This is a fun quick paced lesson designed to introduce paper 2 from EDEXCEL to your students. We look at the idea of creating a bucket list and focus on the use of language/structure and introduce counter arguments to help when answering question 8/9. There are lots of group activities in where they think and create their own bucket list, breakdown an article, work on counter arguments and eventually create their own persuasive article, encouraging reader to create and actually do their own bucket list. This session comes with the whole lesson on powerpoint, starter worksheets and 4 core lesson worksheets. Please keep in mind that the TES preview does distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

It has been 200 years since the birth of Emily Bronte and her novel Wuthering Heights has just as much to offer now as it did then. This session is designed to look at Wuthering Heights with 21st century eyes and introduce a new generation to this story. This session is an engaging, fast paced and fun session with plenty of student lead activities to help the them come to their own conclusions and to share those conclusions with others. This is a jam packed lesson with scaffolded / differentiated questions to help students access this 19th century text at all levels. The session comes with paired and groups activities ranging from read and obtain tasks, read and infer tasks, group discussions and opportunities for students to express their own opinions. This session focuses on paper 1 question 2 and ends with the question “How does Emily Bronte use language to suggest that Heathcliff is perhaps Mr Earnshaw’s illegitimate mixed race son?” - a question which is inclusive, can bring about further discussion and touches upon British Values, something that I was praised for in an recent observation of this session. Much of this session works hard to build on students inference skills, which is key to this exam. Many tasks have both simple questions and deeper, more thought provoking questions, therefore embedding this skill in to almost every task in the session. This session comes with a full powerpoint over 10 worksheets which can be used and adapted in whichever way you need, handouts with tips, hand outs with answer break downs, discussion prompts and a run down of a list of characters and plot summary and the trailer for the 2011 movie. There is enough material to span 3 hours or more, therefore allowing you as the teacher to adapt to your own timetable and students abilities. Many of the slides can also be used as handouts - such as the starter slide which comes with a word search. Please keep in mind that TES previews can often distort the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection of the materials. Hope it helps.

This is a fun lesson looking at the notion of the Earth Being flat as a means to an introduction to Paper 2 questions 7a and b from the Edexcel exam board. The session looks at two different articles on the topic and delves into how they are written and how the writer conveys a point of view. There is a break down of the exam questions and answer format to help students formulate an answer to these questions. There are team and paired activities and a short video. The session comes with a starter and plenary and 8 pages of worksheets / activities. Please be aware that the TES preview does at times distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

Climate change is a hot topic of the moment and is engaging young people around the world to help start make a difference. To help support this and raise awareness in young people I have created this full lesson based around the subject of climate change and changes a everyday person can make. This pack is a complete lesson with enough material to fill a 3 hour session. It contains plenty of group and paired activities, 5 - 10 minute reading and discussion activities, video clips, an information pack which can be used for independent research for the final writing task based on paper 2 question 5 of the GCSE English language exam. It also underpins issues regarding climate change and also aims to raise awareness among young people by looking at the Nobel peace prize candidate Greta Thunberg, an amazing young lady who started the “School strike for climate change” protests at aged 15. There are various articles in which students look at language, sentence structure, language and tone and is best suited to classes who have already done work on language features. The resources are selected to include a range of levels and abilities and can be altered to suit your students needs and tasks not used in the session could be set as homework. This session can also double up to set presentations to help hit all the requirements of the GCSE spec. Please be aware that the TES preview can sometimes distort the look of the resources and is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps.

