This lesson aims to help students understand the historical context of The Holocaust. It is designed to be the first in a series of lessons based upon Holocaust-themed texts, but also makes a fitting introduction to teaching texts such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Anne Frank's Diary, or simply to be used in a PSHE/form-time lesson to build awareness. Informative and engaging, this lesson follows a clear and logical learning journey. Students learn to: - Define key terms related to the historical context of The Holocaust; - Remember and understand key information about the Holocaust that they learn from an engaging PowerPoint presentation; - Consider the SMSC questions that arise from such a horrific case of genocide; - Create a newspaper article that utilises the features of writing to inform, and shares key facts about the Holocaust; - Peer-assess each others' learning attempts. Included in this resource pack: A comprehensive, whole-lesson, visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, which guides the teacher and learners through the lesson, a writing to inform help-sheet, a tabloid newspaper template, ' a key terms activity, and teacher guidance notes. All images are cited at the end of the PowerPoint presentation, and are licensed for commercial use.

This engaging and informative lesson enhances students’ skills in understanding the significant meanings in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and in particular the influence of the deceitful and mysterious weird sisters. Students gain an understanding of some of the attitudes towards witches in Shakespeare’s times, and attempt to link this knowledge to the events of the text. They also engage with Shakespeare’s intentions in utilising dramatic elements to reveal the witches use of the supernatural and deceit. The lesson follows a clear and logical learning journey, involving progressively more challenging tasks in which students: - Portray their understanding of witches and witchcraft; - Learn more about witches in a historical context through a fun ‘true or false’ game; - Define, identify, and understand dramatic irony; - Read sections of Macbeth and complete tasks to demonstrate their understanding; - Answer key questions about the witches that test their knowledge in relation to each of the English assessment outcomes; - Evaluate a modelled example of an analytical paragraph in relation to the witches; - Analyse the witches’ characteristics in their own responses; - Evaluate each others’ analytical responses. All images are cited on the final slide of the presentation, and are licensed for commercial use.

This lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of camera shots and angles, and in particular those used in horror movies. This should enable them to design their own sequences of camera shots and angles when producing their own moving image media texts. I used this lesson in the middle of the planning phase of a horror film trailer. However, as the main learning for the lesson is to be able to define, identify. analyse and use each of the camera shots and angles, it can be used for students at any stage of a media studies course. It includes a range of tasks, most of which are differentiated for different ability ranges, and includes lots of engaging subject matter. The lesson follows a clear learning journey, which is visually expressed to the students frequently throughout the PowerPoint presentation. The learning journey enables students to: - Define each of the camera angles and shots through a group activity; - Identify each of the shots and angles in movies stills; - Analyse why different shots and angles are effective after watching a segment of a film; - Create their own sequence of camera shots and angles for a short moving image piece; - Evaluate their success in using effective camera shots and angles. NOTE: The subject matter used for the final stages of the analysis task may be visually disturbing or inappropriate for some younger students - please check this section and alter it if you need to - you may wish just to pause the video before it gets too gory! All images and videos are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson.

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of the context of the of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Some of the primary topics that are addressed are William Shakespeare himself, James I and superstition, witches and witchcraft, religion, mortality rates, and the theatre. This knowledge should enable students to make convincing links between the play and the events of the time. It is a vital lesson in any Macbeth theme that can be taught before, during, or after reading. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to be visual and interactive learners. It follows this learning journey: - Understanding who William Shakespeare was, and remembering key details about his life; - Identifying words and phrases that he coined that are still in use today; - Taking part in a quiz about the some of the more basic key events and ideas of the time; - Researching the key events of the time (e.g. witch-hunts and the ascension of James I as King) and understanding which ideas were prominent. (e.g. divine right and religion) - Utilising speaking and listening skills in order to communicate gathered knowledge, and obtain knowledge from others. - Evaluating the learning in the lesson. All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation.

Perfect for use when teaching writing to persuade or argue, this lesson utilises a wide range of teaching strategies to enable students to gain authority over their target audiences. The students who I have taught this lesson before have found it enjoyable and engaging - particularly enjoying the use of videos to see some of the techniques in action! Throughout the lesson, the learning journey that the students follow enables them to: - Define the key terms 'Argue', 'Persuade' and 'Authority.' - Consider famous individuals that are effective at gaining authority; - Link key techniques to their definition and examples; - Identify key techniques in videos (Dave Gorman, Dragon's Den, etc.) and analyse why they are effective; - Write their own authority-filled persuasive piece using a success criteria; - Peer assess their partner's writing attempts. The resource is made up of: - A visual and engaging Powerpoint presentation, which walks teachers and students through the lesson in a step-by-step fashion - Hyperlinks to all of the online video resources that you will need - A key techniques activity worksheet - An analysis worksheet - A full lesson plan/ teacher guidance. All images are cited on the final slide and are licensed for commercial use.

