer in World Cup history. And the World Cup’s hosts and holders have never been so soundly thrashed as Brazil and Spain were here, and this at a World Cup that still managed to produce the most classically old-school semi-final line up yet, a VVIP gathering of the oligarchical powers.

At the end of which, after a tournament that was eight years and $11bn in the making, those four weeks in summer can now begin the familiar process of separating out in the memory into a concatenation of enduringlyvivid moments.

This was a World Cup of bold, rich flavours, a heavily sauced affair that was at times almost a little too pungent for its own good. Never have so many tears been shed by so many athletes in such stunning high definition close-up. Never has so much incident, outrage and media-fanned obiter dicta successfully intruded from the fringes. Above all it has been a deeply sensory, even rather sensual World Cup. Just as the global TV audience swooned over the action and the tournament’s heavily marketed poster boys – J-Rod, Leo, C-Ron, Louis van G – so travelling around Brazil’s cities and stadiums was a brilliantly engaging experience.

This was the first tournament South American fans have travelled to in such numbers on their own continent. In the days leading up to the final, the streets of Rio were duly thronged with sozzled and boisterous Argentinians, the same supporters who had removed their shirts and staged celebratory fraternal fist fights in the stands in São Paulo after the victory against Switzerland.

Even England’s own shortlived travelling support could be seen dancing through the wee hours next to the opera house in Manaus, all driven along by the basic late-night, outdoorsy warmth of Brazil itself, ideal host for a genuinely engaging World Cup in one of the sport’s grand old footballing heartlands. It might be best to savour this while we can. Russia is up next, followed by the irresolvable wrong turn that is Qatar 2022. The World Cup is going outside now. It may be gone for some time.

For the hackneyed footballing romantic it is even tempting to detect some basic infectious Brazilian quality – the air, the light, the memory of the poor old long-dead jogofinito – in the excitement of the early stages. Either way the first week of Brazil 2014 came slathering out of the traps in a furious real-time montage of goals and attacking play. Group stages just aren’t supposed to look like this, but here the players pressed and counter-attacked to the limits of their physical capacities from the start. Holland’s 5-1 destruction of Spain will remain one of the great World Cup results. Germany thrashed a spooked and depleted Portugal in Salvador. France and Switzerland produced a breezy 5-2 romp, and overall by the end of the tournament’s first weekend the opening 14 matches had produced 44 goals.

It couldn’t last. It didn’t. The first 14 matches of the next phase brought just 31 goals, boosted by the isolated absurdity of Brazil’s annihilation in Belo Horizonte, as the best teams began to grind back down through the gears. By the end of the tournament the vogue for swift counter-attack had already begun to congeal into a wised-up retreat into deep-lying mutual counter-defence.

During Argentina’s semi-final with Holland, perhaps the most cautious match of the tournament, Alejandro Sabella’s team at times played a kind of 8-0-0-2, with Lionel Messi and Gonzalo Higuaín stationed miles from their retreating defence, lingering in the distance like fielders at long-on and long-off. And yet it would be wrong to say possession football went out of fashion at Brazil 2014: quite the opposite in fact, as the two teams who made the most passes contested the final. Similarly tiki-taka didn’t die – passing and keeping the ball will never go out of fashion – but instead failed to turn up in the first place as the reigning champions played not just like a tired team, but like a listless, even rather bored one.

Instead the dominant style at this World Cup was a kind of jogocollectivo, the familiar high-speed hustle and closing down of space that defines elite European club football. Helped by an excellent ball in the Brazuca – no wobbly moments, no flailingfrango-howlers here – and refereeing that let the game flow to a fault at times, the general standard was high.

Although there are always exceptions. England had arguably their worst ever World Cup, a tournament that lasted five competitive days and ended with Roy Hodgson’s quietly hopeful squad bottom of Group D having outscored only Cameroon, Iran and Honduras at Brazil 2014. There is a theory England were unlucky, that playing their first match in the great steaming saucepan that was the Arena Amazônia mortally wounded them ahead of Uruguay four days later. This is wishful thinking.

England were just not good enough, exposed by playing two teams at the group stage of the same calibre that more often eliminates them in the knockout rounds. The players were short on small details – a lack of concentration in defence and precision in attack – but to blame the details is to avoid the great sweeping backstory of structural underachievement.

As Philip Larkin wrote in As Bad As A Mile …

“Watching the shied core

Striking the basket, skidding across the floor

Shows less and less of luck, and more and more

Of failure spreading back up the arm.”

Or in other words, the lads came up short – and will do the same again if nothing changes.

It was fairly clear what marked out the best teams at this World Cup. The more successful nations were those with coherent, productive domestic leagues, where the national association has a benevolenthandle on how players are produced what the style and structure is going to be. Costa Rica, Holland, Germany, Belgium and Argentina benefited from players produced by a coherent domestic system, rather than the chaoticshort-termism of England or, as it turns out, Brazil.

Indeed the only time the Premier League seemed tangibly present at this World Cup was when Luis Suárez bit Giorgio Chiellini in Natal, the familiar engines of drama and sentimentrevved up and the English joined in the party, like teenagers at the disco leaping up at the end of the night when the DJ finally relents and puts some heavy metal on.

And what about the hosts anyway? In the end Brazil 2014 was both a PR disaster and a triumph, a shared sporting nightmare and a shared success; a triumph of stadium building fatally undermined by the spectacle of inadequate roads, housing and basic infrastructure that surrounded many of these high-spec space capsules.