This is a fun lesson designed to help engage the lower level students or students who are disengaged with GCSE English. The focus of this lesson is to use persuasive writing features within a review in order to help prepare students for paper 2 question 5 of the AQA English Language spec 8700 exam. This lesson uses 3 clips from the reality TV show "Worlds Worst Tenants" to develop ideas and opinions about the show to eventually be written up using DAFOREST. If you are having trouble with the video file (it is quite large but should work fine on a pen drive using VLC or windows player), I'm happy to send in an email it to you. The video contains bleeped language and use of mild curse words, however as I taught largely over 16 yr olds, this was not a problem, however you may ant to give it some consideration. Other resources include word banks, sentence starter support material and watch/obtain worksheets. There is room to expand on this lesson with basic punctuation and / or vocabulary building activities if needed. My students from GCSE and Construction Functional Skills loved this lesson. Hope it helps

A fun and engaging lesson which can be used in the run up to Halloween, although it can work at any time of the year. I have used this lesson for presentations with both GCSE and Functional Skills lessons and students love it as it involves dressing up someone in their team as a mummy and creating a backstory for it. This is a relaxed take on presentations and I use it to introduce and help more under confident students become used to standing up and presenting in front of others, it embeds elements such as working within a team and introducing structure and planning to presentations. This lesson starts with a few fun critical thinking questions and develops to look at Egyptian Mummies and the curses which surround them, there are two videos and supporting ideas boards to help the lesson move forwards and maintain structure but also to help the students form and plan out ideas. This session will require materials for the students to use, this doesn't have to be much as I have often only used bundles of cheap toilet roll, sellotape and cheap make-up from the pound shop ( in many cases students will often find their own materials to add to their mummy). Over the years of using this lesson I have kept left over materials and added to them each year that now I have a small dress up box in my classroom which has all sorts in it, I also take photos of this sessions which are ideal for classroom displays. This lesson also encourages imagination which some students do struggle with and so I find that Question 5 from Paper 1 on the AQA 8700 GCSE spec is difficult for them. Sessions like this can be used to help develop that skill and recently I have added a piece of independent study in which the students must write up the backstory they created for their mummy up as a piece of creative writing in practice for P1:Q5. Hope it helps

This complete lesson comes with extracts from Bill Bryson and Engles, worksheets and supporting materials. The focus of this lesson is looking at the writers points of view on the city of Manchester in order to create answers for paper 2 question 4 ( comparative question) Bill Bryson talks about the city in 1995 and Engles talks about the city in 1844. This lesson has enough content to fill a 3 hour session and is designed to gradually build the students confidence into tackling this question and developing an exam styled answer using a PQI-C answer structure. It does this with lots of quick paced activities, team and paired activities, short class discussion and through developing ideas and analysis of the two texts. Hope it helps

This is a full , informal and fun lesson put together based around the novel, Lord of the Flies. The lesson warms up the students with background information to Lord of the flies which includes group activities and a video (Thug Notes has low level use of cuss words, although many are beeped. I used this resource with 16-19 yr olds and so was allowed, however many other summary videos are available) This lesson can be used as an informal mock exam to help prepare and track students progress or it can be adapted to be used in a formal setting for exam preparation under exam conditions. Lord of the Flies was chosen as it may be a text your students are familiar with and so helps to make this exam less daunting. Materials include 2 worksheets (including extract) with a varied question structure for all levels, a video and question 1 - 5 based on paper 1 of the AQA 8700 spec.

Great bite sized assessment created to recreated question 4 from paper 1 on the AQA GCSE English Language exam. This assessment is based from the short story "Glass, Bricks and Dust". These bite sized assessments are a perfect tool for tracking individuals progress and for gaining a clear picture of which questions a student will have the most difficulty with come exam time. Hope it helps

