Empower your teaching with this customisable Learning Targets Poster - an adaptable tool for clearly communicating targets and keeping students aligned and engaged! Created in PowerPoint, just click on the elements to add your targets - or print it off and put them in by hand. This comes with a Word document - students are introduced to the idea of emerging, consolidated, or established - and can track their own targets. LEVEL & VOCATIONAL AREA - in this area simply type in something relevant for your institution… Enjoy!

This pack of picture questions is designed for (AQA) GCSE English Language 9-1. They simulate Paper 1 Question 5. Often this can become a little boring for the students as they are given picture after picture to write about. This tries to be a little different. In this case the pictures are of child prisoners from the Victorian era with a small bio of each (age, crime, punishment). Altogether, ten prisoners are pictured (all ten are 100% real-life cases) - five girls and five boys. There is also some background history about the kind of places underage Victorian lawbreakers ending up - altogether not very pleasant - with some discussion suggestions. It may well tie in with things that your students have studied in their history classes. I hope that you will be able to use this pack to help you increase the story-telling powers of your learners as well as their descriptive prowess - and to bring these children who have been “hidden from history” back to life. The pack gives teachers the opportunity to have a selection of ready-made questions for Paper 1 Question 5. These can be used to ensure that there are always writing tasks at hand. They might be used to stimulate class or small group discussion or can be used as interchangeable exercises to be done during a session. I hope that there is a sufficient variety of images in this pack to pique the interest of even the most reluctant of writers. By giving your learners a choice of task (while the assessment objectives - A05 and A06 remain the same) these sample questions might help to ensure both differentiation and an element of choice. Each is formatted to include the question on a single A4 sheet. The originals are also included on their own if you would like to edit them. Plus if it’s easier for you - PDFs are also included of all files. They would probably also be very useful if you are covering a class - the skills that students develop with these questions are vital for success in GCSE English as this question alone represents 25% of the entire exam. All of the wonderful pictures have been ethically sourced and are available under a Creative Commons license which means you do not have to worry about copyright with them at all. Each originator is credited by use of a link to the original.

This is a beautifully presented set of 50 “Do Now” activities to increase student participation and resilience in their creative and transactional writing. They feature a cute alien called Helkor (from the planet Halcyon, don’t you know) who is a little confused by the English lessons he is experiencing in his new school. These 50 Do Nows will help Helkor - and your students - spark their imagination and develop their writing skills in short, very active bursts. Whether it’s crafting vivid descriptions, exploring emotions through dialogue, or coming up with fresh story ideas, these exercises are designed to help everyone get their creative juices flowing. Your support will help Helkor- and your students - build confidence and improve their writing in a fun, engaging way! Some of these activities are very short – such as the editing a sentence ones (to include similes, adverbs and so on). Others are a little longer but ideally suited to mixed ability classes where some will produce longer and more sophisticated responses than others. However, they are also very adaptable. For example, I have included one “Do Now” where students have to write about Paper 1 Question 3. You have up to 11 more “Do Nows” by simply tweaking the slide to ask the same of a different exam question. Likewise, the other “Do Nows” are very easy to adapt to your own ideas. These Do Nows were created in an attempt to increase the resilience of my students when it comes to writing in a (supposedly!) familiar way about unexpected subjects. I call it “exam paralysis” – when students sit in an exam for five, ten, fifteen minutes or more, apparently doing nothing. They are so unused to writing spontaneously and in time-constrained conditions that they freeze. This not only wastes valuable exam time, it stops them doing as well as they could (in terms of final grade). The “Helkor” set is designed without marking in mind – they are designed simply to develop the ability to write and edit quickly, developing voice and confidence. However, I will pace the room making comments and encouraging the writing process, of course! As these do not have “answers” as such, only responses, there is also they joy of hearing some of the students read these out loud. They are not a passive learning tool by any means – as they give other learners ideas about how to approach their own creative writing as well as a EBI (Even Better If) platform for a teacher to make suggestions. I have included a PDF of the file as well as the original PowerPoint presentations. The additional “image acknowledgment” file is to reassure that all images that have been used are in the public domain. (Sometimes it’s difficult to activate learning, especially at the beginning of the first session of the day or week. A great way to kickstart a class, assess prior learning and to give the students instant feedback is a “Do Now” activity.)

