I have shared with you all of my best lessons I have developed over the last 11 years. I'm a Teacher of English with excellent achievement rates making me among the top 2% of the GCSE English team and a consistent strong grade 2 in observations. I have taught a wide range of English qualifications within FE including Functional Skills (English and Maths) and GCSE. I hope you find these resources as useful to your students as I have.
I have shared with you all of my best lessons I have developed over the last 11 years. I'm a Teacher of English with excellent achievement rates making me among the top 2% of the GCSE English team and a consistent strong grade 2 in observations. I have taught a wide range of English qualifications within FE including Functional Skills (English and Maths) and GCSE. I hope you find these resources as useful to your students as I have.
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 resource can be used with L2 functional skills classes or with GCSE English classes with enough material to cover up to 2 hours. This resources covers language features and apostrophes in one lesson, underpinning proofreading and writing to describe. This is a quick paced session which involves both group and individual tasks, it has routes for stretch and challenge whilst also giving tasks enough scaffolding to support the weaker students in the class. This session is designed to be developed or split into two separate sessions depending on your classes needs. Please be advised that the TES preview does not always give a true reflection of the resource.
I like to encourage reading in my classes, and one of the ways I like to do that is with a visual display of books which became blockbuster movies to help grab students attention. This resource is my collection of visuals that I use in different ways to create these displays. It includes 14 different movies which includes a range of diversity and genres, contains images of the book and movie cover with still from the movie itself. You can print these, play with the sizes, layouts and be creative as you feel to suit your learning environment, I like to laminate to provide a glossy look and drape a red cloth over the boards in my classroom to create a old school cinema / theater curtain to create some drama.
Images include:
Eat Prey Love
War Horse
Divergent
The Hobbit
Memoirs of a Geisha
Atonement
The Colour Purple
The Help
Brighton Rock
Feel free to play with and tinker with this resource, these are just image templates to help you get going and create amazing in class displays of your own. Be advised that the TES preview does not always truly reflect the resource. Hope it helps
This is a fun and fast paced introduction to Language Features (DAFOREST) for L2 Functional English or GCSE English ( any board).
This session is based on activities for groups and pairs, eventually leading to a independent writing task, in which the student must use the language features used to describe one of either two characters. This session includes a fun anagrams “buzzer” game and supporting scaffolds in word banks and starter paragraphs. There are opportunities for stretch and challenge with the introduction into higher level language features which you can stretch as much as your class needs allow. This session is design for a 1.5 hr session but can be developed for longer lessons.
Please be aware that TES preview is not always a true reflection of the presentation of the materials. Hope it helps
The text for this resource is based around healthy eating, looking at the pros and cons of eating chicken. This paper is based on the questions you would find in the edexcel reading paper and designed as a starter/taster, rather than a mock, to help support less able students achieve.
This resource can be altered to suit your cohort, please keep in mind that the TES preview sometimes distorts the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps
This mini bundle consists of a mini reading activity and writing activity, along with video and video worksheet for L1 English Functional Skills. All resources are based around Greta Thunberg and are designed to be as similar as possible to the layout of the pearson functional skills exam - although they can be altered to accommodate any exam board.
The reading paper is based on 1 article about Greta and takes questions as they are presented and worded on the exam. The writing is also presented and worded as it would appear on the exam, so this mini bundle is perfect for any exam prep or to use with lower ability learners. This package also comes with a BBC video and worksheet to accompany it.
Please keep in mind that the TES preview can sometimes alter the look of the resources and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps
This single text resource is designed to help support less ability students prepare for their functional reading exam. Based on the current protests with climate change, this resource basis it’s questions around the edexcel paper.
This resource can be altered to suit the needs of your cohort, please keep in mind that the TES preview can distort the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps
This resource is an introduction to comparing two tasks and the P.E.E answer format to Q13 on the L2 reading paper. The theme of the lesson is “Flat Earth” and contains a Powerpoint, video and related worksheets. This is a quick paced session design for classes which are 2 hours, but can be altered to suit your timetable. Hope it helps
If you teach Functional Skills to low level, reluctant hair & beauty students, then you may find these resources helpful. I teach short sessions (1 hour) to hair students who will not work unless everything is hair or beauty related. Naturally, you can adapt the materials to suit your own class needs /lengths.
This session is based around nail art and is designed to encourage writing a complaint in practice for the writing paper. Tasks include designing their own nail art, describing the design, looking at a complaint and structure of complaint then writing their own complaint. Like I say, my sessions are only an hour with difficult to engage students, so feel free to adapt. Hope it helps
I find it useful, when close to the exam period, to take students through an exam answer as if they were the examiner and awarding the marks. This helps to clarify in the students mind the skills and knowledge they need to demonstrate in the exam and to identify any areas of development within their own writing skills. This session is based on that premise.
