I had a whole stack of newspapers in my classroom which the cleaners were threatening to throw away and an end of term lesson with my year 7 students. I put together this selection of the games we played to get students engaged with this text type (which lots of them said they rarely, if ever, saw at home). Most are set up as team building challenges, but there are several which would make great independent activities as a starter for a lesson involving or analysing newspapers. There are artistic, kinesthetic and, of course, literacy- based challenges suitable for a variety of ages and abilities. Nothing that isn't fun! Very few materials are required for these activities apart from the newspapers: sticky tape, any scrap materials, marker pens, A3 paper and glue would cover every challenge and most can be done with nothing more than a pen. Enjoy!

I've designed this lesson to introduce poetry to KS4 students at GCSE, but it would work as well for KS3 too. It is an overview of what poetry is, building on what they already know. There are several games and activities which are linked to Songs of Ourselves, but easily adapted to any poetry you want to tackle with them. There is a poetry carousel as the main activity, so simply print the poems they will be studying or some poems about poetry for them to analyse. Enjoy!

Everything you need in one place! A four-part lesson with a range of visual, auditory and kinesthetic activities to keep the students engaged and connect with the themes and language of this beautiful poem. The development lesson guides students through the analysis of the poem in detail before setting an essay question on the characters and relationships. There are differentiated activities to match points, evidence and language features in a table to scaffold student answers. I have provided the CIE mark scheme for students before they write the full essay and I have also written and provided an example essay. The students could be given this essay in cut out paragraphs which they have to reorder, they could use different colour highlighters to work out how to structure their paragraphs and embed quotations, and they should read the essay, mark it and provide feedback. This is a lovely poem , excellent for Masculinist studies, on the themes of death, regret, emotions, communication and nature. One of the set texts from Songs of Ourselves in the CIE iGCSE, a mark scheme and outcomes have been provided for this course. These slides can simply be swapped for your own mark scheme if it is different. Enjoy!

THE ONLY END OF TERM QUIZ YOU WILL NEED! There are celebrity names, cropped pictures, cartoon silhouettes, lateral thinking puzzles and an English Literature round and a music intros round just for fun! This goes well with the Speech and Characters video also available in my shop. This multiple round team quiz will keep every student interested. Some rounds could be printed out (I would recommend that for the first picture round so students can keep working on it) but the rest can just be put up on screen for three to five minutes each. Prizes for winners always go down well! After the quiz there are some extra activities to get students thinking about how authors (and real life humans!) create characters and why we do this, comparing quotations from Shakespeare, Russell Brand and Eminem on creating your personal character and place in the world. High ability groups would gain a lot from comparing and contrasting these ideas. Enjoy!

8 clips of characters from Fantasy and Sci-fi films speaking. The students are asked to write down the names of the characters and the films in the first round. In Seychelles we had watched clips from several of these beforehand, but in England I think it would work from general knowledge. In the second round, students are asked 4 questions about genre and comparing sci-fi to fantasy. The whole quiz is out of 20 and should challenge everyone from my EAL lower ability kids to the top set ones. The first time they are shown, the video effect should mean they cannot see the characters clearly. If your students really struggle, the videos play through without a filter at the end and the answers come up after each clip. With some of my less confident classes, I would only play this part and ask students to hold up answers on a whiteboard after each clip. I would also pause between each clip to allow writing time. I created this for my Fantasy scheme of work, but it would work well as an introduction to character building in any story writing. These particular characters were all selected because they have unusual character voices which would be written down in a way which is outside of the norm, i.e.: Hagrid's elision of h sounds; Gollum's additional s's, etc. My students went on to try to write the speech for each character phonetically, compare them to the scripts/books and then to write phonetic speech for one of the minor characters in their stories. Bonus idea! I showed my top set a clip of all the times Hodor says "Hodor" and then played them the "Hold the door" video too, to illustrate character arcs shown through speech. I'd recommend it! Please rate and review if you use it. This is my first video, so I'd happily make more if it's enjoyed. I hope it's as useful to you as it has been to me.

I hate spoon-feeding Shakespeare to students. Shakespeare deserves better! This unit of work is for GCSE and focuses on the first three acts of The Merchant of Venice. It is designed to give background information and close reading practice in order to build up to an essay on audience sympathy for the character of Shylock. The last scene with Shylock in (Act 4, scene 1) was then given for independent analysis and students watched different versions of the trial scene before writing that paragraph in class in controlled conditions. This gave me a chance to see them move from more structured group and whole class work to their personal, independent ability. Their essay results were excellent and the range of approaches to the question really paid off with a wide range of different answers, quotations chosen and analysis of language. In this unit you will find a range of interactive games, PowerPoint presentations and note-making worksheets suitable for students from D to A*

8 adjectives, superlatives and adverbs activities which make great starters for writing lessons of all kinds or as part of a literacy lesson. Accessible for all ages and very active, including drama, team games, timed races, etc. Very versatile activities and still academic enough for any HOD to approve of. I've done these lessons with students aged from 10 to 18!

