GREAT 10-MINUTE STARTER TO CEMENT THE FOLLOWING KEY TERMS AND THEIR DEFINITIONS: Accent Adjacency pairs Back-channel features Blend word Contraction Deixis / deictics Dialect Discourse markers Elision Ellipsis False start Fillers Hedge Idiolect Interactional talk Initialism Jargon Micropause Non-fluency features Overt prestige Paralinguistic features Phatic talk Prosodic features Received Pronunciation Repairs Slang Sociolect Standard English Tag question Transactional talk Transcript Turn taking Utterance Vague language INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACTIVITY: Cut out these dominoes and laminate them (optional). Give individuals or pairs one domino, including you, the teacher. You begin by reading out the definition on the yellow side of your card. The student who has the term on the blue side of their card that matches with your definition then puts up their hand and says their term out loud. They then read aloud the definition on the yellow side of their card. All class members will have to listen carefully to see if their term matches with the definition they’ve just heard, and so the game continues until it goes full circle, every student has spoken, and you eventually hear the definition that matches with the term on the blue side of your card. Essentially, you’re playing a large game of dominoes, where students have to match key terms with definitions they hear. Depending on your group’s knowledge/ability, you may work altogether to match up the terms with definitions, or, alternatively, you may decide to play this as an actual dominoes game on the floor. This is a great 10-minute starter that really helps students to remember key terms and their definitions.

As part of students' study of Anne Fine's play Flour Babies, they can adopt an egg to look after during the holidays. You will need as many hard boiled eggs as you have students in the class to do this activity. Students are talked through the adoption process before signing an official adoption certificate. Students are required to complete a 'baby book' to record their experiences. This obviously emulates what the characters have to do with a bag of flour in the play.

Show the PPT and discuss students' responses to the three questions. Discuss Roald Dahl's quotation, and the short story features on slide 3. Show slide 4 and issue Baby Shoes handout. Explain to students that this is a short story, just one sentence. Students are to read the ‘short story’ and think about the story behind it, e.g. Has a married couple lost a baby? Encourage students to think a little more left-field, like is 'Baby Shoes, Never Worn' the name of a painting? Students should jot down their ideas around the ‘short story’. They may discuss their ideas with a partner. Introduce Ernest Hemingway. Students are to copy down notes into their exercise book. Ask students to think of a collective name they would give to stories that are six words long, e.g. ‘sentence stories’. Encourage students to be inventive. They may discuss in pairs. Show slide 4; these are different names given to the shortest of short stories - are the ones students suggested up there? Split students into seven groups. Give each group one piece of Flash Fiction stuck to a piece of A4 paper. As a group, they must decide the ‘story’ behind each piece of flash fiction. Model activity. Rotate the flash fiction allowing different groups to make notes on the same sheet of paper. Encourage students to think outside the box and not to go straight for the obvious. After 10-15 minutes, make sure each group has one piece of flash fiction. Each group should read their flash fiction aloud and explain their story behind it. Students who are not presenting should listen, as they will be randomly selected to pick and explain their favourite piece of flash fiction. (Optional) Issue question cards. Ask students to see whether the 'short story features' discussed earlier apply to the six-word stories. As a final activity, students should have a go at writing their own 6-word short story. Share with the class. Issue Question Cards

This 23 slide PowerPoint (for teachers) contains 50+ FUN activities for students to do when reading novels as a class. These tasks really do engage, enthuse and excite, and they can be used with any age group. Look at the 'previews' to see the kind of activities on offer. These activities really do jazz up 'reading' up students and gives them an active task when reading as a class.

GREAT 10-MINUTE STARTER TO CEMENT THE FOLLOWING KEY TERMS AND THEIR DEFINITIONS: Alliteration Assonance Enjambment Content Emotive language Form/ Structure Imagery Metaphor Onomatopoeia End-stopped line Rhyme Simile Stanza Tone Voice Symbol Rhythm Personification Mood INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACTIVITY: Cut out these dominoes and laminate them (optional). Give individuals or pairs one domino, including you, the teacher. You begin by reading out the definition on the yellow side of your card. The student who has the term on the blue side of their card that matches with your definition then puts up their hand and says their term out loud. They then read aloud the definition on the yellow side of their card. All class members will have to listen carefully to see if their term matches with the definition they’ve just heard, and so the game continues until it goes full circle, every student has spoken, and you eventually hear the definition that matches with the term on the blue side of your card. Essentially, you’re playing a large game of dominoes, where students have to match key terms with definitions they hear. Depending on your group’s knowledge/ability, you may work altogether to match up the terms with definitions, or, alternatively, you may decide to play this as an actual dominoes game on the floor. This is a great 10-minute starter that really helps students to remember key terms and their definitions.

This resource offers a comprehensive list of techniques used by the media to influence consumers. This list can be used in a variety of ways. Students could use it to identify techniques used in adverts or they could use it to create their own advert. There are 15 different techniques listed: Association Bandwagon Beautiful People Bribery Celebrities Experts Explicit Claims Fear Humour Intensity Maybe Plain Folks Repetition Testimonials Warm & Fuzzy

Students need to be in two teams. A volunteer from each team must come to the front. Volunteers must answer a series of questions to try cross the square vertically or horizontally. They’re allowed to ask for help from their team twice. They’re only allowed to choose one person to answer the question. This resource includes a PowerPoint and a series of 18 questions with answers. Example of three questions below: F – How do you spell Frankenstein? C – Who is Frankenstein’s friend? Walton I – In which city does Frankenstein live? Ingolstadt

Students are asked to write a short paragraph about their weekend using three connectives from the list displayed in the PPT. Students are then asked to share their paragraph before reflecting on how connectives help to improve their writing.

