What This Resource Includes 11 Steps: Just Tell Me What to Do Sample Question What the mark scheme says Why students should always write about complex sentences How to write great complex sentences in students’ own writing How to write about contrast and juxtaposition Model text, based on Brighton Rock 3 Further texts for practice: Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist, Household Worlds extracts Model Answer, to get 100% Model Answer which can be written in the 12 minute time limit, to get 100% 15 skills to learn from the model answer How to move on from PEE paragraphs so students can write more in fewer words, and sound like an expert 10 great jokes

AO1: The Ability to Quote and Explore Interpretations, Including Personal Response The presentation takes students through these four skills: Begin with the author’s purpose Link the author’s purpose to symbolism Refer to the characters as a construct Propose an alternative interpretation Watch my video to see how to teach it.

This comprehensive analysis of all 5 questions breaks down AQA Paper 2 into a series of very clear do's and don'ts that students and teachers can easily follow. Examples accompany the advice. The PowerPoint slides are all linked to videos on my YouTube channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, so it is much easier to see how to apply the advice.

What this resource includes: 10 Steps: Just tell me what to do Sample Question 4 Student misconceptions The marks scheme explained Exam tactics Glossary of terms: 15 of them, with 3 examples of each Sample texts: The 39 Steps, by John Buchan, CHAPTER ONE, The Man Who Died Sample texts: Call of the Wild, Jack London, Chapter I. Into the Primitive 11 techniques to teach from these extracts What does the examiner really want? Model Question Model Answer Colour coded Model Answer to show how to get rid of PEE paragraphs and write like an expert The Magic Finger: the technique for finding quotations to write about 14 Skills common to questions 3 and 4

This resource has numerous examples of language features for you to teach your students how to both recognise the writer’s craft, and use them in their own writing. Here is a sample: Juxtaposition: two things that are put close together in order to emphasise the difference between them. • “Give us a pound, mister,” said the beggar, scrolling through the internet on his phone. • The mother, tortured with pain, now smiled beatifically, while the baby, newly released, screamed incessantly. • While the battle raged, the generals sat behind the front lines, drinking beers and stuffing three course meals. Repetition: repeating a word, phrase, or idea. This can be done to emphasise, to create a rhythm or tone, or to reveal a contrast or comparison. Register: In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular setting. What words give this the register of colloquial, American teenage language? “(Candace runs out to the backyard, she stares in shock upon seeing the rollercoaster, along with horror music) Candace: Phineas, what is this?! Phineas: Do you like it? Candace: Ooh, I’m gonna tell Mom, and when she sees what you’re doing, you are going down. (runs off) Down! Down! Down! D-O-W-N, down!” Which words deal with the idea of writing a novel? “In my mind, I continually entertain myself with fragments of narrative, dialogue and plot twists but as soon as I’m in front of a blank page, they evaporate. I feel stuck. Sometimes I think I should give up, but I have convinced myself that if I can find a way to write more freely and suppress my inner critic, I could finally finish that first draft.”

AQA likes to test the novel by asking students to compare Pip to another character. This is my top tip for 2018. Students often struggle to find interesting comparisons and fail to write about Dickens’ purpose. This resource introduces four big ideas which will allow your students to write confidently about Dickens’ purpose. It also provides 20 ideas and 20 quotations for them to use in their essay. Most quotations, as you can see, are detailed, so that you can give your students practice in selecting judiciously, and so that they learn to embed quotations in their sentences. Below is a sample of the first 4 ideas:

Dickens is a master of his craft, but by God, you can tell he was paid by the word, can’t you? Never was a man so in love with a sentence, loaded with clauses, garnished with phrases and then, to add to the confusion, the main clause tagged on at the end. What 16 year old wouldn’t struggle? I’ve abridged this great novel down to 20,000 words, from 27,000. That’s a quarter less time to read it, and a quarter more time to teach the content. Better than that, it actually makes for a more entertaining read. The conversation feels much more natural, and has some real pace. You can easily have your students taking parts. And of course, none of the essential quotations are left out! Here is a sample:

What if you could teach your students 3 key skills which would make their essays worth grades 7-9? What if you could show your students 7 mistakes students make, which reduce their marks? And then, what would happen if your students learned to correct those mistakes? Then they would get grades 7, 8 and 9. A poll of over 600 students on my YouTube channel shows that 79% of students think my resources earned them at least one extra grade, and 38% think that they went up by at least two grades. You can find the video which teaches this presentation on Mr Salles Teaches English so that your students can also dramatically improve their grade.

Propel students to top grades in their full understanding of the context of this poem. It is propaganda, we know. But teaching the rhyme scheme and dactyl metre reveals a surprising alternative, that Tennyson is horrified at the senseless slaughter of the soldiers. Students who understand ‘form and structure’ achieve at least grade 7. A video also explains everything, so your students can follow up the lesson with homework, or can use it as flipped learning before you teach the poem.

How do you get a student who is packing their description and narrative with too many adjectives and adverbs to pick them carefully. How do you help them choose when to speed action up, and when to slow it down? Sometimes this feels as though we have to get them to unlearn what we have taught them! It’s hard. But this lesson will help you do that quickly, and in a way your students will understand. A video goes with it, so you can see how I teach it. You also get a copy of the all the writing in Word, so it is easy to edit and print off. It gives the original version, and then the improved version. Also included is the rest of the story, which you an get your students to edit and rewrite in response to your teaching.

