Planned for a year 8 class, this lesson takes as its central idea Holmes’s comment at the end of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” that, ‘I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.’ After a recap of what’s meant by a noun phrase, pupils are directed to choose adjectives to develop nouns from the story into emotive noun phrases, thereby building a word bank. They then use their word bank in developing Holmes’s sentence into a speech to Watson in which he expands and develops his viewpoint.

Planned for a year 8 class, this explores Holmes’ and Watson’s vigil towards the end of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”. Pupils are guided through an understanding of the meaning of tension. There is a text marking activity after which a grid is used to clarify their thinking. The lesson concludes with a piece of evaluative/comparative writing in which pupils are asked which of their identified methods is most successful in creating tension; which is least successful. Depending on the amount of modelling/scaffolding needed and the length at which you want your pupils to write, this lesson could be extended over two hours - although it was planned to occupy one hour.

Planned as part of a SOW for year 8 - a unit on Charles Dickens with a focus on characterisation - this lesson looks at Pip’s first visit to Satis House (chapter 8 of ‘Great Expectations’) and the first description of Miss Havisham. The aim of the lesson is to infer and deduce from description. Pupils are asked to explore the symbolism of colour, looking at the connotations of the colour used in the description of Miss Havisham. Their attention is drawn to the noun ‘lustre’ - this is used later to model a paragraph of analysis. Teaching strategies used are questioning, paired discussion and modelling.

This lesson was planned for a year 8 group but could be used elsewhere at KS3. It uses Conan Doyle’s story and this lesson focuses on how Conan Doyle creates a sense of urgency as Holmes uncovers the motive for murder and heads to Stoke Moran to try to protect Helen Stoner. The lesson asks the pupils to explore three of the writer’s methods for creating a sense of urgency: the plot itself, the setting and the dialogue. Focused questioning is used throughout. Differentiation is possible in the approach to this questioning - pupils could be asked to think and pair, then share; for greater challenge, responses could be written without any discussion.

Planned for year 8 but useful at any point in KS3, I think, this lesson focuses on using understanding of connotation to broaden and deepen understanding of Doyle’s characterisation of Dr Roylott as he appears in Sherlock Holmes’s rooms. Pupils are asked to look at the comparison of Dr Roylott to a bird of prey and think of the connotations of this noun, using the connotations in an explanation of what they understand about the character. Thereafter, their attention is turned to Doyle’s use of verbs. They are asked to choose the most effective verb - the one with the strongest connotations - and to use their work on the “bird of prey” comparison as a model to work more independently on their chosen verb.

This is a short and simple worksheet focusing on the scene from “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in which Holmes, Watson and Sir Henry Baskerville approach Baskerville Hall. There are four (short) sets of questions on vocabulary, information retrieval, inference and explanation of the writer’s methods. I created this as a cover activity but it would work for homework or even to structure a guided reading session.

This lesson was planned for year 9 as they work on the skills that they’re going to need for GCSE. The lesson uses “Drought” by William Henry Ogilvie and takes the pupils through what we mean by a writer’s methods with a specific focus on personification. The lesson leads the pupils towards this question: In “Drought”, how does the poet present ideas about the speaker, Drought?" This lesson would also work at KS4, particularly in the early stages of teaching the response to the unseen poetry question.

Created for a year 11 class to try to build on their skills of analysis of unseen poetry this uses a deceptively simple poem by Whitman and guides the students through the process of analysis. With this lesson I am trying to encourage them to write about structural features for a poem that doesn’t necessarily have a wealth of language. The teaching strategies include close questioning on the title (something I find my students tend to ignore in their analysis though it is often a fruitful area for exploration), a whole-class reading of the poem (changing voice with punctuation to encourage students to notice that the whole poem is a single sentence and how the punctuation is used for emphasis), some paired discussion, spotting and beginning to explore the features and then modelling of the first paragraph of the response. The mark scheme is used to plot what’s required in the response.

Created for a less confident year 11 group in the run-up to their first mock exam, this powerpoint makes it clear and explicit which skills are tested and required to answer question 4 on paper 1. The lesson walks the students through those skills and culminates in a model (if one is needed). The text used is from “Frankenstein”.

Created for a year 8 class as part of a unit exploring some of the work of Charles Dickens, this 14 slide powerpoint takes as its focal text the scene in “Oliver Twist” where Oliver and Mr Sowerberry go into a slum to deal with the corpse of a woman who has starved to death. The aim of the lesson is for the pupils to explain how the writer’s methods help to convey his viewpoint. To lead up to this, there is some discussion and pair work which builds (after a verbal model) to the pupils writing their own explanations of how Dickens’ methods help to convey his attitudes towards his subjects.

