Quiz, quiz, trade is a great way to get kids asking and answering questions on Geography. This activity has some straightforward questions covering topics including globalisation, climate and weather, Antarctica, maps and directions. Answers provided. Cut out and go! After the students have quizzed each other and traded enough times, the PPT has a quiz related to those questions so you have a grade for your mark book.

I wrote this modern-day version of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice which became the school's secondary performance. Like The Merchant of Venice, it has a range of parts for all abilities (we had students from 12 to 18 taking part) and some more adult themes and references. It was designed to be performed in the round with various scenes filmed in advance and played on a screen for the audience. We ended up filming the entire production and selling DVDs to raise money for the school. I have aimed to be as true to Shakespeare's version as possible and it was interesting to see the humour coming through the somewhat grim situations. The prologue was rapped by one of our students while a pre-recorded video (detailed in the comments) played in the background. This was created by a small group of students in Media and Visual Arts Club after school, but there would be enough pre-recorded scenes for an entire Media Studies group to storyboard, film and edit in advance.

A wonderful lesson. Probably my favourite one ever. The kids enjoy the sense of mystery and the energetic, kinaesthetic lesson but it is based very solidly in seeing progression from them. This has worked for me at every school, with every ability and every year group. It's rare I get to bring up one of my favourite poets, Slyvia Plath, before 6th form, so I wanted to make sure they fell in love with her too. This poem is to her unborn child. The picture is painted pretty clearly in the imagery, so this is the overall puzzle the children have to solve: Who is she talking to when she says "You're". (Before this lesson is a great time to have a you're/your homework or starter.) At sixth form or for top set year 11 the students can work it out on their own or in pairs, but I have usually set it as group work in tables of four. This poetry lesson is also to get them to recognise different types of imagery, be able to analyse quotations and spot patterns in the imagery, making connections across the text. There is a second lesson attached which goes into much more detail about writing analytical paragraphs giving examples of other students' work. This could very easily become a mini-essay even at year 7. There are a range of different activities to suit each type of learner, so simply select the slides which are best for your class. Enjoy!!

Potential interview or cover lesson? I love Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. Reading extracts from books I love always makes for more interesting lessons and revisting book 1 will keep me going until April when the new season starts! There are enough activities on the PowerPoint to easily cover a 2-hour lesson, though it could be cut down to an hour without difficulty. Activities include: learning new vocabulary; guided reading; drama; a short video clip for comparison and consolidation (caution: it uses the word "bitch" while talking about dogs, but is clearly also a joke at Tyrion's expense about his promiscuity); helps assess their ability to find quotations and read for basic meaning (Who is saying what? How do authors blend descriptions of people and places?); an assessment of their reading skills with questions focused on characters and relationships; differentiated from bottom sets to top sets with a range of questions; answers are included for those questions. Phew! I hope this is pretty much fool proof! I have tried it with all of my sets (bottom = levels 2 - 4; middle = 4 - 6; top = 5 - 8) who found it challenging (good!) but also showed some of their best work. Bottom set were able to complete the questions with short answers in about 20 minutes. My top set were still working after an hour, giving much longer answers with quotations and analysis of language. Obviously, some activities are more suited to some groups and lessons than others, but there is enough variety here to keep everyone interested. I would love to know how you get on with this! Please let me know, particularly if you use it for an interview. (Remember your relevant outcomes/objectives!)

Book the ICT room, print these two sheets, done!

Three lessons which focus on planning, developing ideas into paragraphs, structuring paragraphs, using language features and structuring the whole letter. I have also included a frame for weaker students as well as an exemplar article on Seychelles culture. Students can write about their own culture, of course. Everything from outcomes, starters, progress tracking, self or peer-assessment instructions and plenaries are provided for each lesson. Initially I created this for WJEC but have recently adapted it for CIE's Checkpoint English. Please feel free to put in your board's mark scheme where this one was. I have also included a lesson plan for the second lesson, just in case you are being observed, this will make adapting it much easier, as well as giving you clear guidance.

Designed for my bottom set year 9 group who are learning about Victorian England and Romantic Poetry, these lessons became their final reading assessment. The activities are straightforward and engaging, the language is simple, yet asks them to reflect on their own expression and the final assessment has scaffolding including sentence openings and gap fills.

These lessons will have students prepared and confident for any assessment you give them! Great preparation for unseen poetry at GCSE.

This lesson introduces students to the monster Cthulhu through pictures and a listening quiz using the parody song "Hey There Cthulhu". The lesson focus is on using impressive vocabulary, so there is a thesaurus race at the start and a cloze (gap filling exercise) to use new vocabulary in as well as a descriptive writing task. Nothing too spooky here, but enough to get students interested.

