One power point per poem and some associated skills. I teach the poems in the order in which they appear in the anthology (except Tissue; I put that one at the end). I follow a pattern with the lessons and source the contextual information from the BBC Bitesize website (and a couple of other places when I get bored of them) - it makes sense as any student that misses out on something can go and find what they need relatively quickly. The material is readily available elsewhere, hence the relatively low price for so many lessons. NOTE: I have upgraded these lessons now. I’ve moved away from endorsing the PEEL style responses - the exam reports indicate clearly this is the thing to do. Additionally, I have included much more of a focus on the POWER themes. Lastly, I have used these poems as a springboard to discuss gender issues - part of this is my attempt to narrow the gender gap at the top end of GCSE English achievement by trying to get the lads to be more engaged with the material. These lessons are designed to work in tandem with my own version of the poetry anthology. At the moment, I have yet to upload the edited version but I shall do so soon. That being said, the power points wouldn’t take much editing to use them with the traditional AQA version. All of the original lessons are included just in case you are still using the PEEL method of building a response.

I've found another use for all that knowledge we have about the old AQA English Lit anthology (The Sunlight on The Grass anthology). I have started to turn them into English Language Paper 1 Section A Mock Exams! This is one of them. There is no mark scheme, but if you use the Paper 1 mark scheme from the AQA website you should be fine. This one uses a section from When The Wasps Drowned - it's not the start bit, but if you think about it, it doesn't really need to be.

I've found another use for all that knowledge we have about the old AQA English Lit anthology (The Sunlight on The Grass anthology). I have started to turn them into English Language Paper 1 Section A Mock Exams! This is one of them. There is no mark scheme, but if you use the Paper 1 mark scheme from the AQA website you should be fine. This one uses sections from Compass and Torch - I've stitched together two sections and omitted the bit about the horses (for those who remember) so that the extract focuses only on the relationship between the boy and the man.

I've found another use for all that knowledge we have about the old AQA English Lit anthology (The Sunlight on The Grass anthology). I have started to turn them into English Language Paper 1 Section A Mock Exams! This is one of them. There is no mark scheme, but if you use the Paper 1 mark scheme from the AQA website you should be fine. This one uses the start of Anil. As a pause for though, you may wish to consider renaming the character of Anil. Think about it...

I've found another use for all that knowledge we have about the old AQA English Lit anthology (The Sunlight on The Grass anthology). I have started to turn them into English Language Paper 1 Section A Mock Exams! This is one of them. There is no mark scheme, but if you use the Paper 1 mark scheme from the AQA website you should be fine. This one uses the start of On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning. I've taken one paragraph out but don't worry, it doesn't take away from the creepiness of the narrative voice.

I’ve found another use for all that knowledge we have about the old AQA English Lit anthology (The Sunlight on The Grass anthology). I have started to turn them into English Language Paper 1 Section A Mock Exams! This is one of them. There is no mark scheme, but if you use the Paper 1 mark scheme from the AQA website you should be fine. This one uses the start of The Darkness Out There. The focus here is very much on the use of setting. UPDATE: I’ve included some rudimentary answers. You’ll still need a copy of the mark scheme.

A couple of lessons that focus on improving creative writing skills. I allude to tasks that have already been completed by the students - you can easily edit these to reflect your own tasks. Particularly pleased with the descriptive writing task as it got a bunch of lads who don’t “do” creative writing to talk about their feelings.

A few things first: the mock exam can be found elsewhere on in my resources and I base the lessons off a similar series of lessons focused on Anil. The difference here is that these lessons are very much targeting higher ability students - all of the success criteria draws from the top end of the mark criteria. I found this series of lessons to be really useful as a way of establishing the skills required to answer each of the Section A questions. The lessons focus less on exam strategy and more on understanding what is required in relation to each question. The kids found it useful.

A stand alone lesson that assumes all participants have read and understood the text. I used it as a platform to show students what they needed to be revising. There is some focus on themes and a focus on an extract - both areas of which I use as a stimulus for class lead discussion. I finish with an exam based question - the focus is upon the characters that are manipulated, not the manipulator (just to keep them on their toes). Hope you find this useful.

Does exactly what it says. This spreadsheet will create one random comparative question for and will generate a new one every time you double-click a cell and press enter. A word of caution in that you cannot retrieve the old question. But, this is very useful for revision and or cover lessons. I’ve left room for you to add in your own question stems and you can manipulate the poetry lists too. I’ve left some instructions on the relevant tab. Hope you find this useful.