Created for a year 9 class, this is a lesson on Wordsworth’s “Upon Westminster Bridge” which asks the students to identify the viewpoint expressed in the poem and then explore features of language and structure that help to convey that viewpoint. Also attached here is a multiple-choice quiz that I originally created as a homework to be used after the lesson in order to consolidate the learning.

Created for a more able year 8 class, this is a lesson on the description of Gradgrind from the start of “Hard Times”. The aim is to link Dickens’s use of language and structural features to his viewpoint. The lesson is scaffolded so that there is a grid for the pupils to complete explaining what they can infer about Gradgrind from the language used to describe him (there’s also a little bit on the Victorians’ belief that character could be gauged from facial features). After having completed the grid, the pupils then look at the longer excerpt and work more independently on an extended answer - though they can use the structure of their response in the grid to plan and guide that answer.

Created for a year 7 class as part of a unit of work on “Treasure Island”, this lesson invites the children to explore Masefield’s poem, “Sea Fever”, identifying the speaker’s attitude towards the sea and focusing on the use of personification and other language features. The lesson uses hinge questions at key points, requiring all children to feed back with one from a choice of answers. In my classroom we use our arms to make letter shapes; you could use mini-whiteboards. At the end of the lesson, the children are asked to produce a written response focusing on Masefield’s use of personification and two other language features of their choice, explaining what’s revealed about the speaker’s attitude towards the sea (and here you could introduce or embed the idea of viewpoint). There is a separate homework available for this lesson which is a series of multiple-choice questions about the poem.

Created for a mixed ability year nine class, this powerpoint takes the pupils through the poem, initially with a focus on Owen’s redrafting - what is the effect of ‘doomed youth’ rather than the initial ‘dead youth’. Throughout the lesson the pupils are asked to consider the effect of Owen’s language choices. There is a multiple-choice question focusing on the simile ‘who die as cattle’. In our classroom, we respond by using our arms to make the letters, YMCA-style. The question could as easily be answered using mini whiteboards. The lesson takes the pupils through a model paragraph of response focusing on the effect of the ‘as cattle’ simile; they’re then asked to produce a further three paragraphs working independently. Useful as a reading assessment or as part of a unit of work on war poetry. The intention is that this lesson begins to embed the skills on which the pupils will be tested at GCSE.

Created for my year nine group as part of a non-fiction SOW on journeys, this uses Scott’s diary and focuses on the pupils using their skills of inference to link Scott’s feelings to his use of language. The lesson culminates with the writing of a P.E.E response.

Planned for year 9 with a focus on building and polishing skills in the run up to GCSE, this lesson uses Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “An Obstacle”. Pupils are led through questions with a tiny bit of relevant context (Gilman’s gender and the year of the poem). There’s a slide focused on the use of the indefinite article in the title and what might be inferred from this. The first two verses of the poem are explored via questioning which asks the pupils to focus on a couple of features in each verse. In the run-up to the pupils’ written response, there is an ‘I do’ slide providing a model and a ‘We do’ slide providing sentence openers for discussion and completion. After this, the intention is that the pupils should work independently to write their response. This could also be used with year 10 to build their confidence and skills in responding to unseen poetry.

The aim of this lesson is for the children to explain a writer’s viewpoint and to write effectively to describe. The text used is “The Spell of the Yukon” by Robert W.Service. The lesson begins with an image of a prospector and there are questions to prompt some really basic knowledge of the context and then to prompt the building of a word bank. The focus then changes to the poem itself. There are four slides taking the pupils through the first verse and the effect of its verbs, simile and metaphor. The pupils are then asked to explain the speaker’s viewpoint - as expressed in the last two lines of the first verse - in their own words. The pupils are then asked to read the whole poem with a focus on the writer’s viewpoint and how it’s communicated. One slide provides an opportunity for a recap on abstract nouns - as Service uses plenty in the poem. Finally, there is a writing activity which takes the pupils back to the original image and asks them to write a description inspired by that image, using a simile, a metaphor and an abstract noun in each paragraph of their writing.

A workmanlike comprehension activity based on the excerpt from chapter 23 in which Victor discovers that Elizabeth has been strangled and tries to shoot the creature. There are ten questions focusing on comprehension, inference, methods and their effect. Useful for homework, for cover or even for structuring a guided discussion of the text.

A walkthrough of Thomas Hardy’s “Neutral Tones” intended to be a first teaching of the poem for candidates preparing for their GCSE English Literature exam. When it comes to looking at Hardy’s use of oxymorons with “tedious riddles” and “grin of bitterness”, the ppt makes reference to some of Shakespeare’s methods in “Romeo and Juliet”. This is because this class is also studying the play so the references are intended to support a bit of recall. The final slide sets a homework - there is a multiple-choice quiz also available on TES (though listed separately).

GCSE resource for first teaching of William Blake's "London", part of the 'Power and Conflict' cluster.