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.

This is a 6-7 week scheme of work that can be adapted to suit your needs, but it basically leads students up to pitching their idea for a new type of fast food restaurant. Essentially, it leads up to a very engaging speaking and listening assessment. Students must learn to work in a team with different roles. They must learn to delegate tasks based on students' differing abilities. The SOW involves mind mapping, problem-solving and decision-making. Having done this SOW with students before, it really does get their creative juices flowing. They end up taking it very seriously and really do think about their restaurant's brand name, slogan, logo, target audience, USP, appropriate location etc. The competitive element of the SOW really engages boys as well. Not only do students hone their speaking and listening skills, but they gain a basic understanding of how to create a business that will be successful when considering several different factors. The SOW is all included within the PowerPoint with 'notes' added to most slides to be completely self-explanatory. The PowerPoint contains 31 slides, which are very easy to follow and tell students exactly what they need to do.

This resource offers a reading question, an essay plan and key word definitions. This essay was used as the reading assessment for a high ability Year 9 group studying Shakespeare's Macbeth. Essay Question: Starting with this speech, explain how far you think Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a tragic hero. Assessment Objectives A01 – Maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response, and use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations. A02 – Analyse language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate A03 – Show understanding of the contexts in which texts were written A04 – Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.

Issue the worksheet to students and ask them to identify whether the line comes from Shakespeare or a contemporary singer. After 5-10 minutes, go through the answers using the soundtrack to show which lines are from contemporary singers. The exercise proves to students that contemporary singers use similes, metaphors and other poetic techniques in the same way Shakespeare did.

The first sentence of an article (often printed in bold, or capitals, or a larger font) is called the topic sentence, as it introduces the main topic/subject of the article. It aims to give you the whole story in one go – who, what, where, why and when. Explain that it’s imperative that a writer is clear, concise and correct in their topic sentence. Issue Topic Sentences to pairs of students. Ask them to write down the five Ws and see how many their topic sentence answers. Students will see how concise the topic sentence is, and what questions have been left unanswered. After 5 minutes, ask students to swap their topic sentence with another pair and do the same. Discuss: How well were the topic sentences written? How could they have been improved? (PW) Display PowerPoint. Ask students to use the facts displayed to have a go at writing their own topic sentence. Show students the sentence written in the Daily Mail article (slide 3). Discuss how they’ve focused on the mother at the start of the sentence. Students to swap their topic sentences with a partner to see whether it answers the 5 Ws. This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Using the PowerPoint, explain to students the three main types of newspaper writing – news stories, features and opinion pieces. Students should make notes in their books as you explain to them. Quick test (slide 6): Ask students to decide whether the headlines are for news, features or opinion pieces. They should explain what clues helped them, e.g. the use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ Issue the three Articles to pairs. Students are to decide which one is the news story, the feature article and the opinion piece. Students are to read the articles closely. Under the headings of ‘news stories’ ‘features’ and ‘opinion pieces’ in their book, students are to identify word level features in the different types of writing. Display slide 7 on the PowerPoint to assist students. But encourage students to be open-minded about what the find. Differentiation: some features will need explaining. For lower ability groups, delete tricky features as appropriate. After activity, ask students to explain what language features they're likely to find in a features article/news story/opinion piece? This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Readers want to consume the news as quickly as possible; they don’t want to excavate nuggets of meaning from mountains of words. The news needs to be written clearly, concisely and correctly – THE 3 BIG C’s. Illustrate with the following: Write on the board ‘FRESH FISH SOLD HERE’ The fishmonger had a sign which said ‘FRESH FISH SOLD HERE’. The fishmonger had a friend who persuaded him to rub out the word FRESH – because naturally he wouldn’t expect to sell fish that wasn’t fresh; to rub out the word HERE – because naturally he’s selling it here, in the shop; to rub out the word SOLD – because naturally he isn’t giving it away. And finally to rub out the word FRESH – because you can smell it a mile off. Using the same principle, you can ask students which words they could remove and why. Explain that vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a machine has no unnecessary parts. This doesn’t mean that the writer should make every sentence short, or avoid all detail. It just means that every word should TELL. Issue Wasteful Words sheet. Discuss the example; check understanding. Students to complete the sheet by giving the sentences a good butchering. Students to to try to make the sentences crisper, shorter and more to the point. The underlined words indicate where wasteful words are being used. After activity, ask students to complete the following sentence in their book. Writers have to be economical with language when writing the news because… This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

This resource offers a fun way of researching context. Before the lesson print of the questions and put them into colour-coded piles. You'll need as many questions are you have groups of students. For example, if you have 6 groups, you must of 6 print-outs of the questions. You'll need 6 x yellow questions, 6 x green questions, 6 x blue questions etc. Put students in teams of 3-4 students. Students must have immediate access to a laptop or computer to be able to find the answers to the questions. You need to put the piles of questions on your desk. Issue Q1 to all groups and 1 answer sheet to all groups. Groups must find the answer to Q1, write it down on their answer sheet and then bring their answer sheet to you. If the answer is correct, you issue them with Q2, and so on until groups have found all the answers to all the questions. It is basically a race to the finish, but the answers must be of quality because you have to 'okay' them before they're issued with the next question. Students enjoy the competitive element of this task. You may wish to give the winning group a small prize as an added incentive. Discuss the contextual research once the task is over and discuss its links with the play.