This resource is so comprehensive, that it also explains the whole of the play. Because the Inspector deals with every character, the whole play is covered. Because he is the proxy for Priestley’s viewpoint, every possible exam question can be answered simply by knowing this resource. Can your students do without it? Try a flavour of it in this extract:

This comprehensive and beautiful resource teaches all the themes of An Inspector Calls. It is filled with detail which will help most students access grade 7, and the more able to get grades 8 and 9. It summarises most of The Mr Salles Guide to An Inspector Calls, which you can see on Amazon https://amzn.to/2DDPl91 Each PPT slide can be printed as a revision card there are 32 in total. A video showing you how to teach from it is also included. You can play this to your class, or pick out the salient points you want to cover yourself.

This very focused PPT takes an extract from Bleak House to show you 7 secrets of Dickens' description, including how to use contrast, why metaphor and personification trump metaphor, the power of listing and the subtlety of alliterative sound and rhythm. When we look at marking criteria we tend to befuddle the students with lists of descriptive techniques. Notice that listing, rhythm and contrast probably don't make it onto most teachers' lists, but these are the most powerful ways of improving their description. The kind of all writing techniques, or indeed the queen, is the use of the right verb. Dickens masters that too. The resource will also be linked to a video you can use to teach this, or plan your teaching from. Also included is the extract from Bleak House in Word.

Not only do you get a great story to teach from, but it is 630 words long, so your students can write the same amount in the exam. Better than that, you can teach how to use the picture as a springboard to writing the story, without them stressing. Crucially, you can teach your students to write a story, under exam pressure, WITHOUT HAVING TO PLAN! The most helpful part is the free video which comes with it, to show you lots of ways of teaching the story to your class. There are 7 useful tips in the video: What’s holding you back in your writing? A fascinating fact about learning to swim and learning to drive, which will help you become a writer! A picture. A story and description. How an expert thinks as they write, which will help you think like an expert. How to have fun in the exam. No, I really mean it! And obviously, how to write a brilliant description or story which will get you full marks (unless you can’t punctuate, but that is another video). As you will see from the extract below, it is particulary useful for teaching boys! “Obviously, the cooler part of my brain, the mixed martial art aficionado part, registered that I was about to get my ticket punched, so obviously I kept on ducking. Unfortunately, as you’ve seen by now, this wasn’t the most active part of my brain and so, like South West Trains, it had arrived a little late, and bam, there it was: fist, face – fiddlesticks.” Although it is in Word, I’ve spaced the paragraphs and font so that it will fill your screen a paragraph at a time, like a PPT.

Here is the beginning: Princess Mathilde and Cupid’s Arrow Mathilde knew she looked amazing. But then it was her duty as a princess. She loved being the centre of attention, loved dressing up: the chiffon and silk; the velvet, the fun of display. She was a girl, wasn’t she? She was sixteen. Her father, the warrior king, McArthur Glen the Great, was a wonderful father, she had to admit, but he was still first and foremost a king. And a king is bound by tradition, much the same as a princess. So, today was Suitor Day, when the 16-year-old princess must begin the long and frustrating selection of a husband. They would compete for her in an archery contest. Problem number one: she was beautiful, but Mathilde didn’t want a husband. Problem number two: the suitors on offer, even if she had been in the market to buy, wouldn’t have made her part with a bag of farthings, let alone gold. Jacob the Just from the McDuff clan was ‘duff’ by name and nature, and ‘Just’ about had a brain, was skinny and ‘just’ barely male.

This story is written to model exactly what students should do to write a story that they can finish within 40 minutes, which is roughly the amount of writing time they get at GCSE. There are no published stories of around 500 words, so I have begun to write my own. Writing one on a real character takes away the fear of planning - students already know how the story starts. You get a comprehensive PowerPoint with the story on it. The first section explicitly teaches skills that English teachers may be ignoring. a. The Power of Verbs b. How to introduce the character in an interesting way c How to use humour, not jokes d How to build tension using contrast and juxtaposition e How dialogue must reveal character before plot f The power of repetition and rule of three, or triplets, in building a rhythm h Paragraphing for impact The second half of the PowerPoint teaches more conventional story telling skills, with an additional focus on the importance of sound. a. Metaphor b. Similes c. Personification d. Alliteration e. Assonance, Half Rhyme and Hidden Alliteration Finally, you also get a completely free video on how to teach this at: http://bit.ly/WriteAboutARealCharacter All the PowerPoint slides are included in the video, so you can see how to teach each skill explicitly. If you would like copies of the story, it is available as a separate resource.

This PPT is linked to 10 videos on my YouTube channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, so you can see how it works. The idea is that students learn exactly how to analyse an extract, and how to link it to the rest of the novella. Moreover, the quotations analysed and the links made will fit any extract question from any other of the 9 chapters.

This resource teaches students how to take even ordinary people they know and shape a story round them. Teach 7 techniques which guarantee a good story. It shows them how to structure what they know so that it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It illustrates how to craft the ending with a twist. It provides the full short story, as well as questions to help students realise how it is put together, so that they can plan and write their own. The story is also provided in Word form, so you can adapt it for your class, or annotate it with them, or print it for them.

Here’s the beginning. I hope you like it. Dear Bedroom, Two years after my mother died, I think of you. When did childhood end? Was it when I gave the eulogy, told the impossible, hilarious, tragic, extraordinary life she had? There were earlier endings. At five, my grandmother died, and I didn’t speak for a week. You remember me then, in the womb of your white walls, weeping, kicking against the sides, against the tides, against death. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Leaving Spain was another death – when dad left, and mum started dating the bank robber, and the dream of Disneyland died, our savings taking us only as far as Canada – right continent, wrong country. I didn’t say goodbye, or send you a postcard from the border, leaving the sun and crossing into the snows. Nor a photograph, a snapshot of me ballooning to eleven stone: ten years old, and a giant snowball of a kid, out of place. Yes, that was a kind of ending, but really, I think the damage was already done, further back, when you still knew me.