Based on the popular game show 'Pointless', this resource is perfect for use as a starter activity, plenary, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. Containing almost 30 slides of sound clips, engaging visuals, and suitably challenging questions, this resource is effective at both promoting engagement and enhancing learning. There are several full rounds of questions to build learning of Writing to Argue: 1. Identifying Arguing/ Persuasive Devices 2. Defining Arguing Devices 3. Identifying and Unscrambling Text Types and Jobs that use Structured Arguments 4. Naming Opposing Connectives (to help structure arguments.) The nature of the game ensures that this resource can challenge students of all levels.

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of John Steinbeck’s key messages in his novella Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, considering the outcomes about the characters, and making precise and confident interpretations about Steinbeck’s intentions. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interpersonal skills. It follows this learning journey: - Investigating the life of John Steinbeck, including his influences, experiences, and beliefs; - Finding relevant quotations to ascertain which characters fulfilled their dreams, and what this could tell us about Steinbeck’s message; - Completing analysis paragraphs on how Steinbeck reveals his message through the final chapters of the text, using a template and a success criteria; - Evaluating each others’ argumentative attempts. The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet to decipher which characters achieved their dreams, a template and success criteria for the main task, and a lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet. All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

This engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge and understanding of the character of Crooks in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: His dreams, his loneliness, and how his plight is a product of living in 1930s America. The lesson also aims to improve students’ analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character. This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with tasks and key information, an extract from the text with close reading questions, a writing to analyse help-sheet, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of increasingly more difficult tasks, including: - An opening task to ascertain what is known about Crooks, and racism in 1930s America - An extract from the text that highlights some of his characteristics and his loneliness. - Questions to encourage students to infer and deduce hidden meanings, and understand Steinbeck’s message, - Joint creation of an analysis success criteria; - An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Crooks; - A chance to peer assess against the success criteria. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of the final events of the novel (the killing of Lennie by his best friend, George) in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, understanding the writer’s ideas and opinions, and making precise and confident interpretations about texts. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interpersonal skills. It follows this learning journey: - Reading, and interpreting the ending of the text; - Inferring the hidden meanings in the final section of the text; - Identifying the options available to George, and evaluating the pros and cons for each of them; - Arguing a viewpoint either justifying or condemning George’s actions; - Evaluating each others’ argumentative attempts. The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet to evaluate George’s reasoning, an abstract from the text, a help-sheet for writing to analyse, and a lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet. All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

This engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge and understanding of the character of Curley’s Wife in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: Her dreams, her loneliness, and how her plight is a product of the Great Depression. The lesson also aims to improve students’ analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character. This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with animations and key information, a double-page worksheet with clear and concise instructions, True and False cards for the starter activity, a writing to analyse help-sheet, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of progressively more difficult tasks, including: - An engaging true or false game to help students understand what life was like for women in the Great Depression; - A worksheet that enables students to demonstrate understanding of key quotations about Curley’s Wife, and also to link Curley’s Wife to key themes and ideas. - Close reading of a modelled analysis paragraph; - Joint creation of an analysis success criteria; - An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Curley’s Wife; - A chance to peer assess against the success criteria. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

These colourful, engaging and informative posters/ help-sheets are perfect to help your students gain a broad and deep understanding of each of the key persuasive devices, thus vastly improving their textual analysis and enhancing their persuasive/argumentative writing attempts. Each sheet displays the key word in the middle, and then answers some of the key questions surrounding the words, including: - What does it mean? - How many syllables does it have? - What are examples of it? - How do I spell it? - When would I use this? - What type of word is it? - Where does the word come from? There are sheets for: Statistics, Personal Pronouns, Anecdotes, Rhetorical Questions, Repetition, Colloquial Language, Connectives, List of Three, Imperatives, Emotive Language. These can be used as help-sheets as students write (my students love this) or blown up to A3 to use as classroom posters. I have also provided blank templates for each word, so that students can fill in the everything that they know about the words themselves, which makes for an excellent starter, plenary, or recap activity.

Based on the popular game show ‘Pointless’, this resource is perfect for use as a starter activity, plenary, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. Containing almost 30 slides of sound clips, engaging visuals, and suitably challenging questions, this resource is effective at both promoting engagement and enhancing learning. There are several full rounds of questions to build learning of Persuasive Writing: 1. Emotive Language 2. Definitions of Persuasive Devices 3. Adding and Contrasting Connectives 4. Remembering Persuasive Devices The nature of the game ensures that this resource can challenge students of all levels. A blank template is now included, so that you can create your own Pointless games!

These colourful, engaging and informative posters/ help-sheets are perfect to help your students gain a broad and deep understanding of each of the key descriptive devices, thus vastly improving their textual analysis and enhancing their creative writing attempts. Each sheet displays the key word in the middle, and then answers some of the key questions surrounding the words, including: - What does it mean? - How many syllables does it have? - What are examples of it? - How do I spell it? - When would I use this? - What type of word is it? - Where does the word come from? There are sheets for: Similes, Metaphors, Hyperbole, Adjectives, Adverbs, Alliteration, Onomatopoeia, Verbs, Personification, and Verbs. These can be used as help-sheets as students write (my students love this) or blown up to A3 to use as classroom posters. I have also provided blank templates for each word, so that students can fill in the everything that they know about the words themselves, which makes for an excellent starter, plenary, or recap activity.