Hi! This is a complete set of resources to teach Muliebrity by Sujata Bhatt. This poem is on the iGCSE curriculum as part of the SOngs of Ourselves anthology. I’ve included everything I would want to put on each slide including dates, titles, LOs, and detailed analysis of language and structure for each part. There are biographical details and context slides as well as the BBC news article to introduce some of the concepts to students and there are plenty of games/activities to learn new vocabulary either in the poem or useful to describe the poem. The final lesson assessment has an exam style question about the girl in Muliebrity which is broken down, planning is provided, as are sentence starters, paragraph success criteria, a mark scheme, self- or peer-assessment slides and a reflective plenary as well. There should be more than enough for a lesson here so you can come back to some of the activities for revision. Enjoy!

A complete set of resources for teaching Morris’ poem “Little Boy Crying”. This is on the Songs of Ourselves iGCSE poetry exam for CIE, but is a great poem to explore this controversial topic. I have read online that it is based on a childhood memory of Morris being hit by his father and then returning to this as an adult disciplining his son. This seems totally likely, but I haven’t found confirmation from a trustworthy source. There is a descriptive writing PPT included which will allow students to explore how they create imagery in description before going on to look at Morris’ use of descriptive techniques and imagery in his poem. There is also a separate PPT with key vocabulary to explore in a physical and engaging way which I thought would be useful for weaker readers or EAL students. I have included everything in the main presentation that you would need to teach this poem for the first time,for revision, or to even ask students to pre-teach from. The lesson objectives (on each slide) and end of lesson exam-style essay question ask students to explore how the language, structure and form present the themes of discipline and parent-child relationships. (For a higher ability class, you could split these two.) and the starter activities, biographical information and the guided questions (with answers provided on the next slide) help students meet that outcome. There is support provided for students’ essay answers in the form of sentence starters,simplified assessment objectives and mark schemes, sentence starters, paragraph structures, and a peer/self-marking slide. A really interesting lesson to explore students relationships with their parents. Enjoy!

I hope your class have had a great year. You’ve worked so hard and you deserve to use this for…all your classes at least once? So I’ve made it broad enough to apply to ages 11 - 19 with no amendment. 5 rounds of questions: 1. Film and TV 2. Children’s Literature 3. News headlines 4. The Royal Wedding 5. Music Intros. The films and TV programmes , news headlines and royal wedding are from 2018 while the children’s books referred to are mostly classics with a few recent best sellers, The music intros are linked to YouTube. All songs selected are from this year and suitable for all ages while still (hopefully!) being cool. I’m sure the kids will give you their opinions! The newspaper headlines round asks students to write their own true headlines to go with the pictures provided. This can also vary in assessment depending on the ability of your class. It’s difficult to give definitive answers to some of these (no PowerPoint should have to burden all of Donald Trump’s newsworthy stories), so links have been provided to Google searches for news on the person in question. Enjoy and have a wonderful summer! : )

Hi! By popular demand! This bundle of resources covers chapters 7 and 8 of Mildred D. Taylor’s semi-biographihcal novel ‘Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry’.in detail. The thorough whole-lesson PowerPoints cover imagery frequently used, offer up advice, paragraph structures, write-along line-by-line exemplars and extended reading such as the first chapter of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I have included everything you need for these three lessons (it may run longer if getting through the reading takes too long.) I have provided more than enough starters and plenaries for you to pick and choose or create a whole new lesson. Enjoy!

objectives writing challenges timed activities opportunities for discussion reflection building on their own interests minimal prep I created this to go with the KS3 Fantasy Writing Scheme of Work I also have for sale on here. It would be less 3 in there. I set brain storming homework before, but the results were wildly varied, often plagiarised,and 99% pointless. Teaching students to be creative sounds impossible but this is a really rewarding process for students to be able to draw on their own varied loves and build up stories based on their specific interests. When I did my Masters in Creative Writing at Warwick, we would do short writing tasks to explore our ideas, writing around the central story to create a sense of depth and scope to the world. This lesson builds students ideas from individual words up to a 1000-word piece using timed segments and opportunities for reflection and discussion, all focused around a Fantasy/Sci-Fi theme. Some of these ideas are from that course, others are from the FANTASTSIC resource “Ready, Set, Novel” published by Chronicle Books and building on the strategies developed over National Novel Writing Month. However all writing, descriptions, and further breaking down is mine. Objectives: Creating original and imaginative ideas. Reflecting those ideas effectively through descriptive writing. There is a plenary slide, but because of the idiosyncratic nature of school objectives, I have not added them to each slide, but it gives “excellent, great, good and let’s talk” standards which the students must use to assess their own imaginative ad creative writing. I would ask students to write them on Post-its so if they need to talk, they can throw these later (of course, once they’re over the horror of asking for help, they won’t bother removing it).

