A very thorough and detailed resource which defines difficult terms, provides students with a range of fun and varied examples and explores gender bias in speech and carefully sourced written texts. The scanned pdf is fine and readable, but is an early ‘work’ from when I examined the A level, so is a little old and not full of fancy images and video clips. However, it is a complete teaching pack, ideal for a teacher having to plan this fascinating unit at short notice. I am currently uploading a range of recently created Language and Gender resources this month, so do follow me.

A slideshow with detailed definitions, examples, historical context and lots of good images. Ideal for anyone studying or teaching Jekyll and Hyde, Dracula, Frankenstein...any Gothic texts.

Everything you ever wanted to know about this dark strand of Shakespeare's play but were too afraid to ask. It's all here. Lots of supporting images and some historical context to stretch the most able. A good springboard for students to then link some of the information here to key scenes and quotations.

A thorough unit of work with full instructions and a clear mark scheme. Students imagine that they are a well to do Elizabethan lady (or lord!) from the fifteenth or early sixteenth century country shires, visiting seedy Southwark for the first time. Students have to write a letter home to the country Manor House in a suitably formal style, telling their loved ones all about the sights, smells and sounds of Shakespearean London. Included is a good sample response and some useful handouts about the area. Globe education also offer students excellent information too. You could start the students off with the task, get them to brainstorm, research the playhouses and city using the handouts as a starting point, look at the sample letter, then ask them to write their own letters. The responses look great as wall displays. This task will encourage students to enjoy Shakespeare rather than fear him!

These odd one out activities are great ways to open up lessons and get the students focussed and on task. The resources is flexible and so handy as students can start working on it while the latecomers are arriving. Just project it up in the whiteboard. You can slot one into the middle or end of a lesson too. They differentiate well because all kids can respond in some way to an image. Often the weaker essay writers produce superb oral responses to this task. The students look at images from the play and have to link them in some way, arguing their case for which is the oddball. Some of the best discussions and genuine learning can come from this simple activity. The slides show suggested answers and the images are well chosen. Please see my other odd one outs in my shop.

This 16 slide presentation was originally created for a comparative essay task and is an ideal way of introducing the genre, introducing new focus texts and covering comparative skills. It goes through the key terms, starting with ‘Utopias’ and defining what they are, with examples and quotations, then moving onto their flipside, the dystopian vision. I used it with my A level students who were studying ‘1984’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange’ for coursework, but it would easily transfer across to the other texts such as ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and ‘Frankenstein’. This resource explores the same over-arching ideas behind the exam topic and explains a lot of the tricky contextual references and theories.

Full PowerPoint presentation which covers all the main three ways in which Shylock is viewed by academics, with textual examples and supporting analysis for each stance. Lots of detail. Makes ideal characterand play revision.

A good pair of revision packs which cover the lot. Please note that the cover sheet is a separate A4 overview page. You may well want to select what you prefer from each. The cover sheet goes with the 'complete' PDF and the second revision pack looks more at specific revision tasks. The aim is to improve textual understanding and confidence with the play whilst giving students lots to work on.

This is an ideal pack for anyone wanting to encourage their students to read widely and perhaps try a different range of books. It is aimed at KS3 age students, mainly year sevens and eights. However, it is just as useful for aspiration Commin Entrance exam students who are keen to brush up on book knowledge prior to interviews. The project can last several weeks and is ideal as both extension or class work activity. The pack contains a useful letter home to parents asking them to support their child with the project, focus tasks on all aspects of the chosen book, tipsnon what makes a good read and a great speaking and listening debate activity- which book would you save from destruction, and why?

This is a set of a range of key scenes and likely exam question scenes for the students to revise. Clear, uncomplicated and well designed. Lots of detailed and academic notes on at least ten of the key speeches and soliloquies, complete with cross-textual links, scene links and definitions of tricky language. The cross textual links are really handy as I provide the act and scene references for words, images and ideas which link out to the focus scene. I also contextualise each extract in depth, helping students focus on these key assesment objectives.

Fun and educational handout on accents and dialects plus a glossary of Scouser words and terms followed by an activity asking students to write phrases for Mickey in Scouser and Edward Lyons in Standard English. I created it to reinforce students’ learning of the play ‘Blood Brothers’, but you could use it just as well as a stand alone resource on accents and dialects. For many kids in southern England, this resource was an eye-opener as language is far more standardised down here. Ideal springboard for further research and creative writing in the authentic ‘voice’ for Mickey Johnston. Kids enjoy the exercise a lot and it’s a good springboard for more work on language and class.

1)This flexible pack consists of a six slide PowerPoint with clear wording and attractive graphics. It explains what the hallmarks of descriptive and narrative writing are and suggests ten key features that students might include. It also works well for teaching descriptive writing…the slideshow covers core shared key areas for both writing style and makes it clear that narratives develop plot and character a bit more, whereas descriptions focus on zooming in on details and have simpler plots. The slideshow has a heavy emphasis on the common core of descriptive techniques ideal for all types of composition. This ‘slide of key techniques’ can be printed out and given to students as a reference reminder sheet as they write their stories. 2) The second file consists of an ‘image grid’ of various scenes from a horror tale…approaching the house, entering, what’s inside, what is encountered and so on. This could easily work as a descriptive writing activity as well. The image grids work on A4 or A3 Students are set a task to write their own pieces, choosing from option she in the image grid to encourage them to create detailed and developed paragraphed prose. The images are great differentiators as the weaker kids can scaffold their answers with them whilst more able students can use more images and develop them into more detailed narrations with developed narrative voice and description. Also fun to use!

Students of all ages love these, so, as term approaches, treat yourself to my fairground- themed story grid! It works so well and you will be amazed at how much writing previously reluctant scribes can produce.. You need to colour print out the boards then, to recycle them, do get them laminated. Game rules: Split students up into pairs or no more than three. Brighter students can do this independently, but it's more fun in pairs. You need two dice per card. Ebay sell really good cheap foam ones. All the squares show close up details of aspects of a fairground. One child is on the red numbers side and the other one the green. They throw dice to get two numbers, such as 1, 6. Look up 1 and 6 on the board. Where the numbers coincide is your 'focus square'. They then have to write between 3-4 descriptive sentences for that square. They have to link , so they produce, between them, a single continuous piece of paragraphed description. between each other's squares. They will need about 6 focus squares, which means three paragraphs each. Boys get really competitive over besting each other, and soon a really good bit of writing emerges. The aim of the game is that they help each other come up with good words and imagery for each square, but, together, on a single page of paper, they co-author theor masterpiece. They are not allowed to swap squares. Some are harder than others - for example, the text squares ask students to incorporate that phrase into their paragraph. Others are abstract, such as a black hole - good for forcing unimaginative kids to think in abstract and symbolic ways! This works well with my slideshow tips for good narrative writing, also available in my shop. Once the students have done their timed mini descriptive pieces, get them t read out their work to each other. You will see a huge differentiated range. It teaches students loads of skills, from improving their grammar and vocabulary to teamwork, from speaking and listening skills and boosting confidence to creating textual cohesion and good links between paragraphs. It's also lots of fun to play!

Here is another really good pack which offers an extra set of focus tasks plus good overview points and deeper analysis. Ideal for extending the more able whilst covering the key areas as well.