I designed this for the old AQA specification. Now that the spec is obsolete, some of you might be thinking of turning those stacks and stacks of anthologies into resources for KS3 classes (we certainly are for year 9). As a result, you may find this booklet useful. The booklet is essentially a copy of the entire anthology where on the left hand side of a double page spread you have the text, and on the right hand side you have space for notes. Each story is ended with generic questions and has TWO exam questions for revision purposes. Perfect for planning lessons when you are taking an extended period of time off. Happy reading.

Two powerpoints (both alike in dignity…); the larger of the two covers the deconstruction of an English Language Paper 2 Section A mock exam - we go through common mistakes, areas of concern and identify how to improve on what we’ve done. I’ve provided the sources too, so you could use this as the basis of a Section A walking-talking mock; the smaller powerpoint covers speech writing, an area my lot particularly struggled with. Happy hunting…

A reintroduction lesson that should be taught with the understanding that the students have read the text beforehand. Designed as an entry point into year 13; ideal for new teachers looking to get the measure of a new class (as in my case). I found this lesson particularly useful when combined with FAR marking the material surrounding the quotations. You should view this as a starting point - future lessons will get much more specific.

My second lesson. Here, I focus almost entirely on ACT 2 SCENE 1 and Iago's soliloquies therein. The notes element of the power point pulls a lot of thinking together from across a lot of sources - you'll need these notes to flesh out the tasks. I tie it up with an exam style question at the end focusing on what we can infer about attitudes to women. Quite pleased with how this looks and how it goes.

A series of lessons that I taught to top set KS4 students. Please note, the gaps between the first and fourth lessons are intentional as I had the students act out the play and answer the comprehension questions in the AQA Study Guide book.

A thematic exploration of Violence within Othello - focusing specifically on Act 4. Also, the power point starts with a little revision of characters and quotations from across the play. I found this a fun lesson.

These resources assume prior knowledge on the part of the students - they will have covered the greater majority of the texts before hand. The lessons go back and fill in the gaps. I try a few different things here in terms of approach. The "Mike and Sophia" extract guide is a guided annotation lesson; I'd be interested to see how classes respond to this.

SPAG lessons can get a little flat at times. These are the worksheets I’ve designed to use with my own SPAG group. It is designed to be taught in tandem with a Dystopian Fiction SoW that ends with a reading assessment. Specifically, these lessons focus on an extract taken from Michael Grant’s “Gone” - all extracts taken from the first chapter. The aim is to develop an increased understanding of each text through the asking of more and more complex questions. The tasks can be sat as part of a lesson (I reckon they’ll take most groups between 10-30 minutes depending on the groups setting), or make ideal homework and/or extension tasks. At the moment, the resources are set up to be taught to lower set year 7 students. But, it won’t be too hard to change the tasks to more suitable ones for any set. UPDATE: I’ve included some versions that are more suited to be printed out. They have some basic RAG feedback grids on the back with some generic targets.

This uses a format I’ve used elsewhere. The lessons are designed to support the teaching of conflict poetry from WW1. The goal is that the students sharpen their reading skills and get a boost in their English lessons where the poet is the subject of focus.

Designed to be taught in support of a Year 9 class doing a GCSE-style task on Of Mice and Men. These powerpoints make good activities as part of a lesson, or they can be printed off as individual worksheets. The worksheet element contains a RAG rating system and some generic targets, suited for peer or self assessment.

The lessons are designed to tie in specifically with the Scholastic Classics version of the text OR the Collins Classroom Classics version, but it wouldn’t take too much to use this with any version to be honest. Visually, the powerpoints are designed to be eye-catching. Each one is loaded with links to videos, layered with animations and suitably spooky xmas music. The lessons are ordered via number for your convenience. There is a specific focus on each of the GCSE Assessment Focuses, starting with AO3 (It makes sense, to me at least, to contextualise the story prior to reading it). The stave lessons each contain definitions of the archaic words (though there is a definite backing off with this the further in you get: as the students get more familiar with the language, they’ll need less prompting with decoding it), as well as a particular focus on key quotations. There are comprehension questions layered throughout, and the first THREE of the stave lessons have an ending task that links to a type of question found in AQA English Language Paper 1 Section A - my class had previously focused on this unit and it made sense to me to keep these skills “hot” so to speak. The AO specific lessons tie in with the Assessment Objectives for the English Literature course. The AO1 and AO2 lessons assume that the students have read the entire text. Finally, the theme lessons build towards the students sitting a GCSE Literature style assessment. I have sourced a lot of ideas from the following pdf file - I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to pass these ideas off as my own; I include the link so that any person might have the benefit of this resource without having to pay for mine: http://drbacchus.com/files/christmas_carol/glossary.pdf There’s about 30+ hours worth of teaching materials in here; enjoy!

A deconstruction of the English Language Paper 1 examination that uses Brighton Rock as a source. I’ve lifted the model material from the mark schemes and there’s FAR related targets included. Essentially, this is a lesson that can be taught either AFTER the students have sat the exam and you want them to peer/self assess, or you could change it so that that they answer a question and then mark their efforts. The Section B element is a bit of an experiment - peer marking creative writing is always a challenge. So I’ve given the students a series of yes/not/some related questions. The idea is that they “tick” the level next to the answer on a copy of the AO5 and AO6 mark schemes. Using that, they should be better able to work out where the creative writing fits. My peer marked creative writing has got much more accurate as a result of this.