I created this short comprehension activity for my year 7 class to be used alongside their class reader, "Love That Dog". It uses an excerpt from "The Call of the Wild" describing Buck's kidnap. Alongside the extract are ten questions focusing on vocabulary and understanding. This works as a homework but could also be used as a cover activity. Alternatively, the questions could be used to structure a guided reading session.

Created for a year 7 class as a homework to go alongside our class reader of 'Love That Dog', this is a comprehension (close reading and response) activity based on the segment from "The Call of the Wild" in which Buck fights Spitz to become top dog. There are 14 questions in total, focusing on vocabulary, inference and the effects of language. This would be a good cover activity or the questions could be used to structure a guided reading session.

Created for a year 9 class, this is a lesson on Wordsworth’s “Upon Westminster Bridge” which asks the students to identify the viewpoint expressed in the poem and then explore features of language and structure that help to convey that viewpoint. Also attached here is a multiple-choice quiz that I originally created as a homework to be used after the lesson in order to consolidate the learning.

Planned for my year 9 class as part of a unit of work on Journeys, introducing the skills and tasks of English GCSE, I have also used this with a year 10 group as we begin to tackle the unseen poetry question for English Literature. It uses Shakespeare’s sonnet 50 and is an opportunity to explore the sonnet form as well as the poet’s use of language and structural features.

Created for a more able year 8 class, this is a lesson on the description of Gradgrind from the start of “Hard Times”. The aim is to link Dickens’s use of language and structural features to his viewpoint. The lesson is scaffolded so that there is a grid for the pupils to complete explaining what they can infer about Gradgrind from the language used to describe him (there’s also a little bit on the Victorians’ belief that character could be gauged from facial features). After having completed the grid, the pupils then look at the longer excerpt and work more independently on an extended answer - though they can use the structure of their response in the grid to plan and guide that answer.

A 14-slide powerpoint, taking the students through the Inspector’s final speech with a focus on the features of language and structure used in the speech and an analysis of their effects. Planned for my mixed-ability year ten class, this lesson does emphasise that the Inspector is a vehicle for Priestley’s ideas and messages in the play.

Created for a year 7 class as part of a unit of work on “Treasure Island”, this lesson invites the children to explore Masefield’s poem, “Sea Fever”, identifying the speaker’s attitude towards the sea and focusing on the use of personification and other language features. The lesson uses hinge questions at key points, requiring all children to feed back with one from a choice of answers. In my classroom we use our arms to make letter shapes; you could use mini-whiteboards. At the end of the lesson, the children are asked to produce a written response focusing on Masefield’s use of personification and two other language features of their choice, explaining what’s revealed about the speaker’s attitude towards the sea (and here you could introduce or embed the idea of viewpoint). There is a separate homework available for this lesson which is a series of multiple-choice questions about the poem.

Created for a mixed ability year nine class, this powerpoint takes the pupils through the poem, initially with a focus on Owen’s redrafting - what is the effect of ‘doomed youth’ rather than the initial ‘dead youth’. Throughout the lesson the pupils are asked to consider the effect of Owen’s language choices. There is a multiple-choice question focusing on the simile ‘who die as cattle’. In our classroom, we respond by using our arms to make the letters, YMCA-style. The question could as easily be answered using mini whiteboards. The lesson takes the pupils through a model paragraph of response focusing on the effect of the ‘as cattle’ simile; they’re then asked to produce a further three paragraphs working independently. Useful as a reading assessment or as part of a unit of work on war poetry. The intention is that this lesson begins to embed the skills on which the pupils will be tested at GCSE.

Created for a higher-ability year 7 class as part of a unit of work on "Treasure Island" and pirates, this lesson plan takes the pupils through "The Ballad of John Silver" by John Masefield. Using images and drama to embed the idea of writing having a mood, the lesson culminates with the pupils selecting one of the verses from the poem and re-writing it in script form (model given on one of the slides), creating the same mood as the original poem.

Created for my year nine group as part of a non-fiction SOW on journeys, this uses Scott’s diary and focuses on the pupils using their skills of inference to link Scott’s feelings to his use of language. The lesson culminates with the writing of a P.E.E response.

Planned for a year 10 group all of whom have targets of a grade 5, this ppt leads the students through the presentation of Gerald Croft, up to the exploration of his affair with Daisy Renton. Students are encouraged to think about the method Priestley uses to link Gerald to Mr Birling, one way in which the theme of hypocrisy is explored and the way in which Gerald is used to explore the idea of different attitudes and values across generations.