Sourcing material for your classes can take up a large proportion of what precious little time teachers have. For this reason I have complied a resource pack of various news articles to use with Functional English or GCSE English Language students. This pack has 10 articles covering 22 pages from a wide range of news outlets such as The BBC, The Metro, The Sun, The Telegraph and many more. The articles cover a wide range of topics from Climate Change, gender identity to homophobia and looks at people such as Greta Thunberg and JK Rowling. The articles vary in length and layout to help reach students of all levels, some are individual articles regarding an individual news story, whilst other news stories have more than 1 article to show how writers create view points or potential bias when covering the news. You are free to use the resources in whichever way fits you and your students. You can create your own worksheets or use the links to project the articles onto an IWB or to show the videos attached. You can use the articles to discuss language, layout, bias, writers view points or to use as a catalyst for class debate. Please be aware that the TES preview can at time distort the look of a resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This session is fast paced and covers a lot of ground. I have used it in both level 2 functional English and as a starter lesson in GCSE English Language in the first month of the new academic year. As many students I have taught within FE are resistant to English, lessons which encourage the demonstration of opinions, encourage critical thinking and group / pair activities are extremely helpful in engaging students with English early on. This session looks at male dancers such as Sergei Polunin and the recent comments made by an American presenter about Prince George taking ballet at school. We use this example to cover wider topics such as prejudice, tolerance and encourage discussions which allow students to look at the issue from a different angle, but also to look at subject specific topics such as writers point of views, language features. The resource comes with the full lesson, with starters, discussion, main activity and peer assessment plenary, on powerpoint, with hyperlinks to various online videos / articles and 7 pages of worksheets and support material. There is enough material to cover a 3 hour session and so can be altered to suit whatever length sessions you may have. Please keep in mind that the TES preview does sometimes alter the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps

There is a lot of focus on assessing our students, and initial assessments at the start of the year are seen as crucial to setting the student on their journey for the academic year. In my teaching career, many institutions I have worked for have relied heavily on electronic assessments, which is fine. However myself, as a teacher, can assess so much more into a students needs, strengths and weaknesses from a sample of their own writing. This is something I have found useful and successful time and time again for a wide range of reasons, so I decided to share some of my most successful free writing initial assessment tasks with you. This pack comes with 5 different free writing tasks, writing prompts, videos for each task and a feedback sheet which can be placed inside a students file or book and used as an individual tracking sheet through out the year. Some of my most successful assessments have been the ones where students get to express their opinions, which gives them a good first impression of your course as being one where they can express themselves. I also try to underpin deeper themes into light hearted topics to help stretch and challenge those students who enjoy thinking more deeply. For example, the Flat Earth free writing task has prompts which asks the student about the dangers of fake news on social media. One of the many uses free writing has is that I can identify those who may have a dyslexia need and alert the necessary people from the first week and get them assessed and / or supported. I can find out more about the students in my class on a more personal level and connect with them more quickly, I can also quickly find out any areas of personal need and highlight these students to youth workers for example. I can also use these quick writing tasks in other sessions and develop them into underpinning British Values, equality and diversity or to underpin speaking and listening tasks for example. The topics of the free writing are: Beauty industry - used mainly with female classes equality flat earth - underpins fake news / social media big giant swords - underpins ambition and following your dreams. being brave I have attached a short guideline of what to look for when assessing, however most teachers do assess in their own way so feel free to use in a way which suits you and your students. I hope it helps

This is a fast paced lesson which delves into the diary of Anne Frank to help students practice for AQA’s paper 2 Question 3. This session is student focused and allows students to work together and find their own conclusions to the answer " How does Anne Frank use language to describe her experience of living in hiding?". This session encourages students to share their ideas and talk about their findings in order to help self learn and learn from each other rather than getting all their knowledge from the teacher with plenty of group and pair activities, peer marking and a self assessment / reflective plenary. This session differentiates between all levels whilst also allowing room to stretch and challenge with activities which promote insight and inference. We break down the exam question and the skills the exam wants from the students, the lesson then looks into the background of Anne Frank, which is an ideal opportunity to embed some British Values regarding tolerance and freedom of religion if so desired. We then start to breakdown her diary extract, focus on language and how to use the extract to answer the exam question. The session gives an example answer with a breakdown of what the examiner is looking for and what makes the answer a top band answer and what doesn’t. There is enough material to fill a 3 hour session, the lesson in full on powerpoint and 6 worksheets. Please be aware that TES preview doesn’t always give a true reflection of what the session contains and can distort the look of the session. For this reason I have included some screen shots to help give you a better view. Hope it helps

I know from experience with my own students that the more practice you do from a wide range of different texts, the more prepared you will be for the live exam. It is at this stage in the academic year that practice becomes very important and knowing your exam paper - the type of questions and layout of the paper - is vital to achieving the grades you want for your students. A diverse collection of interesting and engaging practice papers is difficult to come by as the 8700 spec is still relatively new. Therefore I have authored my own practice papers to use with my own classes, all with questions based from both the AQA exam papers. The sources for these mock papers include extracts from The Colour Purple, Harry Potter and Hunger Games. Paper 2 mocks include documents on the topics of Child Labour, disasters and celebrity culture. This bundle contains: Paper 1 mock x 3 Paper 2 mock x 3 All source materials A bite sized mock with focuses on a selection of the more tricky questions from both papers. That is 7 papers all together, which averages as £1.40 per paper. Please be advised that the TES preview can distort the look of the material so please keep in mind that this is not always a true reflection of the resource. Hope it helps.

