A complete bite sized assessment for the GCSE AQA English Language 8700 exam, Paper 1 Question 2. This assessment is great for regularly tracking the students progress on the course throughout the year. This allows the students to see their areas of strength and weakness question by question and is a great tool for revision , it also allows for an easier marking load for you. The question mirrors the actual exam question in feel and phrasing, gradually allowing the student to become acquainted with the exam itself. Hope it helps.

Students often struggle with the idea of inference, particularly within an exam situation. This often leads to students struggling to explain their points meaning they lose valuable marks. This is a fun, humour filled lesson which "gets back to basics" lesson with plenty of group activities with embedded confidence building. Activities allow for stretch and challenge for the more capable in your groups. Activities draw from humour and social issues (sexism in advertising) finally leading to activities which draw from literature (War Horse). Final activity will require students to have knowledge of the PQI / PEA / PEE structure, however this is easy to adapt and change to your students needs. This lesson was design initially for the AQA GCSE specification, however it will work for a range of levels (including Functional Skills) and for all exam boards.

An engaging and relevant lesson which introduces critical thinking but in a real world context. This lesson focuses around Donald Trump (which my students LOVE talking about) and his comments made around his inauguration attendance figures. This is a fantastic lesson which allows students to express their opinions but also teaches them to express their opinions in a thoughtful and considered way which will suit an exam question. In a world of multimedia and free information, I find it important to teach students how to think about the information they hear and to research their opinions, but also that it is acceptable to have mixed opinions on a topic. I have tried to bring all these elements together in this introductory lesson. The lesson includes group / paired discussion, group work , independent work and videos and a fun break down of the numerical grading system using a Bee metaphor (Are you a honey / busy or queen bee?) to help encourage students to become the type of student they want to be. There are fun starter activities, aims and objectives and a dairy entry plenary. I originally designed this lesson to fill 3 hours, but it can be edited to suit your session length. I hope you find it useful, thanks.

As controlled assessments are a thing of the past now on the GCSE English Language course, I have a selection of bite sized assessments to be used through out the year as a means to track students progress on individual question from the exam. This is extremely useful for both student and teacher as it allows for continuous yearly exam practice and progress tracking on each exam question without the burden of marking full mock exams for large classes at a singular time. This assessment focus on a section of text from Warm Bodies for paper 1 question 4 (critical thinking). The lesson includes group tasks and a video to help warm your students up. It also comes with a helpful scaffold to allow students to form ideas to use as their assessment answers, this can be edited to suit the level of your class. Hope it helps.

A fantastic bite sized assessment for paper 1 question 3 from the AQA GCSE English Language. This lesson allows for the student to take ownership over their own learning with lots of group work and discussions which are facilitated but not lead by the teacher. The lesson is designed to take all students at all levels through the assessment step by step, allowing students to support one another and to build the confidence to come to their own conclusions and answers. The lesson ends with a quick timed bite sized assessment, which is similar in look and feel to the exam question which allows the teacher to track each students progress on each individual exam question. Hope it helps

A fantastic full lesson based on The Forever 27 Club comes with 6 resources which included articles, worksheets, full power point with guidance notes, quiz, music clips and independent study. This lesson covers the essential skills needed for Paper 2 Question 3 and also allows time to cover some deeper social issues which some of your students may have experience with, such as body image, gender stereotypes and substance abuse. This lesson enables the students to look at a piece of non fiction and identify language techniques used to influence the readers. It is a fun and fully interactive quick paced lesson where the students investigate language but also learn about two of the most influential musicians of our time and how their personal issue are still issues we face today. The lesson aims to walk students through the process of piecing together a final answer, based on their investigations, which would be expected in the final exam. The lesson ends with a student self assessment plenary called "The Hand of Truth" and optional independent study. Although the source used in this lesson is not from the 19th century it does still instil the skills a student will need to answer this question. Further examples of older sources can also be found in my shop which will be significantly useful when teaching paper 2. This lesson is designed for a 3 hour session but is easily adaptable to suit your own timetable. Hope it helps.