This fantastic and fun lesson can be used with either AQA or Edexcel exam boards for GCSE English language. This lesson focuses on writing skills, emphasising ambitious vocabulary, developing language / structural features and writing for an audience. It is a perfect refresher to build on already taught skills and is an excellent lesson to use after a break or half term to re-inspire students and re-engage them in to English. This full lesson has enough material to fill 3 hours and can be used as one complete session or broken into 2 sessions, it is designed to re-awaken students imagination and uses plenty of bite sized group and team activities to encourage self motivation and independent learning. This session starts off with the "design your dream house" theme and uses MTV Cribs and plenty of stimulating visuals to inspire students and get their engines running. It ends with a look at Tolkiens description of a Hobbit Hole and the use of structural features used to engage his audience and bring them on a journey , therefore progressing students skill level from simple descriptive writing to something more sophisticated. The final main task is for the students to write a piece of mind blowing descriptive writing of their own dream house using all the skills covered. Resources include ppt of the full lesson with slides which can be printed and distributed, Hobbit extract with Q&A section, video with accompanying worksheet, writing scaffold, MTV cribs blurb sheet for those who don't know the programme. This lesson has engaged and inspired students every time I have used it and has lead to some really great pieces of writing. Hope it helps.

This lesson was a big hit amongst my students and co-workers as it is a stretch and challenge lesson designed to be used once the students are comfortable with identifying and explaining language features. It is a quick paced and fun lesson, with enough material to fill 3 hours and it can be used with either AQA or EDEXCEL GCSE English Language exam papers. Using a extract from Oscar Wilde’s A picture of Dorian Gray this lesson takes your students through ,step by step, a deeper thinking process to help them access tricker texts which may crop up in the exam - where the answers are not obvious but hidden. To do this, the resource uses a trailer from the movie, there are group and paired activities, group discussions to promote shared learning and develops your students self confidence in being able to formulate ideas and answers on their own merit. These tasks are all designed to help your students accumulate everything they need to answer the final question, which is structured how it would be in the live exam. Please be aware that TES preview can distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

Independent study resource to help students with identifying and using inference in their answers for paper 1 question 2. This resource uses extracts from The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, it helps students to break down the extract and to examine the language an author has used whilst also supporting students to use a structured answer format (point, quote, infer). Hope it helps

This resource is 5 pages worth of discussion points on the topic of social media. Social media is in everyone's lives yet the rules on how we interact with other, including businesses via these medias is fuzzy and unclear to those generations growing up within the digital age. This lesson is a speaking and listening activity designed to let small groups work interdependently to discuss the use of language and formal / informal constructs on social media in different contexts to help them think about their own personal use of language in different contexts. This can be used to build up towards or be used as a speaking and listening assessment. It can be adapted to suit your own preferred method of delivery or to help facilitate a larger group discussion rather than smaller, independent ones. Please be aware that at times, the preview on TES distorts the resource making things appear out of line etc, please note this is not how the finished product looks. Hope it helps

This is a brilliant resource I have used with both GCSE and Functional English students to help them understand bias writing and inference. I have an FE background and so encouraged to embed English into other disciplines, this resource was initially used to teach dance students however I quickly found that students from almost any discipline responded to this resource and so its compatibility naturally grew. Therefore this resource can be used when teaching Paper 2 Question 3 with AQA GCSE English Language students or L2 FS. This resource uses a clip from Americas Best Dance Crew, this dance troop are diverse in culture, gender and age - as the youngest is only 15, knowing small details like this can help students confidence and can go a little way to helping to break down barriers of gender and culture. It also allows the teacher to expand on these ideas and themes if they so wanted to. This lesson uses group and team discussion, allows the students to share and build on their own ideas therefore encouraging independent discovery and learning and looks into biased writing, identifying biased language and phrases and ends with a final writing task of their own with a peer marking assessment. The identifying task is designed to challenge and there are words banks to support the weaker students. This resource can be altered and developed further to suit your course and / or students if desired. Hope it helps

This speaking and listening lesson focuses around the conspiracy theory that Princess Diana was murdered. Students love this lesson because many students love a good conspiracy theory. This lesson comes with videos to help students get a full background of her life and events. It requires the students to work together to collect their own research and develop their own opinions and counter arguments which will form part of the group debate. The videos don’t come with additional worksheets although they can be created to help form part of the students research as and when you feel necessary. This lesson can be used with any exam board and also with functional skills SP & LIST. It can be developed to underpin skills such as identifying bias and critical thinking. Please be aware that TES preview can often distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This is a complete mock paper 2 exam for the AQA English Language 8700 spec. It features all questions from 1 - 5 in the style of AQA , The sources are a twitter war between Perez Hilton and Lady Gaga and a letter written in 1874 by the poet AC Swinburne, both documents tackle the issue of public slander and public arguments. Please keep in mind that the TES preview can often distort the look of the resource, it is not always a true reflection of the how the resource truly appears. Hope it helps