Planned for year 9 with a focus on building and polishing skills in the run up to GCSE, this lesson uses Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “An Obstacle”. Pupils are led through questions with a tiny bit of relevant context (Gilman’s gender and the year of the poem). There’s a slide focused on the use of the indefinite article in the title and what might be inferred from this. The first two verses of the poem are explored via questioning which asks the pupils to focus on a couple of features in each verse. In the run-up to the pupils’ written response, there is an ‘I do’ slide providing a model and a ‘We do’ slide providing sentence openers for discussion and completion. After this, the intention is that the pupils should work independently to write their response. This could also be used with year 10 to build their confidence and skills in responding to unseen poetry.

This lesson uses four stanzas from Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. In these stanzas, there is a very clear, critical viewpoint about the prison system and its impact. The stanzas contain a wealth of language methods which should enable less confident pupils to find something to explore and give more confident pupils the opportunity to link ideas. Planned for a year 9 class to build and hone the skills of analysis of previously unseen poetry, this lesson uses close questioning and modelling to support the pupils in a response to a question requiring analysis of the writer’s methods. The wording of the question echoes the question to be found on AQA’s English Literature GCSE Paper 2. Slide 3 of the ppt can be used as a printable.

The aim of this lesson is for the children to explain a writer’s viewpoint and to write effectively to describe. The text used is “The Spell of the Yukon” by Robert W.Service. The lesson begins with an image of a prospector and there are questions to prompt some really basic knowledge of the context and then to prompt the building of a word bank. The focus then changes to the poem itself. There are four slides taking the pupils through the first verse and the effect of its verbs, simile and metaphor. The pupils are then asked to explain the speaker’s viewpoint - as expressed in the last two lines of the first verse - in their own words. The pupils are then asked to read the whole poem with a focus on the writer’s viewpoint and how it’s communicated. One slide provides an opportunity for a recap on abstract nouns - as Service uses plenty in the poem. Finally, there is a writing activity which takes the pupils back to the original image and asks them to write a description inspired by that image, using a simile, a metaphor and an abstract noun in each paragraph of their writing.

A workmanlike comprehension activity based on the excerpt from chapter 23 in which Victor discovers that Elizabeth has been strangled and tries to shoot the creature. There are ten questions focusing on comprehension, inference, methods and their effect. Useful for homework, for cover or even for structuring a guided discussion of the text.

A walkthrough of Thomas Hardy’s “Neutral Tones” intended to be a first teaching of the poem for candidates preparing for their GCSE English Literature exam. When it comes to looking at Hardy’s use of oxymorons with “tedious riddles” and “grin of bitterness”, the ppt makes reference to some of Shakespeare’s methods in “Romeo and Juliet”. This is because this class is also studying the play so the references are intended to support a bit of recall. The final slide sets a homework - there is a multiple-choice quiz also available on TES (though listed separately).

This lesson uses the excerpt in which Mrs Joe is introduced. Students are asked to work through 3 of Dickens’s methods for characterisation: contrast, symbolism (specifically, the symbol of Mrs Joe’s apron) and the use of a semantic field. Through a mixture of questioning and discussion, pupils are guided through some ideas about the effect of these methods. Thereafter, they are asked to write a response to this question: Explain how Dickens uses contrast, the symbol of the apron and a semantic field to create the character of Mrs Joe. The final slide of the powerpoint is a self-assessment grid.

GCSE resource for first teaching of William Blake's "London", part of the 'Power and Conflict' cluster.

Powerpoint presentation looking at emotive language and linking the use of emotive language to Priestley’s intentions. Students are asked to write using emotive language with picture prompts that echo Priestley's attitudes. Students are then asked to explore Priestley's use of emotive language, linking it to his message in the play.

This lesson uses Margaret Postgate Cole’s “The Falling Leaves”. The lesson was originally planned as cover. There is a short powerpoint (only 9 slides and one of those slides is a printable) accompanied by a worksheet which has a copy of the poem together with six questions, two of which are on the poem’s structure and its effect; the others focus on Cole’s use of simile and its effect. The main focus of the lesson is on the use of simile. Once the analysis of the poem is done, the pupils are then asked to create their own similes to go alongside an image of a WW1 soldier in a trench. Having done this, they are asked to use their similes along with four of Cole’s words to produce a piece of creative writing, either in poetry or in prose.