This engaging resource fuses poetry and persuasive writing together in a stretch and challenge lesson based around the work of John Cooper Clarke. The idea for this lesson was born from Functional Skills and works well with a wide range of students from various disciplines (eg: Childcare, Music etc) and is easy to adapt to any level. This lesson allows students to have their own opinion and feel confident enough to build their opinion into a well formed piece of persuasive writing, which uses the skills the examiners are looking for. The lesson includes a full power-point with guidance notes, a video and article / worksheet. Tasks include a fun "free writing" starter, fun drawing task, break down of the exam question, team/paired and individual tasks, peer assessment and a self assessment plenary. The session will be lively, engaging and full of exploration and learning. Hope it helps

A fantastic and fun, time tested resource which never fails to work with my students. This lesson looks at iconoclastic ideas and conspiracy theories (The 1st Moon Landing was faked) in order to help develop the persuasive skills needed for Paper 2 Question 5 of the 8700 spec from AQA. This lesson allows the students to formulate their ideas and opinions whilst also taking them through important planning steps required for this question. The lesson includes lots of fun games, team and paired activities, a short video and plenty of platforms for students to offer their opinions, which many students love to do :) There are opportunities to both stretch and challenge whilst also offering supportive material where needed. This lesson is a 3 hour session with all worksheets included, however it could be taught in 2 separate sessions, depending on your session time. The lesson is structured into quick 5 / 10 min activities with a final 20 min persuasive writing task at the end, it involves both peer and summative assessments along with a fun starter based on a "sheep hat" designed to encourage creativity and a "daily diary" plenary. Hope it helps

A fantastic lesson full of group and paired activities to help students understand structural features. Based on the story of Jekyll and Hyde this lesson uses comic books / storyboards to help students visualise structural features as if the story were a movie. I have found that by teaching structure this visual way, the students find it easier to identify these features and therefore this question becomes less daunting. I have also incorporated a new mnemonic called ROW OF CLONES to help students remember some of the More commonly used structural features. The lesson uses peer assessment, whole group and paired activities, it is quick paced and fun to teach. Hope it helps

A great lesson which uses a wide range of resource types and teaching strategies to help students prepare for Paper 1 Question 3, Structure. This lesson uses the trailer and extract from the movie/book Divergent by Veronica Roth to engage students and help them look deeper into ways stories are told in order to interest a reader. To help them do this, this lesson uses a helpful mnemonic of commonly used structural features -ROW OF CLONES and focuses on repetition, opening / endings and setting. This lesson is designed for a 3 hour session, it uses team and paired work, support grids and stretch and challenge inference class discussion. Quick 5/10/15 min activities keep the lesson at a good pace and allows for information to be delivered in bite sized chunks with a short self assessment plenary. Hope it helps

This is a mock / practice exam paper for the GCSE English Language from AQA (8700 spec). This is not an entire paper, it is a bitesized version which included some of the trickier questions that students tend to struggle with. I have used this with my students to help build confidence with some of the harder questions, track their progress on specific questions and to help get students used to exam conditions. As it is a shorter version of the exam it helps to cut down on a teachers marking load whilst also being a supportive tool for the students. This paper includes practice questions, with sample materials, for Paper 1 Question 3, Paper 2 Question 3, Paper 2 Question 4 and Paper 2 Question 5. I have also given it a more friendly look with some handy tips and advice along the way to help support the more needy or less confident in the group. Sample materials include extracts from The Help and Chocolat, A news article from 1873 and 2 speeches made by British PM's Churchill and Cameron. Hope it helps

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 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.

This lesson is focused around one of the, arguably, harder questions from paper 1 of the AQA exam - question 4. This lesson is quick paced, supportive and full of student focused activities. This lesson focuses around students formulating their own opinions and thoughts on the characters, Robbie and Cecilia from the book Atonement. Many tasks are designed to provoke deeper, independent thought from students with plenty of group and paired activities so students can discuss and share ideas, promoting critical thinking and independent learning skills. Tasks come with word banks and starter sentences for those who struggle to get started yet they can also be used to push the more able in your class to formulate deeper and more insightful answers and ideas . This lesson come with a full lesson powerpoint with enough material to fill a 3 hour lesson, extract and trailer for the movie, 3 worksheets and a support scaffold which can be distributed in class to support students. The session ends with a quick peers assessment task. Hope it helps.

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.

This resource is an 8 page group of worksheets which can be used to design your own lesson around depending on which exam board you are working with in GCSE English. Using the prologue from the 1st book of George RR Martins series, this resource looks at language and structural features. It comes with worksheets for a range of levels, starting simple with read and obtain questions, working our way up to inference, language analysis and strong example answers with stretch and challenge tasks. The resources are designed so you can develop a teacher led lesson around them or set self study or independent learning seminar sessions with teacher acting as support or facilitator as the worksheets allow for paired or team interaction between the students. There is enough material for a 3 or more hour session, which can be broken into 2 or more sessions depending on your timetable. 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