Get your students thinking more critically as they decode the background behind a text with this display / prompt sheet. Print and laminate.

English teachers are the worst for mnemonics and acronyms. Particularly, since the likes of AFOREST PIE and MOPSA never actually cater for the needs of the students. Is that P for Personification or Pathetic Fallacy? That S, is it for Similes or Senses? Do you even know if they can remember both? Try SOAPMAPS instead. It's a far simpler approach to understanding what techniques make work more creative: Similes Onomatopoeia Adjectives Personification Metaphors Adverbs Pathetic Fallacy Senses Now the students can use the language devices to "clean-up their narrative direction".

Print and handout so that every student has a handy reminder of Drop Swap and Double spellings

Students, particularly those with low literacy or suffering from dyslexia, require strategies for reading. These prompts, logs, and question sheets are designed to draw out greater depth of comprehension.

I don't argue or negotiate with my students over the importance of English as a subject. I direct them to my "Break the ICE" posters which set out the reasons for them: Inference Communication Empathy All three skills are necessary for us to be fully functioning members of society. Further, they are intrinsic to a student's development in English.

The Interactive Grammar App is a classroom and lecture resource designed to aid the learning of grammar from secondary to degree level, by providing the ability to reveal or hide the breakdown of sentence construction on a number of levels. It uses Excel and simple mouse clicks to hide or reveal the info. Buy the app and its 167 sentences here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/interactive-grammar-app-11334721

A simple, straightforward guide to safeguarding through: Listen Feedback Respond Refer

Created for my finals, this two-page infographic is a great way to summarise the order,features, themes and story types of each of the Canterbury Tales. A clear revision guide helping to expand student awareness - can be used as a display or knowledge organiser

Linking identification of word classes to language techniques, this simple worksheet helps build confidence in spotting what job each word or phrase is doing

How often do you remember to give students their due praise? How about, passing that onto parents? Edit the Header, alter the details for your own name, school, email, etc, and print as 4 postcards on 1 A4 sheet. Print, cut and get writing those positive comments. Get the parents on side and include them in their children's' education.

Wanting to stretch your students through creative tasks? Impose restrictions on the approach they take. Use a single die to determine perspective, tense, genre and the narrator's tone.

I've been struggling to get my students to analyse with any effectiveness, so I'm currently trying (with some success-) the a visual approach - as an example from Journey's End (see the picture), Stanhope is talking negatively about Raleigh (talking him down). Using an interactive whiteboard, I can model answers on the word document really easily, and have been doubling up by getting the students to identify their keywords (underlining / circling) and then defining the word classes / linguistic device of those keywords, before moving onto analysis. There are instructions on the first page of the document. Most importantly, getting the students to replicate the model (red, downward arrow for negative and green, upward arrow for positive) will help them visualise what can often be a complex cognitive construction.

A handy set of worksheets for use with poetry analysis. Breaking down aspects into constituent parts for defining examples and inferring meaning.

I have been achieving great results with syllabified spelling tasks. My low literacy students are making greater strides in their confidence and are better able to retain the information. These worksheets introduce students to base words, suffixes and prefixes and then syllabifies them for ease of breaking spellings down. Also included are the KS2 National Curriculum word lists for 3-4 and 5-6 all syllabified.

These quick and easy ideas are a great and simple way of getting your students onto the task and off of their chatter. Included in several activities are extension and differentiation activities and alternatives, to best support the way you wish to use them: Includes: Crosswords Definitions Explorations Interpretation Pronunciation Register Response Syllabify Taboo Unscramble Wordsearch

If, like me, you massively need to prioritise what is critical against the urgent, important and inane, then this excel organiser is the tool for you: List your jobs in the Job List worksheet and see what you actually need to complete first. Based upon a simple algorithm, you write a short Type reference, followed by the task itself, specify whether it is important (with a y) or rank the task's importance from 1 (low) to 5 (high), and either provide a due date or select the urgency level from 1 (low) to 5 (high). The spreadsheet will do the well, providing you with a functional list and a visual grid to help your understand when you're working effectively and when you're wasting time.

Chart the progression and development of plot, theme, or character thoughts, feelings and motivations with these handy templates. 2 blank templates provide freedom for plotting story structure (rising and falling action), or creating your own chart to follow a particular theme or characters. There are 3 examples, using the dramatic structure of Conan Doyle's short story "A Scandal in Bohemia", A love, attraction and regrets chart for Dickens's "Great Expectations" and a moral integrity and principles chart for Payne's "No Man's Land". Useful for all text types, from short story, novels, plays or even epic poetry.

An Excel spreadsheet which allows you to quickly plan out your lessons to the minute - particularly useful for new teachers. This version is set up for a school with an alternate Friday structure to the rest of the week. But this can be altered with minimal fuss. Further, if you buy this and need assistance in converting it for your school, contact me and provide with the breakdown of your school day(s), and I will gladly personalise it for you.

The mnemonic Restate / Relate Answer Cite Explain React Signify Rationale Racers represents an acronym designed to assist students in analysing texts with depth. I have tried PEE, PEEA, PEEL, and most recently AIDRWL, but found either a perpetual lack of insight or utter confusion. I have therefore continued to look for a suitable mnemonic that might be memorable and assist students in the delivery of their responses. I believe I have found that in Tantillo’s Racer (adapted here for my purposes). Adapted from Tantillo, S. (2014), Literacy and the Common Core. San Fransciso, Jossey-Bass (p.154)

Forget AFOREST PIE, it's random, ill-thought out, difficult to memorise and doesn't cater for all that it's meant to: don't put the onus on your students to remember Rhetorical Questions and Repetition or Anecdotes and Alliteration. So, try FAIRER APOSTLE instead for persuasive techniques. Along with a poetic devices knowledge organiser, a TAP (text-type, audience and purpose) knowledge organiser, and both a FAIRER APOSTLE and a SOAPMAPS worksheet (Similes, Onomatopoeia, Adjectives, Personification, Metaphors, Adverbs, Pathetic Fallacy, Senses). Use as knowledge organisers or poster displays