These quick starters are all self-mark and focus on vocabulary and spelling.

The advantage of this ‘jigsaw’ way of preparing students to write an essay answer is that they will write much more, it will be well thought through and weaker students will benefit from working collaboratively, while more able students will spark each other. It can work with any text with a bit of tweaking and the resource can be adapted to suit your class. This work will cover several lessons, with the lesson PP giving clear instructions. The written guide gives the teacher the steps to follow as well as sharing friendly advice born of experience. The 'Methods' sheet lists the methods if required and the checklist helps students make sure their essays meet the criteria for top marks. A 'Targets'PP facilitates your marking and feedback to students. A print version of the targets enables you to give a set to each student if you don't think writing out their own target warrants the time.

A first reading of the eponymous short story is best done privately as some students need to adjust to the graphic descriptions. So this is ideal as holiday homework before class reading begins; best made available electronically. If students have their own texts, highlighting different aspects or threads in different colours is really useful - the PP alerts students to the strands they need to notice as well as giving a link to the original tale, which they may not know. The vocabulary activity is best done digitally, but remember when uploading it to the VLE to remove the answer page! Answers can be projected in the next lesson. This is a good opportunity to discuss the 'body language' of a text - here the obscure vocabulary makes the reader experience what the character feels [confusion, a world more sophisticated etc].

These starters feel like games, right from the choice of icon [let students pick as a reward], which is hyper-linked to the task. From making words to choosing the most apt word, the aim is to make students more aware of the vast array of words available to them. There are 7 starters with answers, making self- and peer-assessment quick and easy. Two of the tasks have paper texts to help weaker students or speed-up the task.

As these 4 terms, denotation/connotation; explicit/implicit, come up throughout KS3 & 4, it is worth taking time to ensure that weaker students understand them. Included are the 'notes' students will be making from the power point, with key words written in a 'join the dots' font for the slow and those whose handwriting is illegible. This lesson can be used with any topic where the terms feature in lessons, or as a stand-alone literacy task.

Each game is a 9-letter word for students to find and then use to make 4-or more- letter words from. Vocabulary is a vital – and these 3 games are can be used as a starter or reward that focuses attention on their word-hoard [as the Anglo-Saxons called it]. Little and often is the best way to extend vocabulary and if it’s a game, so much the better. Each PP has a last slide with possible answer, so students can check their own or each other's work and you won't have to do a thing!

Although these poems were both in the old OCR anthology and are easy to find online, they are given again on a handout to to enable the task to be done more easily as a cover or homework. The main worksheet is a fill-in which makes it suitable for all abilities - as extension more able students can work these ideas into a comparative essay. The second worksheet has possible answers in bold and can also be given out to students who have missed the work by way of catch-up help.

Part of the SPaG starter series, these two starters consist of an instruction slide, a handout for differentiation and an answer slide. The idea is to keep drip-feeding SPaG reminders by way of starters that are self mark. Here the focus is on prepositions and plurals. In each case as an extension activity students try to formulate a rule which is given with the answers.

The PP looks at what is meant by 'problem play' and quotes various opinions - the class should apply the quotes in discussion and explore to what extent they agree and find them helpful. Students can use these quotes either to sharpen their own insights or as supporting evidence in essays. End the lesson with a discussion or debate, as a class or in groups, about how they think the actors should end the play - does she or doesn't she?! The 'so what' worksheet is versatile as a starter or homework - its aim is to develop a sense of Shakespeare's like experience as a context for the play.

Starting with a visual and example of '3-D' writing including an 'X-factor' exercise, the PP focuses the lesson on structure both at sentence level and text level. The plenary sets a writing task based on the extract, where the superficial description is actually showing something more complex. The PP can easily be adapted for different abilities, just leave out the more demanding concepts till students are ready for them. The main part of the lesson is a close reading of an extract from Chapter 4 of James Joyce's 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', while the starter uses Stephen Crane's 'The red badge of Courage'. As such it is also a good resource for exposing students to a wide range of reading in preparation for their GCSE English exam.

We all know it is no revision at all to tell students to write loads of past papers in timed conditions – only a few would do it. These tasks lend themselves specifically to the revision of essay questions of any topic or content subject [R.E., Biology; English; History; Geography...] and all you have to do by way of preparation is apply the tasks to the specifics of your subject, particularly your exam board and provide some guidance as to where students can find information, whether that’s in the text book, online or reference books. Your exam board’s website should be able to provide you with sample questions, mark schemes and sample answers. Before using these tasks you will need to prepare the material, but chances are you’ll have it to hand anyway as it is what you’d be revising: this resource helps you approach it in a different way and gets the students actively involved in their revision. On the task prompt sheet is a ‘You will need’ list to help you prepare. Slide one has 6 images – choose any icon to click on in a way that engages the class [throw a di, ask a question, choose a quiet student to make the choice]. A hyperlink will take you straight to the relevant slide, where the tasks will come up in steps on your click [adapt the wording of these to suit your specifics if you wish]. At the end of the lesson ‘end show’ to get back to slide 1 for the next lesson. Each task is explained in your ‘recipe for success’ word document and alternatives or ways to differentiate suggested. The central idea is to get students helping each other while you facilitate only when required. And I’ve added a bonus task in recognition of the price rise – you should get at least 8 lessons out of this pack – Enjoy!