Are you falling asleep while marking your students' work? Whether descriptive or narrative, these resources are designed to help get those uninspired writing to the next level, making their work imaginative and engaging to read. I used them initially with a top set GCSE group, but quickly started rolling them out all the way down to year 7 low ability (high expectations are the key!). Each lesson has specific outcomes with resources for students to self or peer assess so they can see their progress. There are 7 complete lessons which deal with vocabulary building, word connotations, sentence structure, paragraphing, planning, etc. I found my students' marks went up by as much as two grades by using these key ideas and students who found it hard to be creative before had the confidence to take much better risks with their work and enjoy the process. I felt like I'd discovered a secret of some kind with these ideas and I hope you feel the same.

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*

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

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 baker's dozen of revision creative tasks and activities. Little to no preparation time needed. These are student-focused, varied for different abilities and to keep students engaged. These make the student work hard, not you. These would form either the main focus of a lesson or part of a carousel of activities which students tackle over the lesson. They could also be set as homework tasks with opportunity to feedback in the following lesson. These are revision tasks, so students should have already read the book and discussed the themes and issues.

FIVE different activities to help students refresh their memories of the characters, events and quotations from The Secret River. These could be spread out over several lessons or combined into a couple. Students should have their own copies of the books, but there is no specific need for them here. I would suggest using these in the first week of revision. They are enjoyable, engaging, team activities with a bit of something for every learning style. Some notes on using the resources: Answers are provided for all of the quizzes on the same PPT. Cut up the dominoes beforehand because they are currently in the correct order. The pictures are taken from the TV mini-series, but should be obvious even if the students haven't seen it. The only ones who seem a little nondescript are Dan and Ned. Enjoy!

This resource pack is aimed at helping students analyse the text in close detail for a passage question and to structure that kind of response, and at students who will tackle a whole-book essay question. There are some activities which focus on Grenville herself and the information is provided for students along with some active reading challenges. This background information then links into a lesson helping students develop an empathetic response and a question on where our sympathies as readers lie. It succinctly takes them through the steps of structuring sentences, paragraphs and the whole response. There are clear objectives for each task, breaking down the C grade descriptors and A grade descriptors and helping students push themselves to the next grade. Best of luck to all of you guiding students through iGCSEs! I'm sure they will be a credit to you!

These resources focus on essay writing skills and revising knowledge of characters in an active game (though this could be done with students just writing notes on each character - feel free to adapt it to your needs). There is essay writing guidance including grade C and grade A mark scheme, colour-coding revision of essay paragraphs and an interactive plenary with a venn diagram for students to place themselves on. These are resources which will challenge every student to take part. They are easily adaptable for any essay question. These work really well in conjunction with the other resource packs I have for sale. The PowerPoint has been re-uploaded from the working copy I have.

Designed to teach Wilfred Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth and Seigfried Sassoon's Attack, this bundle is full of structured 4 or 5 part lessons with differentiated outcomes and activities, varied to keep every student engaged and challenged, making excellent progress. Whether analysing these poems for CIE iGCSE Songs of Ourselves, Unseen Poetry or WW1 Poetry, they are accessible for KS3 and KS4 and lead to structured and scaffolded essay responses suitable for exam preparation or coursework. It includes a whole lesson contextualising WW1 and analysing the language of recruitment posters persuading soldiers to enlist. This is a great way to have students thinking critically and engaged from the first moment! The following lesson goes on to challenge students to compete to read and answer questions on the two poets through their biographies. This is a really fun strategy to get them reading and can get really competitive! Students have never failed to empathise with these two soldier-poets who wrote about their experiences on the front line and the reflection afterwards has created some very rewarding responses. The next lesson is a full lesson of analysis in the form of a snooker game. Students will be active, working independently and pushing themselves, but won't even notice how much hard work they're doing! All you have to do is sit back and check their answers as they bring them up! This lesson has always gone down so well with the students and I achieved an Outstanding in a lesson observation with it too: I'm really excited to pass it on to you! Finally, I have included an example of a student's war poetry essay for iGCSE (on two different poems) so students can see a modelled example of how to structure their responses and get to act as the teacher and mark an anonymous piece of coursework. Everything you need to study these poets and poems is here in one place. Enjoy!

A complete lesson on chapter 6 of No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe. This lesson has sentence level analysis for students to complete as well as starter, timeline, questions on each passage from chapter 6, practice for essay writing with mark scheme and plenary. Just project and go!

A full lesson on chapter 7 of No Longer at Ease. The lesson objective is about themes in the novel as a whole and the starter, questions for each passage and main lesson activity all relate back to the themes. Don’t worry! Lots of my students need a little reminder of what themes actually are too, so there’s an interactive game to play at the beginning as well. Enjoy!