This quick paced, vibrant session is designed to introduce students to the comparison question on the exam paper. I have geared it towards the AQA exam paper, but can be easily adapted to suit any exam board. To help students become more familiar with this question, this lesson uses the Manchester 2017 MEN bombings as its subject and underpins the message of unity, one love and tolerance. As this is an introduction, it only uses current day articles and resources to ease the students in to this tricky question. This resource contains enough material for a 3 hour session. You have a full powerpoint lesson with starters, paired / team / individual tasks, self assessment plenary, videos, articles, activities and a mini class discussion. The lesson gives a small break down of the exam question and a simple example of an answer to helps students become familiar with the answer structure. The session contains tasks which are achievable at a wide range of levels. When delivering this session, I often will invite youth workers to help support as it’s over arching message is one of tolerance and British values and not terrorism, therefore youth workers / support workers will be a valuable assist in this session and help give a more holistic approach to your students education. This is something both my department heads and Ofsted have commented positively on in the past. Please keep in mind that the TES preview does at times distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. I hope this session helps.

This is a short and sweet introduction to the P.E.E answer format for GCSE English students. This is a great way to introduce the idea of stories being constructed and designed to make the audience behave / react a certain way. This session looks at a violent scene from The Hunger Games (rated 12A) breaks down a scene and talks about why a director may have constructed a scene in a way to make the audience react a certain way. The final task is for students to use these elements discussed to prompt P.E.E paragraphs. This resource is easy to adapt and can be used in conjunction with other sessions were P.E.E is used. Please keep in mind that the TES preview can distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This is a short and sweet resource which can be used as a recap/workshop session or as a introduction session to implicit and explicit meaning. This session is fast paced, team based and leads into a creative writing final main task, although it is easy to adapt for your own needs. This session is based around a short video where the viewer must piece together the overall story from the imagery depicted. Students look for implicit and explicit meaning from this video and then create a piece of descriptive writing based from what they have concluded. This session comes with a quick starter from the outset, quick group activities, team and class discussions and a final individual task with a support starter structure to support the lower ability students. Please keep in mind that TES previews can distort the look of the preview and this is not always a true reflection. 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

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 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

This fantastic lesson looks at question 3 from paper 1 of the AQA English Language exam - spec 8700. Using the work of Stephen King "The Body" this lesson uses power-point, paired activities, video and activity sheets to focus on how authors use Openings and Endings to convey symbolic meanings, in this case - the end of childhood and innocence. The lesson comes with plenty of paired, timed activities to help support less able students and a discussion on inference to help stretch and challenge the more able in your class. I have also introduced a mnemonic for the more commonly used structural features called ROW OF CLONES to help students learn a range of techniques authors may use in their writing which my students found incredibly useful last year. The final aim of this lesson is for the student to be able to write a full Point, Quote, Infer answer to this exam question. This resource is adaptable, will fill and hour to hour and half lesson, engaging, quick paced and comes with fun starters and plenaries. Please keep in mind that this movie is a 15 certificate and using this resource for anyone under that age maybe worth some consideration. Mild language used in the extract, however as I taught in a college, this was fine to use. Hope it helps.

This is a well paced, exciting lesson filled with fun and team games. Paper 1 Question 5 is worth a lot of marks and today the examiners expect students to use a wide range of sentence forms and language features to obtain those marks. Many students jump into this question as it looks deceptively easy and they will forget to PLAN for what the examiner wants to see. This lesson is a fun well paced lesson to help students to remember what to plan for in this question and therefore is great as an introduction to the question / topic. Using games and short activities, students will build up a bank of language features and sentences on the topic of Donald Trump over the course of the lesson to use in their final task. Feel free to amend to your students needs and levels. Please be advised that the preview sometimes distorts the look of the resource. 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

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