KS3 English Shakespeare Macbeth - 10 Characteristics of a Shakespearean Tragedy

In this resource bundle are three activities to learn the language features on a magazine's front cover: CARD SORT - cut out all of the cards and ask students to match up the feature with the example. FEATURE DOMINOES - students essentially play a spoken version of dominoes in which they match up language features with examples. Detailed instructions included on resource.. BLOCKBUSTERS - students have the cross the square on the PPT vertically or horizontally by asking a series of questions about magazine language features. MAGAZINE LAYOUT - students learn how a magazine is laid out. Firstly, put students in pairs. One partner spends 1-2 minutes studying the magazine layout before they have to turn over the sheet and try to explain to their partner how a magazine is laid out. Students learn the following features: Alliteration Emotive language Tag line Left side third Cover line Imperative Superlative Sky line Pun Masthead Second person pronoun Interrogative Hyperbole Central image Use of numbers Connotation

Students are to work in pairs. Issue one line from the poem to each pair. Students are to analyse the language closely to try to learn about the speaker’s feelings. Motivate students by asking them to imagine their police detectives, with only one sentence of the criminal’s confession to analyse. They are to read the line deeply to consider the multiple layers of meaning. Model activity. Whole-class feedback. Students should write down what their peers say.

This short activity tests students' ability to follow instructions. It is a fun starter and shows students the importance of reading ALL the instructions before starting a task.

Students learn what a kenning is and how it originated. They then look at some examples, guessing what the title of the kenning is. They then have a go at writing their own. This is a fun activity which engages students with Anglo-Saxon and Norse poetry.

Students need to be in pairs or groups of three. They need to match the words to the time period. They need to read the cards carefully as the clues are in the text. Everyone should be able to work out the correct answers if they look out for the clues in the text.

In this lesson students revisit the features of gothic stories before identifying them in an extract from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Students are then told that they'll be re-telling a popular nursery rhyme in the gothic genre. They are shown examples of Jack and Jill in the 'romance' genre and then the 'gothic' genre to give them an idea of how a nursery rhyme can be adapted. Students then choose and nursery rhyme and have a go themselves. From personal experience, students absolutely love this activity and it really gets their creative juices flowing. It allows for very rich, high quality descriptive writing. This lesson is compatible with all abilities, but very successful with high ability KS3 students.

Print off the slides in the PowerPoint and issue them to pairs or groups. Students are to analyse and annotate the opening lines with their ideas about what makes them effective and what makes them draw the reader in.

This is a fun, dynamic lesson in which students are creative right from the start. They do a shared writing activity as a class before analysing an extract from John McGregor's If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. This is an exemplary piece of descriptive writing entirely based on sounds. Students then start to plan their own piece of descriptive writing about a most loved or hated placed based entirely on sound. This then leads into students writing a descriptive piece about three paragraphs long that could be used as a writing assessment.

Print off the slides in the presentation, mix them up, and issue them to pairs or groups. Students to match the opening line to the correct story.

Issue Belfast Confetti ‘Wordle’ to students. Explain that the Wordle contains the entire poem, with the prepositions removed. All that’s there is the core vocabulary; these lexical words provide the meaning of the poem. Tell students that you want them to sort the words into lexical sets (groups of words that are associated by meaning), categories essentially. Ask students to invent their own groupings and categories and find their own associations: for example, punctuation or place names. Students may then decide to create thematic categories. Through this activity students can ‘discover’ patterns of meaning, for instance underlying metaphors, before reading the poem and seeing them revealed in the true context of the whole text.

A 30-minute activity for students to understand what makes a great story opening. Students analyse some of the world's most renown story openings, they identify what's effective about them and then they use their new-found knowledge to craft their own enticing story opening. There are 13 story openings including The Lovely Bones, Orwell's 1984, Jane Eyre and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - a real mix for students to get their teeth into. I dare say this activity may encourage some students to read the books after being drawn in by some of the openings.

This resource takes students through the process of reading and understanding an exam question. It encourages students to look closely at the wording and dissect the question before they even consider answering it. All too often students glance at the question and make a start on the answer. This resource helps students see why it's so important to really engage with the question. You can swap the questions on the PPT and activity with exam questions that are relevant to what your class is studying.

Assign different foci to pairs or groups either before reading or as a separate task for them to explore the play. Students are to find quotations relevant to their theme/symbol. After the task, students may teach other pairs/groups about their theme or symbol.

This exam question PEE plan is applicable to all questions on AQA's English Literature Paper 1. It allows a space for the question, and then separates it off into the two bullet points, then allowing students space to plan their PEE paragaphs. Students find this plan very clear and simple to use. It allows them to organise their thoughts and plan a coherent exam response.