Bright, eye-catching handout / support booklet with confidence building / inspirational quotes and handy guides to language features to support those who struggle and to stretch and challenge the more able. I used this resource in my class as a casual resource left out on students desks, allowing them to choose to use it or not. This was a great success with both student and inspector as it both supports and allows for independence over learning. Can be used with any exam board.

An introduction lesson to Identifying bias and writers view points centring around the Marvel Universe. The lesson is designed to focus on Paper 2 Question 3 of the GCSE English language exam for AQA, but it can also be adapted for L2 Functional Skills. The lesson includes a film quiz starter, useful scaffolds and plenty of short, snappy group and paired activities. It is designed to reach students of all abilities and includes a short analytical thinking task to stretch and challenge more able students to develop thought out answers. This is a fun lesson which many of my classes have enjoyed. Hope it helps.

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.

A full lesson, designed for a 3 hours session but can be adapted to suit your own sessions. Lesson is filled with videos, group/paired/individual tasks and group discussions. Package comes with PPT with guidance notes, 2 videos and all accompanying worksheets. This lesson also comes with a useful structural devices mnemonic which can be used in this and subsequent lessons to help your students with this question in the exam. The final task is based around an extract from George Orwell's 1984 and includes modern day parallels with modern movies and current affairs which was a big hit with my students, who love talking about Donald Trump! I was observed delivering this lesson and was awarded a strong grade 2. Feel free to adapt for your own needs, hope it helps.

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.

A full lesson to introduce the concept of comparison of writers opinion for paper 2 question 4. This lesson uses modern celebrities and scandals, such as Marilyn Monroe and Johnny Depp and Amber Heards divorce to help students identify bias language with the larger aim of being able to compare two piece of writing based on the same topic. The lesson PowerPoint comes with guidance notes rather than a lesson plan and slides which can be used to either stretch and challenge strong students or support weaker ones. Resources include 2 videos and various worksheets to be used in group or paired work. The lesson is designed to be fun and engaging but also challenging as this question is often the one most students struggle or worry over the most. Hope you find it helpful.

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

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

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

A handy bite sized assessment to help support and track students towards their paper 2 of the AQA GCSE English Language exam (spec 8700). This assessment tests students on paper 2 questions 3 and 4 by using comparable sources on festivals (Greenwich and Glastonbury). Rather than throw the students in cold to an assessment, this assessment is broken down and uses reinforcement of prior learning and paired work to help students prepare, discuss and scaffold (2 scaffold templates, one populated with examples, one not as to stretch and challenge your students) their answers before the final timed assessment.I find that by having these bite sized assessments at the end of each term helps to build up confidence and allows for tracking progress through out the year. It also helps to reduce your marking. Please note that these resources are designed to be modified by yourselves to support your students needs in whatever way you see fit. Also, the TES preview does at times distort the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps

This is an entire lesson for AQA English Language (spec 8700) for Paper 2 Question 4 where the students must compare two sources. For this lesson I have used two modern sources as opposed to one modern, one older as it would be in the exam. The reason for this is highlighted in the lesson and is clear to the students what they will expect, however I have found that by using this method helps the students build confidence in tackling this overwhelming question and is a good way to build them towards comparing older sources. This lesson looks at the award speeches made by Leo DiCaprio and Kanye West, the lesson starts with a personal values starter and this idea of personal values continues throughout the rest of the lesson by looking into the values these two celebrities display in their speeches. There is room to develop the personal / British values concept if desired. The lesson has 2 videos, links to the you tube site is on both the worksheet and the power point. The activities are timed, short and allow for group discussion and discovery learning. The lesson ends with the students writing their findings in a structure which will suit the examiners needs and a short, self assessment plenary. The power point provides slides which can be printed and distributed as support / scaffolding materials for the weaker students if needed. 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 full, interactive, quick paced lesson which covers a lot of ground as this lesson has enough material to cover a 3 hour class, however it can easily be broken into 3 separate lessons if needs be as there is a lot of information in this session. The lesson warms up the students by using vocabulary building activities and by looking at Cirque Du Soleil to practice the skills needed for paper 2 question 3. The lesson then moves on to an older piece of writing covering the Great Exhibition in 1851, developing the skills needed for P2:Q3 but also preparing the students for a piece of 19th century writing. The last phase of the lesson then compares the Great Exhibition to a piece of writing covering the Millennium Dome Exhibition in 2000. The lesson is broken up with 3 videos, worksheets and has lots of room for interactive paired and group activities and also includes practice exam answer tasks which involve deeper thinking skills. Students support and learn from one another with peer assessment and a short self assessment plenary which encourages independent learning whilst slides and worksheets include starter sentences to support the weaker students. 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 complete lesson comes with extracts from Bill Bryson and Engles, worksheets and supporting materials. The focus of this lesson is looking at the writers points of view on the city of Manchester in order to create answers for paper 2 question 4 ( comparative question) Bill Bryson talks about the city in 1995 and Engles talks about the city in 1844. This lesson has enough content to fill a 3 hour session and is designed to gradually build the students confidence into tackling this question and developing an exam styled answer using a PQI-C answer structure. It does this with lots of quick paced activities, team and paired activities, short class discussion and through developing ideas and analysis of the two texts. Hope it helps