This is a small introduction to improving your students sentence structures which can be used with GCSE English of all exam boards and Functional English classes. The session is based around a YouTube sensation and TV star Michael Cthulhu who makes"Big Giant Swords". It comes with a full powerpoint, support material and 2 videos. The lesson has group activities and individual tasks and is fast paced. I find this lesson works well with students who have completely disengaged with English or with classes largely made up of male students. As I teach within a college I teach English to students who are in grouped in their core subjects, such as bricklaying or music etc and embedding English into fun subjects such as these helps to break the barriers to learning. It is only an introduction so feel free to tinker into order to suit your students needs or to expand on the knowledge provided. Please keep in mind that the TES preview often distorts the preview and this is not a true reflection of the resources layout. Hope it helps.

This is a very simple break down of how to use speech marks suitable for Functional skills students or lower level students. There are 3 pages worth of examples and tasks with a small vocab builder task. This could work well as a piece of homework / extension activity or as a starter for the higher level students. Hope it helps

This is a simple activity which can be used to encourage students to proofread. It can be used with students of all levels, GCSE or Functional Skills, as it can be used as a starter, plenary, homework or as an extension activity. Please be advised that TES previews can often distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps

This work pack is designed for Functional skills and covers areas such as reading for information, summary writing and speaking & listening. The lesson is designed around the murder of Sophie Lancaster, who was killed for the way she dressed. This lesson touches upon issues such as equality, prejudice and British Values . Feel free to tinker with to suit the needs of your students. Please be aware that TES previews can at times distort the look of the resource and this is not true reflection. Hope it helps

This is a simple and fun lesson to introduce persuasive writing techniques. This session looks into the methods and techniques used by advertisers to persuade people to buy their products, it introduces writing techniques such as alliteration and rhetorical questions. The final task is a fun team activity in which each team is given a product in an envelope and they must create a advert, using the methods discussed, to sell this product. This session can be altered to include speaking and listening task or can be elaborated upon. Be advised that TES previews can distort the look of the resources and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps

This is a simple A4 sheet which shows a break down of each question of the AQA exam (both papers). Students can keep in a folder or fold up and keep in their pockets and use for revision. It is very useful as it reminds student of the main elements of each question, times, marks and skills the question is testing and how they need to structure their answers. This helps students to gain in confidence, promotes independent learning and active revision. Hope it helps.

A full 4 page progress assessment for Paper 1 Question 5. As controlled assessments are no longer in use with this specification I found it useful to have regular bite-sized assessments to track a learners journey and progress whilst on the GCSE course. These assessments are based on each question from the AQA exam paper and mirrors the phrasing and tasks that students will find in the real exam. It comes with planning scaffolds to help students structure and organise their ideas. It is a great way to prepare students and highlight areas of weakness and strength. Hope it helps.

This is a fun, lively student centered lesson which revolves around team work activities and allowing the students to push their creativity and imagination. Many students struggle with imagination when it comes to question 5 and many panic, especially as it holds so many marks. This lesson uses images to inspire a range of vocabulary, language features and ideas for a storyline all within the planning of a haiku, therefore underpinning some of the essential skills needed to answer this question. This is quick paced session with a range of 10 minute activities which encourage independent learning and team work. I found that many students created a range of fantastic haiku’s which I made into a booklet for the students to take away with them. This sort of thing also scores brownie points with the managers and Ofsted but also helps to develop a sense of achievement and self confidence in English, which many students lack. It is also great for the students to know their work in English has a use other than for passing an exam and many feel pride in that. This lesson covers: planning for written work, synonyms, metaphors, similes, personification, hyperbole, long short sentences, imagination but can be adapted to cover much more if so desired. It ends with a peer marking assessment based on the Facebook liking system using emoticons and a chance to act like an examiner and identify language features. There is a homework task, which if desired, could be turned into a in class task other than homework. Hope it helps