Mock exams are very useful but they often have to be facilitated over a number of classes, so this resource was developed in response to the need to measure students’ progress but to have the assessment take place over 60 minutes rather then 1 hour and 45. We also The documents included are: The progress test with embedded gap analysis Insert containing Source A and Source B Mark scheme Spreadsheet to automatically generate grades The progress test consists of: Two texts – one Victorian, one contemporary. The subject is “the rooms of teenage boys”. These are shorter than those one would find in the exams to reflect the reduced time students have to complete this. Question 1 – Now worth two marks rather than four. Question 2 (synthesising two texts) – Still worth 8 marks. Question 3 (language) – Now worth 10 marks rather than 12. This makes the Reading section of the paper worth 20 marks. Question 5 – This is now a 30 minute task which is worth 20 marks. It is a speech about what really matters in the life of a teenager. As you can see, Question 4 is left out altogether. When this resource was developed we thought it better to do this than to cut down the time for responses even further. Plus, we deliver the skills in the order that they appear in the exams. As such, at the time we were expected to do a progress test (just before the February half-term holiday), the students hadn’t adequately covered Q4. We decided that Q4 could wait until the full Paper 2 mock later in the term. EMBEDDED GAP ANALYSIS This is a reliable tool to support your students in preparing for their GCSE English Language exams and one I have been using with my own students for a while. These GAP Analysis resources (one each for Paper 1 and Paper 2) help teachers and students pinpoint strengths, identify areas for improvement, and set actionable targets for progress. Key Features: Comprehensive Skill Coverage: Includes self-assessment sections for the critical GCSE English skills (based on the breakdown of Assessment Objectives that appear in exam mark schemes). These are split into two sections – Reading and Writing. Target Setting: A dedicated section for students to set clear, achievable goals based on their mock exam performance. Example Actions List: Includes practical, ready-to-use suggestions to include as action descriptions when target setting. Why teachers where I work love it: This GAP Analysis provides a structured, student-friendly format that encourages meaningful reflection and targeted improvement. It’s a time-saving, flexible tool for classroom use or independent study. By empowering students to take ownership of their progress, you’ll help them build confidence and achieve their potential in GCSE English Language. I have included the documents in two formats – PDFs and Word. As such, you can edit them to suit you more, although I hope that you will be able to use these as they are without any changes.

This is a reliable tool to support your students in preparing for their GCSE English Language exams and one I have been using with my own students for a while - they are preparing for the AQA exams. These GAP Analysis resources (one each for Paper 1 and Paper 2) help teachers and students pinpoint strengths, identify areas for improvement, and set actionable targets for progress. Key Features: Comprehensive Skill Coverage: Includes self-assessment sections for the critical GCSE English skills (based on the breakdown of Assessment Objectives that appear in exam mark schemes). These are split into two sections – Reading and Writing. Target Setting: A dedicated section for students to set clear, achievable goals based on their mock exam performance. Example Actions List: Includes practical, ready-to-use suggestions to include as action descriptions when target setting. Why teachers where I work love it: This GAP Analysis provides a structured, student-friendly format that encourages meaningful reflection and targeted improvement. It’s a time-saving, flexible tool for classroom use or independent study. By empowering students to take ownership of their progress, you’ll help them build confidence and achieve their potential in GCSE English Language. I have included the documents in two formats – PDFs and Word. As such, you can edit the gap analysis to suit you more, although I hope that you will be able to use these as they are without any changes. Please note that if you intend to use this for all classes in your department you should purchase a “school licence”. Thank you!