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of the main themes (Dreams and Loneliness) in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, understanding the writer’s ideas and opinions, and making precise and confident interpretations about texts. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interactive skills. It follows this learning journey: - Understanding what dreams and loneliness are, and how we each experience them; - Defining themes and understanding how writers use them; - Understanding how and why themes are used in other famous texts; - Retrieving evidence from the text to demonstrate where the characters experience dreams and loneliness; - Analysing how the themes are used to help get across John Steinbeck’s ideas about 1930s America; - Evaluating each others’ analytical attempts. The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet for recording the retrieved quotations, a helpful template for the main task, and a lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet. All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

Based on the popular game show ‘Pointless’, this resource is perfect for use as a starter activity, plenary, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. Containing almost 30 slides of sound clips, engaging visuals, and suitably challenging questions, this resource is effective at both promoting engagement and enhancing learning. There are several full rounds of questions to build learning of Of Mice and Men: 1. The characters in Of Mice and Men 2. Quotations from the text 3. Settings, themes, and objects 4. Animals in Of Mice and Men The nature of the game ensures that this resource can challenge students of all levels.

This informative and engaging lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge and understanding of the character of Lennie in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to improve their analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character. This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with animations and key information, a worksheet with clear and concise instructions, an example analysis extract, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of progressively more difficult tasks, including: - An engaging memory game task to recognise and remember items and ideas that are related to the character of Lennie; - A worksheet that enables students to demonstrate understanding of key quotations about Lennie, and to link Lennie to key themes and ideas. - Close reading of a modelled example analysis paragraph; - Joint creation of an analysis success criteria; - An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Lennie; - A chance to peer assess against the success criteria. Students should have read, (or during this lesson read) up to the section in which George and Lennie meet their new boss, in order to fully access the lesson. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of the social, historical, and cultural context of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in creating clear and specific links between the text and it’s context, focusing on a specific extract from the novel. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interactive skills. It follows this learning journey: - Understanding what dreams are and how they differ for each of us; - Defining the American Dream, The Wall Street Crash and The Great Depression; - Creating a timeline which visually depicts the other influential events of the time; - Reading and reflecting on an extract from the text; - Analysing the links between texts and contexts, from a success criteria; - Evaluating each others’ analytical attempts. All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

I have recently taught a descriptive writing unit, and devised this assessment to gauge how students descriptive skills have progressed over the term. It includes the question paper, the mark scheme, and the reading insert. Formal enough to ensure that the students took the assessment seriously, but engaging enough to ensure that all students wanted to complete all of the tasks, (they hate some of the practice exam questions that exam boards provide on the past papers) all of my students seemed to enjoy completing this more than they normally enjoy assessments! The assessment is designed to gauge students' skill in: - Defining and giving examples of descriptive devices; - Identifying descriptive devices in texts; - Analysing the effect of descriptive writing in a vivid description of a 'Nightmare World.' - Creating their own descriptive piece about a their own nightmare world. This lesson can either be bought individually, or as part of the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (which works out cheaper.)

This highly engaging and informative lesson helps students to use appropriate, sophisticated, and original techniques in creating writing that can hold their readers' attention. Students learn: - How to use their five senses in writing; - How to relate the senses to the descriptive devices; - How to create a 'hook' in their writing; - How to create mystery in their writing; - How to analyse and evaluate existing examples of descriptive writing; Included are all worksheets, and detailed and visual PowerPoint presentation, which explains each concept clearly, cards for the interactive 'senses' game, and a lesson plan for teacher guidance. Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £6 All images are licensed for commercial use, and authors are cited on the final slide.

This highly engaging and informative double lesson (around 1.5 to 2 hours of teaching materials) helps students to build skills in demonstrating appropriate, sophisticated, and original structures in their writing, and provides them with theories and techniques to help them to organise their writing adequately. I wrote this lesson because I noticed that there are an extremely high volume of students that approach extended writing tasks (even in their GCSEs) with practically no sense of organisation. Even though they have clearly learnt a number of writing techniques from their teachers, their writing can be extremely short, repetitive, and in some cases the topic is confused. This lesson aims to address each of those issues. Students learn: - What structure and organisation mean; - Narrative structure theory and 'plot mountain;' - How time order can effect a creative text; - How to expand using the five key senses; - How and when to use paragraphing; - Plan for their own extended piece of writing; Included are all worksheets, and detailed and visual PowerPoint presentation, which explains each concept clearly, and a lesson plan for teacher guidance. Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £5. All images are licensed for commercial use, and authors are cited on the final slide.