I've found another use for all that knowledge we have about the old AQA English Lit anthology (The Sunlight on The Grass anthology). I have started to turn them into English Language Paper 1 Section A Mock Exams! This is one of them. There is no mark scheme, but if you use the Paper 1 mark scheme from the AQA website you should be fine. This one uses the opening of My Polish Teacher's Tie.

This is my attempt to engage and develop my Year 12s academic voices in their Paris Anthology related essay responses. The main issue my class had seemed to focus upon when and where to start. What I do is show them how they can place a particular emphasis on one of several potential areas of focus initially. I show them how they could use Mode, Audience, Purpose, each of Grice’s Maxims and each of the different levels of language as a starting point for an analytical response. The attached word document appears to be an “essay”.It isn’t. It’s the collected starting points placed in one document so that the students can focus more on the “how you do it” instead of trying to copy down the best bits. It worked reasonably well and is suited for a class with similar needs. Hope you find this useful.

I designed this for the old AQA specification. Now that the spec is obsolete, some of you might be thinking of turning those stacks and stacks of anthologies into resources for KS3 classes (we certainly are for year 9). As a result, you may find this booklet useful. The booklet is essentially a copy of the entire anthology where on the left hand side of a double page spread you have the text, and on the right hand side you have space for notes. Each story is ended with generic questions and has TWO exam questions for revision purposes. Perfect for planning lessons when you are taking an extended period of time off. Happy reading.

A bank of lessons and extracts that introduce Key Stage 3 to a variety of different 19th Century Literature texts. Designed with a top set year 8 class in mind. Draws heavily from the AQA material - look at this as either a time-saver or a starting point. ADDITION: These lessons are intentionally “light” in terms of their content - the main aim of this unit was to get the students to read the extracts and to ask questions about them. As a result, the lessons I’ve built contain gaps that allow me to react to the needs of the kids. If your intention is to purchase these lessons, please recognise that you will need to fill these gaps yourself. The lessons were only ever intended as a starting point.

My third lesson. This is designed to be a lesson where I as the teacher give less and the students give more of their own ideas - the group is reluctant to communicate. As a result, it is less "idea heavy" and far more task focused - you'll get a lot of markable material out of this.

A thematic exploration of Violence within Othello - focusing specifically on Act 4. Also, the power point starts with a little revision of characters and quotations from across the play. I found this a fun lesson.

A text I taught to year 7 (second set) which we all absolutely loved! There are so few lessons here in comparison to my other resource bundles because we often spent large amounts of time just reading the book. The video is pretty awesome - I take no credit for creating it, I downloaded it from youtube and converted it to a format I could use. May the crows find you willing and able.

One of my old schools did a great job of communicating with their feeder Primary Schools. We would be invited in to teach the incoming Year 7s. We took this a stage further by collaboratively teaching lessons with people from other departments. This lesson is designed to be taught to Year 6 students and combines Art and English. It's quite easy to change this to meet the needs of your own school's transitional needs. You'll need to download some Manga style pictures and also, somewhat unsurprisingly, you'll need Art resources too.

I had SO much fun with this unit of work! It helped that the TA in my class went on to become a local MP for Labour (still is as far as I can tell...). Essentially, this series of 5 lessons - which, by the way, totally went over the 5 lessons I gave myself to teach this - explores a number of different political speeches. Included in the pack are a number of transcripts - Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, Alex Ferguson's farewell speech, Bush's post-911 address to the nation and the transcripts of Clegg, Cameron and Brown from the First Televised General Election Debates (heavy stuff). I was a little tentative at teaching this to a bottom set year 9 class, but they totally got on board with the debates (they tore shreds out of Brown...) and engaged well with the controlled assessment task at the end. I know that the controlled assessments are now null and void (a shame really), but the exploration of speeches might be useful to someone out there in the teaching ether...

A unit designed to be taught to Year 7. It introduces them to the basics of the Media and gets them writing creatively - a Travel Brochure. Includes resources and articles.

A bare bones SoW that focuses on introducing the Literature aspect of study at KS3, but assesses the students on a piece of creative writing. The lessons assume you have a copy of the text for students to follow. Look at this as a starting point. Designed with a bottom set in mind.

A single power point designed to be taught as a walking-talking mock examination. This can extend over several lessons - I predict you'll need at least three to do this justice. The source materials are included.

One lesson that focuses on getting the students to use more technical vocabulary. Another lesson that tests their understanding and hits them with an exam question at the end. All material is based upon the AQA terminology guide (not included in this pack).

A few things first: the mock exam can be found elsewhere on in my resources and I base the lessons off a similar series of lessons focused on Anil. The difference here is that these lessons are very much targeting higher ability students - all of the success criteria draws from the top end of the mark criteria. I found this series of lessons to be really useful as a way of establishing the skills required to answer each of the Section A questions. The lessons focus less on exam strategy and more on understanding what is required in relation to each question. The kids found it useful.