Place these facts around the room. Students have five minutes to search for the facts in the room and write them down. Allow time to feed back and discuss afterwards. This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Place the photographs around the room before the start of the lesson. Tell students that placed around the room are some of the most iconic photographs ever captured. Ask students to walk around the room, view the pictures, read the information and decide which one the most powerful impact. Why? Ask: How important are photographs in newspapers? Do you think it would be possible to run a front page which did not have a photograph with it? Why/why not? Ask: Are there times when using photographs is not justified? Ask students to look at the list and decide what they think. - Pictures taken of celebrities without their permission - Brutal pictures of people hurt or killed in war or violence (The Falling Man 9/11 and Death in Africa caused controversy) - Page 3 semi-naked shots Students to write a short response in their books, giving reasons for their answers. This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Using the PowerPoint, explain to students the three main types of newspaper writing – news stories, features and opinion pieces. Students should make notes in their books as you explain to them. Quick test (slide 6): Ask students to decide whether the headlines are for news, features or opinion pieces. They should explain what clues helped them, e.g. the use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ Issue the three Articles to pairs. Students are to decide which one is the news story, the feature article and the opinion piece. Students are to read the articles closely. Under the headings of ‘news stories’ ‘features’ and ‘opinion pieces’ in their book, students are to identify word level features in the different types of writing. Display slide 7 on the PowerPoint to assist students. But encourage students to be open-minded about what the find. Differentiation: some features will need explaining. For lower ability groups, delete tricky features as appropriate. After activity, ask students to explain what language features they're likely to find in a features article/news story/opinion piece? This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Starter: Be active, not passive! Display PowerPoint. Go through slides 1-3. Explain to students the difference between active and passive voice. Teach students the idea of bringing the subject to the front of the sentence in order to transmit meaning more clearly, directly and succinctly. In this lesson students are going to put together a whole article individually or in pairs (depending on your group’s ability). Ideally, this should be done on laptops, but it’s possible to do on paper. You are going to feed students pieces of information via the PPT. Students will use the information to put their article together. Laptops are better for this activity as they are able to edit previously written paragraphs more efficiently. For lower ability students, it’s probably best to print off the slides. Explain task using slide 4. Show students slide 5-11, leaving about 5 minutes between each slide. For slide 10, you’ll need to print copies of the Article for pairs. In the last five minutes, instruct students to check through their work using slide 12. Students to swap their laptop with another pair and compare articles. Show students Original Article. This is the actual article based on the same information published in 2008. This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

This resource contains two documents: the student version is a blank table for students to complete; the teacher version is already filled in using Bridget Jones's Diary and When Harry Met Sally as examples. Students are to attempt to identify the features of a romantic comedy in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and complete the table using modern romantic comedies to assist their understanding.

This is a comprehensive literacy starter activity covering several homophones. This resource contains an informative PPT followed by three engaging and challenging activities. This activity should last about 20-25 minutes.

In this PPT are seven fantastic brain teasers. These will definitely get your tutees' brains whirring away. For example: What is light as a feather, but even the strongest man cannot hold it more than a few minutes? Answer: His breath.

Two lessons based on Simon Armitage's poem November. The learning objective for both lessons is to understand the subject matter of November, and identify/interpret the feelings and attitudes. These two lessons contain varied and exciting activities including sequencing activities, labelling the poem with pictures and relating the subject matter of the poem to themselves. There's a strong focus on the language of the poem and the different metaphors used.

An informative PPT explaining how to use speech marks correctly.

L.O.: To understand the content and context of Elvis’s Twin Sister. Assess: Students’ ability to: listen carefully to factual information about Elvis’s life; understand how humour is used to achieve particular effects. This resource includes a comprehensive lesson plan and PowerPoint to successfully teach students the poem Elvis's Twin Sister.

The SOW takes students through the following learning objectives: Lesson 1 Obj: To be able to define ‘allegory’ and ‘satire’ Lesson 2 Obj: To be able to identify persuasive devices / To research the background and context of Animal Farm. Lesson 3 Obj: To be able to identify language used for characters in Animal Farm Lesson 4 Obj: To be able to identify differences between Snowball and Napoleon Lesson 5 Obj: To be able to use knowledge of the content of Chapter 4 to plan newspaper article. Lesson 6 Obj: To be able to identify improvements to be made through planning. Lesson 7 Obj: To be able to understand how power and language are interlinked. Lesson 8 Obj: To be able to understand how Animal Farm relates to Russian history. Lesson 9 Obj: To be able to analyse and interpret events in Chapters 8 and 9 Lesson 10 Obj: To be able to identify what makes an effective speaker and listener. Lesson 11 Obj: To be able to work effectively as a group and prepare a speech Lesson 12 Obj: To be able to present speech and peer-assess Lesson 13 Obj: To be able to analyse and discuss the film adaptation of Animal Farm Lesson 14 To be able to analyse and discuss the film adaptation of Animal Farm

Ask your students to graph the build-up of tension in each act. Differentiation would include asking students to add quotes to their graph or illustrate pictures to help their understanding.