Listen to Iron Maiden’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (8 minutes). This is an edited version of the original track as the original track has a lot of instrumentals! Issue lyrics. Students are to follow in order to gauge an understanding of the story. Issue the pictures on A4 paper to individual students. On a sticky note, they’re to describe what’s in the picture. They’re to then try and work out in what order the pictures go. They can refer to the lyrics to help them. It’s all speculation at the moment; try to work it out. This should help them to understand the narrative structure. Afterwards, students are to discuss what they think happens in the story from beginning to end. They should write their plot summary as a list on a piece of A3 paper as a pair and/or group. This should give them an understanding of the narrative structure.

Place the photographs around the room before the start of the lesson. Tell students that placed around the room are some of the most iconic photographs ever captured. Ask students to walk around the room, view the pictures, read the information and decide which one the most powerful impact. Why? Ask: How important are photographs in newspapers? Do you think it would be possible to run a front page which did not have a photograph with it? Why/why not? Ask: Are there times when using photographs is not justified? Ask students to look at the list and decide what they think. - Pictures taken of celebrities without their permission - Brutal pictures of people hurt or killed in war or violence (The Falling Man 9/11 and Death in Africa caused controversy) - Page 3 semi-naked shots Students to write a short response in their books, giving reasons for their answers. This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Students complete two starter activities in the PPT that ask them to improve sentences to make them more dramatic and impactful. Students then look at Chapter 25 in which Michael's sister is described. Issue the Worksheet and two different coloured highlighters. Students are to highlight the important features of language and structure in the extract. Allow 10-15 minutes. Discuss students' findings. Ask students what impact the features have. Display slide 6 which explains how to write an effective PEE paragraph. Students are to write 3 PEE paragraphs about what they've found in Chapter 25 in their books. After 10-15 minutes, ask students to share their best PEE paragraphs.

This is a fantastic starter, guaranteed to engage the most disaffected students. Students look at images and decipher the message. For example, there is the letter 'X' made of cardboard boxes in one image, the message would be 'X-Box'. The practice image is 'hairspray'. The answers for each 'visual pun' are in the 'notes' box on PPT. This is a quick 5-10 minute starter that gets students thinking about more than what's at surface level. This activity could be a route into a lesson on looking for deeper meanings, inference and deduction.

This will ultimately be a revision aid for students studying texts through a narrative lense. They are asked to break a text down into its narrative building blocks and create a summary for each narrative block. On the actual resource there are prompts for each building block to help elicit a response. THE 7 NARRATIVE BUILDING BLOCKS: SCENES AND PLACES TIME AND SEQUENCE CHARACTERS VOICES IN THE STORY POINT OF VIEW DESTINATION

Put students into 6 groups and issue each group one section of the Wife of Bath and one translation sheet. Students are spend 3 minutes with each section and write the modern translation on their translation sheet. IMPORTANT: Students must make sure they write their translation in the correctly numbered space on the sheet to ensure it's in order at the end of the task. They're to use the helpful hints to guide them. After students have had all 6 sections, they're to read out what they've translated. Discuss as a class.

As part of students' study of Anne Fine's play Flour Babies, they can adopt an egg to look after during the holidays. You will need as many hard boiled eggs as you have students in the class to do this activity. Students are talked through the adoption process before signing an official adoption certificate. Students are required to complete a 'baby book' to record their experiences. This obviously emulates what the characters have to do with a bag of flour in the play.

A starter which explains the three different sentence types with examples, making reference to main clauses, subordinate clauses and embedded clauses. Ideal to use as an introduction to a piece of creative/descriptive writing where you'd expect students to use varied sentences.

Explain to students that Macbeth is going to write a letter to Lady Macbeth explaining the decision he’s arrived at. He should either persuade Lady Macbeth to give up on her ideas, or concede that Lady Macbeth might have a point, and he wants to go through with it. This could be written up in full as a writing assessment. This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.

These are two little sheets to stick in the front of students' books. The 'marking key' is a simple guideline for students to understand your own little codes and markers that you use when marking their books. You would fill this in together at the start if the year by writing your own symbols on the board. The 'personal targets' sheet is for students to self-assess themselves at the start of the year. This allows you as a teacher to gauge an understanding of how the students self-assess. It is useful to look back on this at different points during the year to see whether students think they've made progress in certain areas.

This resource offers a comprehensive list of techniques used by the media to influence consumers. This list can be used in a variety of ways. Students could use it to identify techniques used in adverts or they could use it to create their own advert. There are 15 different techniques listed: Association Bandwagon Beautiful People Bribery Celebrities Experts Explicit Claims Fear Humour Intensity Maybe Plain Folks Repetition Testimonials Warm & Fuzzy

Issue Characteristics of a Shakespearean Hero to pairs. Read through. Students are to find evidence for the characteristics; some have been done for them. After this activity, ask students: What is your personal response to Macbeth? Is he a likeable character? Do you feel sorry for him? Or do you think he deserves everything he gets? This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.