This session has enough resources to fill a 2 hour session. It takes 3 sample answers from the exam board and the class examine each one and uses a simplified mark scheme to award marks. The class is then asked to honestly critique their own skills next to the criteria and develop a revision plan to work on up until their own exam. The session is based around SOLO teaching method which chunks up learning and increases in difficulty.
I find this helps to put the writing exam, and students own skill sets into perspective and aids in self study. Hope it helps
This mini mock is targeting question 1 - 3 of paper 1 of the WJEC exam board. The extract is taken from Animal farm. As you hit revision season and start to assess students weak areas, I find mini mocks such as these quite useful. Please keep in mind that the TES preview can distort the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps
This is a 50 page booklet designed to help students independently revise for their exams. I also found these booklets very helpful in getting low attending students back up to speed, Ofsted loved them and my students said they found them more helpful than mock exams for revising certain questions they were less confident with. This booklet covers the underpinning skills and exam practice for paper 1 question 2, Paper 2 question 3 and paper 2 question 4. They have been grouped in this way as the skills which are being tested are the same or similar which is great for target revision. This booklet underpins inference, bias, language and exam answer structures. It also uses mini extracts from books such as War Horse and Harry potter and texts in which to compare writers views. It breaks down and explains each question, gives examples and mini tasks before allowing students to try an example exam question. It is encouraging, colourful and I hope you find it as useful as I have. Be advised that TES previews often distort the look of the resources and this is not a true reflection of how it looks. Hope it helps.
This resource is designed especially for seminar sessions or revision workshops around the exam period. It can be altered as an entire lesson if needs be. I like to spend the last half hour of my lessons as “quickie workshops” where I focus on one question from the exam at a time or set these tasks as homework. This quickie workshop looks at the older text about the working conditions on children in the mines. You can run this as individual or group session depending on the needs of your learners. Please be aware that TES previews can distort the look of a resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps
This is a full informal mock of paper 1 for the AQA GCSE English Language exam based on an extract from To Kill a Mockingbird. It comes with a full powerpoint with a video starter from Thug Notes. Be advised that Thug Notes does contain some adult themes and low level adult language. As I teach 16 + this is fine as a resource but if this is not the case for your class you can stick to the trailer or use an alternative. This powerpoint can be printed off or converted to a more formal paper version of a mock if you wish to use it in that way. Please keep in mind the TES previews can at time distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps
This is a complete mock exam for paper 1 of the AQA GCSE 8700 spec. The extract is taken from The Colour Purple. The lesson comes with a few small groups task starters and a selection of 2 videos - you can choose which one best suits your needs, keep in mind that Thug Notes does contain mild use of language and adult themes. As I teach in FE this is resource is fine to use however you can use the trailer or an alternative if you choose to. The session is created for you to use in any way you wish. You may want to sit a formal practice in which you can print off this powerpoint and be used as a paper document. This book contains theme of racism and sexism and so you can adapt this to underpin theme of equality and diversity. Be advised that Tes previews distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps
This is a bundle pack for the GCSE English language paper from the WJEC exam board. This bundle contains 2 mock papers, 1 for each component, Cheat sheets (with lesson) for each component and creative writing lessons. There are 8 complete lessons all together. All resources sold separately would cost a total of £24. I’m selling this bundle at £20 . 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.
Many of my students enjoy getting embroiled in a debate about the Royals and so I try to embed this interest within my lessons. This is a 6 page resource based around a recent article on the BBC news website about Meghan Markle. The aim of the resource is to try and bridge the gap between Level 2 Functional Skills and GCSE English Language by making low level structural features (such as short sentences / paragraphs, inclusion of tweets, purpose of online text) a point of the resource.
The resource comes with a link to the online article, which includes a short video of the event, a copy of the article itself and a series of question sheets which have been scaffolded into levels and abilities to cater to the mixed levels I often see in FS classes. These question sheets start with simple read and obtain style questions and work their way up to questions which focus on structural features and ask for some analysis. The way in which you want to distribute these questions is left in your hands. You may want all students to try all the questions or leave the difficulty level up to the student and let them choose the level questions they want to tackle and use the rest as extension tasks.
The topic of this resource allows for embellishment to your lesson if you feel the students will take to it, you can include a group discussion on the topic of Royals or what merits as news worthy in todays day and age. However you want to use this resource in your class is up to you. Hope it helps.
Please keep in mind that the TES preview can distort the look of a resource and this is not a true reflection.