A complete set of resources for teaching Nicholson’ poem “Rising Five”. This is on the Songs of Ourselves iGCSE poetry exam for CIE and explores themes of childhood and time. There is a descriptive writing PPT included which will allow students to explore how they create imagery in description before going on to look at Nicholson’ use of descriptive techniques and imagery in his poem. There is also a separate PPT with key vocabulary to explore in a physical and engaging way which I thought would be useful for weaker readers or EAL students. I have included everything in the main presentation that you would need to teach this poem for the first time, for revision, or to even ask students to pre-teach from. The lesson objectives (on each slide) and end of lesson exam-style essay question ask students to explore how the language, structure and form present the theme of time. The starter activities, biographical information and the guided questions (with answers provided on the next slide) help students meet that outcome. There is support provided for students’ essay answers in the form of sentence starters, simplified assessment objectives and mark schemes, sentence starters, paragraph structures, and a peer/self-marking slide. An interesting lesson to explore students’ memories of childhood and experience of aging. Enjoy!

I’m tutoring a 8 year old with ADHD, and ASD who loves motorcycles and Valentino Rossi.I needed to assess his reading skills so chose Rossi’s autobiography from 2006, “What if I Hadn’t Tried?”. It is simply written, translated from Italian, and skirts over inappropriate behaviour with phrases like “long term and short term girlfriends” or “we got into some trouble” and has a review from a Parker-Bowles in the Sun, so I think the whole book will be appropriate for his reading age of 7 1/2 years, and I plan to make several further lessons on it for him if you enjoy this one. Pictures of the cover, back, and Rossi’s signature create some interest and structure of books can be discussed. There are 10 main questions over the course of the first page and a half describing the Australian GP win, followed by some lightning speed skimming and scanning questions. The first couple of questions are Maths based to cover some numeracy skills and see if students can process what they’re being asked to do. The questions touch on structure (in media res opening), metaphors, similes, information retrieval, and effects on the reader of the exciting description. Key Word = trajectory and there is a definition and diagram for this. The last challenge asks students to draw the race track from the description given. I designed this to have answers written in books, but it could easily be adapted. Reading assessment. Reading worksheet.

The third installment of the complete SOW for No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe. These are the resources for at least two complete lessons including homework/revision, starters, context, summarising skills, a diary writing activity, every word of the novel with questions and answers for each paragraph as well, essay writing scaffolding which breaks down how to analyse the question, plan a response and structure a paragraph with sentence starters and a student-friendly mark scheme. Nothing YOU have to do except print the diary outline to support weaker students if applicable, and then project the presentations.** I believe you could walk in and teach the book without having ever read it or checking these slides once. ** Prove me wrong!

Two complete lessons on PowerPoint including every word of chapter 5 with questions to guide students’ first or second reading of Chinua Achebe’s novel No Longer at Ease. There are starters, plenaries, biographical and contextual information as well as a finished exemplar essay on Obi to help your students reflect on their own essays. Mark it with them and then allow them to mark their own essays and improve them. The essay mark scheme as well as planning documents are included. I have also added useful links for the chapter which could support your subject knowledge, or become a webquest/revision/flipped learning activity for students.

A complete lesson with resources to support students answering an iGCSE style essay question (although it would be easily adapted to another curriculum). The focus is on the techniques used to present the farmhand’s thoughts and feelings. There are pre-differentiated worksheets to support different abilities. There is also a line by line analysis essay, which is not the CIE’s preferred method. You could use this pretty solid 7 or 8 essay and change the structure to thematic and create a grade 9 essay. There are questions to guide the students first through fourth readings covering vocabulary, imagery, structure and meaning. I have also provided a biographical page and made clear links between Baxter’s life and the setting and character created in Farmhand. There are a choice of starters and plenaries or these could become a secondary lesson with time for students to write their full essays. Please feel free to message me with comments or requests. Lizzee

3 lessons worth of revision activities which are fun, engaging, practical and helpful. Students revise key quotations, organising them into different piles for different essay topics, there is a “pub quiz” with three rounds and a QQT (quiz, quiz, trade) activity. These make excellent additions to my complete SOW on Achebe’s novel plus they can easily be adapted for different texts. Enjoy!

It’s remarkable how relevant this book is right now. This bundle of lessons includes the final lessons on chapters 9 - 12 and the final assessment. I have included 24 files: every resource you will need and a complete PowerPoint for each lesson including starters, objectives, guided reading with questions on the chapters, development activities and detailed plenaries. There are two additional and non-essential lessons which I have included and my class completed. They reported finding that the unseen poetry lesson was a nice break from doing the book, helped them understand the context, and they were happy to hear a new range of poetic voices. The assessment lesson was necessary because it was our first unit back after the holidays and year 9 needed a refresher. You could easily adapt the assessment lessons (14, 18 and 19) to other questions and have some ready made revision lessons. Download and teach. No preparation required. Minimal or optional printing. A range of possible activities often offered for differentiation. Enjoy!