This resource focuses on AQA’s English Paper 2. Help your students ‘cast a spell’ on exams by making sure they know the criteria each question is judged on, the time available to answer questions and have a strategy for approaching each task - all summarised on this mat/poster [A4 or A3 printout]. The PP serves either as a quick class quiz to make sure they’ve taken note of the information - could be a quick starter for every lesson focusing on one question at a time - or as the answers to the question handout, which in turn could be a quick test, plenary or homework. If you’re handing back mock exams, this is a timely reminder of what you were looking for: useful for corrections. Otherwise, revision for the next exam!

Help your students ‘cast a spell’ on exams by making sure they know the criteria each question is judged on, the time available to answer questions and have a strategy for approaching each task - all summarised on this mat/poster [A4 or A3 printout]. The PP serves either as a quick class quiz to make sure they’ve taken note of the information - could be a quick starter for every lesson focusing on one question at a time - or as the answers to the question handout, which in turn could be a quick test, plenary or homework. If you’re handing back mock exams, this is a timely reminder of what you were looking for: useful for corrections. Otherwise, revision for the next exam!

The focus on this resource is AO1. First an exam type test which follows the style of the AO1 questions in both papers - the point is to focus attention on the skill of finding explicit and implicit information, as well as to show how tasks become progressively more demanding. This can be set as a previous hwk or a lesson starter. Remind students to be aware of time constraints, but allow time for reading. The answers to these questions are given on the PP. Next the focus is on the summary question, using 'AQA-87002-Q2-FI-TS GCSE P2 teaching synthesis' and making it accessible to students with explanations of quotes from AQA's directive. This gives students confidence in the instructions you give them. The sample answer comes from the same directive, with an explanation of the implications of the choice of approach.

A word of the week is a great way to start a lesson and kids love using the new word, but don't think you can't use this resource if you haven't been doing the weekly words - simply print out each slide sans the WOW heading and display them in the classroom or put them on a 'help-desk' and turn the task into a Thesaurus lesson. The wordsearch is not one of those mindless exercises that have brought the genre into disrepute: here students need to find the WoW from the definition and list the words that need to be found. The favourite trick of highlighting anything that looks like a word has been thwarted by there being lots of words that aren't on the list - students lose a mark if they have highlighted an irrelevant word. Alternatively [or for another day] there's a spelling test. Answers make both tasks easy self-mark tasks.

• You will need the specimen paper for Unseen Poetry – p10 & 11, AQA/AQA-77121-SQP.PDF- for each student. • The Power Point will give students a strategy to follow for this paper – annotating the specimen paper, then writing the key ‘steps’ of the strategy is a good way of ensuring students engage with the strategy, but a handout has been made for revision. Some suggested questions can be used by you as a guide for setting essays or given to students for their own revision.

The recipe for success describes lessons 1 and 2, introducing students to the contextual differences that make up the 19th Century world. In lesson 2, for which PP and extracts are provided here, the idea is to get students noticing the writers’ choices by changing them and thinking of their own choices. Short extracts from a range of writers are given on the extract sheet for analysis and /or changing. Instructions and a brief extract as model are given on the PP. PS The title 'Fiction and non-fiction' refers to the UNIT or COMPONENT of the syllabus, rather than this particular resource. However, a non-fiction extract has been added to extend the scope of the lesson.

Help more able students develop their powers of description with this exercise; although it uses colour to create mood and atmosphere, the technique can be transferred to sustaining metaphors or similes, skills top marks are made of. The PP begins with a hyperlink[click on ‘colours’] to a song, Donovan’s ‘Colours’ [you may want to move to slide 2 on the musical interlude, as by then the link between colours and mood has been made] and takes students through the steps of choosing a colour while also making useful notes on the technique by looking at quotes and extracts. In the end, their task is to describe something, weaving colour imagery and mood words through the description. This could be set as a homework – or a next lesson. Linking this task to the opening lines descriptive writing task as a follow up lesson works well.

The first Power Point gives contextual information about the Great Exhibition and a visual impression of the Crystal Palace. The handout consists of two 19th century non-fiction articles: an extract from a letter writer by Charlotte Brontë to her father about her visit to the exhibition and then extracts from Queen Victoria’s diary about her visits. There are simple questions on each passage reflecting the type of question that may be asked at GCSE: retrieval and inference. Then there are questions comparing the texts. Once students have answered the questions, they can self- or peer assess work as the answers are on a Power Point slide that can guide feedback. These extracts can also be used in conjunction with ‘The Diamond Necklace’ by Guy de Maupassant. For a modern writer’s version of the Great Exhibition, you could read Queenie’s description of her visit in Andrea Levey’s Small Island.

Here the focus is on crafting paragraphs for effect, as part of improving the quality of creative writing at both KS3- particularly in preparation for the new spec. English exam - and KS4, enabling students ‘to demonstrate their narrative and descriptive skills in response to a written prompt, scenario or visual image’... For more able students the lesson ends with a challenge to change the mood between the opening paragraphs and the one students go on to write.