I'm an experienced English teacher, senior leader and examiner with a wealth of experience teaching English across all key stages. Having examined for AQA and WJEC, I have a precise knowledge of how to support students so they can make maximum progress in their learning.
I'm an experienced English teacher, senior leader and examiner with a wealth of experience teaching English across all key stages. Having examined for AQA and WJEC, I have a precise knowledge of how to support students so they can make maximum progress in their learning.
A useful exemplar to show how an exam response could be written for 'An Inspector Calls' with a focus on Gerald. It is differentiated to allow students to make progress at an appropriate level of challenge.
A poster to display so that students know what comes for each component of the examination. This is useful to refer to and helps students to understand what they are studying and how they will be assessed.
Four lessons on the poem that help students look at the poet's main ideas. The students are given opportunities to work independently, collaboratively or with the teacher (I,C,T). The lessons are differentiated and include starters, mains and plenaries.
A lesson that focuses on the love poems from the anthology for WJEC (but can be used for any examination board if you change the title). The lesson also indicates the rules and assessment criteria for speaking and listening tasks.
A model answer for Macbeth which has a differentiated task. The students need to annotate the margin using the marking codes and then consider how the response could be improved.
This can be used to focus year 11 students on revision and on what their responses should include in their exam.
A revision lesson for year 11 who already have an understanding of the poems. This reminds them of the skills of comparative responses, and recaps on the poem ‘Mother Any Distance’ from the AQA anthology - love and relationships. Each activity has timings to guide the lesson so it has an appropriate pace.
The lesson has:
Bell task on entry
LOs beginning, middle and end to review progress
Links to exam details
Collaboration built in
Oracy Task
Teacher Model slide to conduct live modeling (which is differentiated with B,S,G)
Extended writing task using bronze, silver, gold to chunk challenge
Plenary that uses peer assessment against a checklist of success criteria
This is another paper 1 exam for English GCSE. It includes all four questions for reading and both writing tasks for Q5 for AQA. It could easily be adapted for different specifications.
There are six poems included in this designed to be grouped in three questions:
Set 1 - these two poems are about the sea/water
Set 2 - these two poems are about the arrival of Winter
Set 3 - these two poems are written from the POVs of animals, one a dog and one a cat, and deal with their views of their owners
The poems link to the AQA specification, but could be adapted to suit any Literature unseen questions.
The worksheet is differentiated using bronze, silver and gold to challenge students with their annotations.
A full paper1 for the AQA English GCSE. If your students need more revision skills, then this is a brand new fiction text that they can develop their comprehension skills and writing for question five. This is perfect for a full lesson, or can be used as homework.
This handy A3 resource is ideal for revising key themes and characters from Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’.
The sheet has 12 questions linked to the AQA spec (but could be adapted for other specs easily) and has 12 extracts, which provide key moments from across the whole of the play.
I am using this myself to prepare my year 11s for their Literature examination.
This is a great resource that has both the image for the writing task for paper 1, AQA and the creative writing task. There are 25 tasks in an 11 page booklet so this would be great for year 11s to use for their revision for the new exam 2017 onwards.
This bundle includes:
25 writing questions for paper 1
a great writing frame for narratives
25 writing questions and guidance for paper 2
with other handy worksheets for reading skills.
This has everything your year 11 needs to revise before their GCSEs - questions, worksheets, revision grids, lessons with model answers, key quotes etc.
You could cut these out and get students to rank order them to justify, which is better and why.
This can be used for a homework, revision task before an exam.
This could also be used as part of a task within a lesson.
There are five responses to an exam question on Eric that gradually become more perceptive and detailed. Alongside the responses is a bronze, silver and gold differentiated task to challenge all learners. There is an extension task (push your thinking) to add additional challenge.
This is something I have used with year 11 to help develop their understanding of the character, context, writer’s intentions and to teach the skills of writing a detailed reading response.
There are three revision lessons for An Inspspector Calls that are fully differentiated with bronze, silver, gold tasks, including ‘challenge’ tasks to stretch the most able. The lessons include model answers, bell tasks, learning objectives, key quotes, opportunities for self/peer assessment and plenaries to conclude the lessons. I have used these in the run up to the exam as each lesson leads carefully to a GCSE exam style question, which the students will be able to answer having completed the starter activities and other learning activities which provide them with the information to plan and write their own responses.
I only ever sell things that I know work well with my own year 11 classes and mine found these lessons very useful in developing their knowledge of the play.
A five week countdown that has activities and tasks for An Inspector Calls, Macbeth, A Christmas Carol, Unseen Poetry and the Love poems. The paper one tasks ask students to revise from all parts of the play to help deepen their knowledge.
Each day, the students also must then revisit revision from the previous days to ensure they develop their retention skills and add this knowledge to their long term memory.
A model answer for year 11 students that will help them prepare for their A Christmas Carol exam. There is a differentiated task whilst reading the response with an opportunity to then develop this.