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.

KS3 English Shakespeare Macbeth - 10 Characteristics of a Shakespearean Tragedy

A simple straight-forward starter for capital letters. Students learn where to use capital letters before correcting sentences where capital letters have not been used.

Students sometimes use the word ‘of’ where they should use the world ‘have’. This may be because the shortened version of ‘have’ sounds like ‘of’. Students learn about the common error as described above, before correcting sentences.

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.

Fun little starter to get students thinking. They're asked to look at 8 different objects and try to group them into pairs and explain their reasons why. Students can work individually, in a pair or in a group depending on their ability.

Spelling activity based on unstressed vowels. Students learn what unstressed vowels are before trying to come up with tricks to remember spellings with unstressed vowels.

Students are to correct a sentence which has used several incorrect homophones. They are then asked to create their own sentences using incorrect homophones for their partner to correct.

Students are shown a collection of objects on the screen. They have two minutes to try and remember them all without writing them down. After the two minutes they must write down as much as they can remember. They are then able to see their age equivalent test score. For example, if they remember 10 objects, then they have the memory of an 8-year-old.

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.

When I first met my new classes I went through a 'classroom code' so they were familiar with my expectations. This is the PowerPoint I used. You may edit it as you wish to suit your own purposes.

This resource offers a reading question, an essay plan and key word definitions. This essay was used as the reading assessment for a high ability Year 9 group studying Shakespeare's Macbeth. Essay Question: Starting with this speech, explain how far you think Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a tragic hero. Assessment Objectives A01 – Maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response, and use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations. A02 – Analyse language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate A03 – Show understanding of the contexts in which texts were written A04 – Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.

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.

An informative PPT explaining how to use speech marks correctly.

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.

This is a fun, engaging starter which gets students excited about writing. Firstly, they watch the McCain Wedges advert before completing a guided writing activity where students write from the perspective of an inanimate object with question prompts. This often has hilarious results. The final activity offers student complete creative freedom, but please note, googly eyes are required.

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.

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.

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

This is a glossary of terms / features of spoken language. This is far from an exhaustive ‘list’ – just some basic terms that you should be familiar with for analysis of spoken language data. It's organised in alphabetical order. It can be used as a guide for students to annotate and identify features in spoken language date. Example of resource: Accent: the ways in which words are pronounced. Accent can vary according to the region or social class of a speaker. Adjacency pairs: parallel expressions used across the boundaries of individual speaking turns. They are usually ritualistic and formulaic socially. For example: ‘How are you?’/ ’Fine thanks’ Back-channel features: words, phrases and non-verbal utterances [e.g. ‘I see’, ‘oh’, ‘uh huh’, ‘really’] used by a listener to give feedback to a speaker that the message is being followed and understood. Blend word: words that are formed by combining parts of other words – e.g. jeans + leggings = jeggings.