A collection of 5 fiction short stories from the AQA telling tales section followed by space for active reading activities and comprehension tasks.

This sequence of lessons could last between three and five lessons depending on ability. It is easily adaptable, but is full of challenging and creative tasks to stretch and support a range of abilities. A great introduction to poetry and techniques, showing students how to annotate and structure a response also. It also analyses Still I Rise in great detail. This sequence has a lot of scaffolding, which can easily be removed for higher ability.

This is a fun set of lessons I designed recently to aid those on their Language Paper 2 Examination and general transactional writing. The lessons are designed to be engaging; the students will be scaffolded to writing a persuasive writing piece. It can easily be differentiated (I personally use Bronze, Silver and Gold for my class). Resources: I have included the Martin Luther King extract from ‘I Have A Dream’. This can easily be adapted to other speeches. Barack Obama, JFK and monologues from US Talk Shows are current but must be sensitively used. As for the video game research, I would recommend using five or six articles around the room. Use the most up to date articles you can and therefore print off according to the date of use. Interactive Elements: Check and adapt depending on software and model. Very easily adapted.

A worksheet to support academic reading of Roylott’s introduction - Sherlock finalising ideas in ‘The Speckled Band’.

A resource to explore COMH by John Agard using evidence-based strategies to engage students in academic reading tasks.

A unit of work exploring ‘Ghost Stories’ and tackling reading skills for individual classes/students. This booklet has room to develop ideas, challenge, and differentiate tasks (we do this based on Accelerated Reader data). Through these lessons, students develop: annotation skills, comprehension skills, decoding, tackling tier-2 language, and many other skills. The final task is a competition where students create and perform their own ghost story based on the extracts and short stories they have read each week.

An extract from ‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ with accompanying academic reading resource - focusing on pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading. An extract to be used for AQA Language Paper 1, Q1/Q2.

A lesson exploring sensory imagery in travel texts, building towards a crafted paragraph utilising sensory imagery.

A single lesson exploring the poem ‘London’ by William Blake in the Power and Conflict GCSE cluster.

A single lesson (easily adapted to two with analytical response) exploring the context, message, and poetic devices in the poem, Valentine. Aimed at a MA/HA Year 8 class.

A double lesson exploring Gothic settings with a focus on ‘The Little Stranger’ and ‘Rebecca’. All resources are included in the PowerPoint and formatted for books.

A collection of over 20 ‘Knowledge Recall Starters’ for KS4 studies.

A Fantasy fiction lesson exploring the appearance of Gollum to develop annotation and inference skills.

Lesson Four: Evaluating Fairy Tales Students will develop an understanding and appreciation of how writers successfully use description in their writing by exploring crafting of writing in ‘The Ickabog’. To begin with, the lesson recaps and identifies important subject terminology. Teachers should set a quiz on any misconceptions. Lesson Five: Famous Fairy Tale Subversions As students have developed an understanding of fairy tales in week one, supported with their homework tasks, this week explores fairy tales and how famous writers have subverted them in the past. This lesson explores The Brothers Grimm and Charles Perault. Lesson Six: Crafting Fairy Tale Descriptions To identify early progress, students will describe a typical fairy tale setting using the knowledge developed from the previous lessons studying The Brothers Grimm and Charles Perault. Weekly Overview: By the end of the week, students should be able to plan a description based on fairy tale conventions and begin to subvert expectations in the style of The Brothers Grimm and Charles Perault.

A two-part, fully resourced lesson introducing students to fairy tales, including conventions. Lesson Two: What are fairy tales Students will gain an initial understanding of the genre to support their homework research, which will include conventions and key-terms to be utilised throughout the topic. Students should be informed of their assessment task and informed of the skills they will need to develop over the course of this term. Lesson Three: Fairy tale conventions Students will explore and identify the conventions in fairy tales. This lesson should link, yet differentiate the conventions in Fantasy fiction (Term 5 SOL). Week Overview: By the end of the week, students need an understanding of what makes a fairy tale, common conventions, different types of fairy tales, and the oral origins of the genre.

Lesson Seven: Freytag’s Narrative Structure This lesson, students will develop their understanding of Freytag’s narrative structure by exploring ‘Aschenputtel’ by The Brothers Grimm. Developing on from last week’s study of famous subversions of fairy tales, students will now move onto the structure of these texts and how this will be utilised in their end of term assessment. Lesson Eight: Fairy Tale Settings Using Shrek as a stimulus and pastiche of the genre, students will explore typical settings in fairy tales. To assess progress, students will complete a short baseline writing task of a setting description, which can be used in their end of term writing during the exposition. Lesson Nine: Archetypal Characters Building on from settings, students will explore archetypal characters in fairy tales and how writers and pop-culture challenge these stereotypes. Students will debate why it is important that we have visible challenges to stereotypes in wider society. Following on from this, students will once again develop their writing by crafting a brief paragraph on a character. Weekly Overview: This week, students will begin to craft settings and character descriptions which can be incorporated into their own assessment response at the end of term. Furthermore, we continue to explore how and why writers subvert character, setting, and plot.

A single transition lesson for Year 5/Year 6 students on their taster day. The lesson introduces English at secondary level, explores what makes a successful description, evaluates character description, and then allows students to create their own. Uses Shrek as a stimulus for fantasy writing.