The Woman in Black at KS3

This unit has everything you need to teach ‘The Woman in Black’ at KS3. It is a fantastic gothic horror novel, and the children are genuinely enthralled by this novel as the secrets are revealed, complimented by the movie with Daniel Radcliffe as an end of unit treat!

This unit of work includes 18 lessons and comes with lesson powerpoints, contextual information, exemplar paragraphs, activities to exploit drama, extracts from the text and opportunities for creative writing. Page numbers refer to the 1998 Vintage edition.

Lesson 1: The gothic genre
Lesson 2: Creating a gothic atmosphere
Lesson 3: How Susan Hill uses pathetic fallacy
Lesson 4: Tracking Arthur’s progress north
Lesson 5: Creating mystery and expectation
Lesson 6: Character reactions
Lesson 7: Leaving clues
Lesson 8: Creative Writing
Lesson 9: Writing a formal letter
Lesson 10: Hiding secrets
Lesson 11: How Susan Hill creates tension
Lesson 12: Using rhetorical devices
Lesson 13: Using clues to form predictions
Lesson 14: The letters
Lesson 15: The Ending
Lesson 16: Prepare your assessment
Lesson 17: Write your assessment
Lesson 18: Feedback and improvement

There is an opportunity to assess the students’ progress at the end of the novel in an essay on how Susan Hill creates a sense of mystery.