Three slides on a power point that can easily be printed out and handed out as a task. Each slide gets progressively more complex. Each slide contains a choice of two tasks (one descriptive and one relating to the writing of a narrative), a punctuation related challenge, a content challenge and an organisational challenge. Ran it with my year 11s yesterday and they found it very useful. Oh yes! I have intentionally put one spelling/punctuation mistake on each slide with the idea that I award a housepoint to the first student that identified it. You’re welcome!

The lessons are designed to tie in specifically with the Scholastic Classics version of the text OR the Collins Classroom Classics version, but it wouldn’t take too much to use this with any version to be honest. Visually, the powerpoints are designed to be eye-catching. Each one is loaded with links to videos, layered with animations and suitably spooky xmas music. The lessons are ordered via number for your convenience. There is a specific focus on each of the GCSE Assessment Focuses, starting with AO3 (It makes sense, to me at least, to contextualise the story prior to reading it). The stave lessons each contain definitions of the archaic words (though there is a definite backing off with this the further in you get: as the students get more familiar with the language, they’ll need less prompting with decoding it), as well as a particular focus on key quotations. There are comprehension questions layered throughout, and the first THREE of the stave lessons have an ending task that links to a type of question found in AQA English Language Paper 1 Section A - my class had previously focused on this unit and it made sense to me to keep these skills “hot” so to speak. The AO specific lessons tie in with the Assessment Objectives for the English Literature course. The AO1 and AO2 lessons assume that the students have read the entire text. Finally, the theme lessons build towards the students sitting a GCSE Literature style assessment. I have sourced a lot of ideas from the following pdf file - I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to pass these ideas off as my own; I include the link so that any person might have the benefit of this resource without having to pay for mine: http://drbacchus.com/files/christmas_carol/glossary.pdf There’s about 30+ hours worth of teaching materials in here; enjoy!

A few elements of my class really struggled with this concept. So, I’ve broken it down into a step by step guide. The class will each need a copy of the AQA Poetry Anthology for this. It focuses on Follower first and then sets them up for an academic tilt at a comparative response. I’ve had a good response from the elements of the class that initially struggled too.

A spreadsheet designed to track the academic progress of up to 30 A-Level drama students (you can do more, but you’d have to UNHIDE every hidden columns in order to make sure that the new cells work). I have included the 2018 and 2019 grade boundaries (as published by AQA), and left both the room and the capacity for the spreadsheet to be updated with 2020 and 2021 grade boundaries. The spreadsheet will tell you how many marks each student needs to achieve their target grade for each component of the course. The “Machine” calculates this on a section by section basis for each of the components. Additionally, there is room for up to 10 attempts for each of these components. The spreadsheet will then show you the BEST, AVERAGE and LAST marks each student achieved. Hopefully, this will make it easier for drama teachers to keep track of where their students are. NOTE: I’ve designed this with the best intentions, but if there is a “bug” or an improvement that you feel would be beneficial after purchase, then leave a note in the comments section and I will attend to it quick sharpish.

As part of my quest to engage students with the 15 Power and Conflict poems, I’ve come up with these Battle Cards. Essentially, the idea is to promote AO1 and AO2 related discussions that get the students to recall what they know about the poems they have been taught without having the actual poem in front of them. The students “score” each of the poem against a number of POWER and CONFLICT related areas. This is recorded on an A5 sized BATTLE CARD where they can draw supporting images(good for recall) and identify methods, key quotations and themes. The idea is for students to battle one another and use the cards as the stimulus point for the discussion. Whoever is best able to justify the score they have given for their card wins the round. I’ve included a blank card along with 15 poem specific cards (each of these has a supporting back ground image, but is the same as the blank card in all other respects).

A collection of resources designed to support the teaching of Macbeth at GCSE level. The lessons assume that the class will be “acting” out the play, using the summary as a stimulus for the acting out element. I interspersed this acting with numerous directions to read the text aloud; overall, the students enjoyed this combination of normal language and Shakespearean. It has always been my way to establish an initial understanding of a Shakespearean text before trying to wade through the language. Hopefully, this will prove a useful starting point.

I’ve used the opening chapter of the novel as the basis for an AQA Language Paper 1 mock exam. I’ve created an Answer paper too.