All my resources are aimed at teaching students to the top, that's the USP! You can find them on the UK's second largest English teaching channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, and also see how I deliver them there. If you want to be an even better teacher, try The Slightly Awesome Techer, https://amzn.to/2GtQu6l
All my resources are aimed at teaching students to the top, that's the USP! You can find them on the UK's second largest English teaching channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, and also see how I deliver them there. If you want to be an even better teacher, try The Slightly Awesome Techer, https://amzn.to/2GtQu6l
What the resource Includes:
5 Steps; Just tell me what to do.
Model answer 444 words
Model answer 550 words
Model answer annotated for descriptive techniques
What do I have to do to get 100%?
How to be original: Breaking the Vase
How to adapt the description to a series of photographs in the exam:
Here’s how mine might start if the photograph were of a train.
Or imagine it was the park.
Or, the ultimate vase breaking, you can simply have it as the photo in the room. Imagine a photo of a road.
What does the examiner really want?
21 ways to look at Descriptive Techniques and Interesting Writing (More Than Just SOAPAIMS)
This powerpoint covers comprehensive themes:
Ambition, Masculinity and Cruelty, The Divine Right of Kings, Tyranny, The Psychology of Guilt, Fate, Prophecy and Free Will, Violence, and The Ambiguity of Reality.
There are a range of quotations for each theme, from different characters’ perspectives.
Each slide has engaging images which should help to make your teaching memorable.
An in depth approach to each slide is also available in my free videos on YouTube. You can find over 600 useful videos at
Or follow the link to the precise video on Macbeth’s themes.
Quite simply, there is no more comprehensive guide to how to teach these 4 questions.
It includes advice for students on each question, the mark schemes, sample questions, sample answers, plenty of fresh texts to practise on, a glossary of terms, how to move beyond PEE paragraphs and, if you are in the mood for more, over 30 English jokes.
All in Word, for you to edit and reproduce as you please.
And all for an unbelievably good price.
This is an amazing bundle.
It contains texts for every question, usually more than one.
It gives you model answers for every question, annotated and explained, all at grade 9.
It gives students the mark scheme in language they can understand, and tells them a series of clear steps to follow for each question.
It includes a glossary of terms, covering skills like juxtaposition and allusion which helps access grades 8 and 9.
It teaches 15 rhetorical techniques for each of questions 2, 3 and 4. And you get a mnemonic to help students remember them.
In short, you won’t find a better bundle for this paper, anywhere.
And, at 62% off, can you afford to turn this opportunity down?
This resource is a copy of the student essay, done under timed conditions.
They will learn more from this if you give it to them to edit and improve, so that it is 1. a perfect story. 2. a perfect description, which does not become a narrative.
There is a powerpoint to teach the 12 techniques which make it a top answer.
This resource includes a typically uninspiring picture.
How to plan.
How to write a description which lasts only a few seconds, so does not turn in to a narrative.
How to select an interesting viewpoint.
A model answer, around 500 words long.
The marking criteria.
An explanation as to why it is grade 9.
Do you want a bundle which will equip your students with all the tools to write great informative writing and great travel writing?
Would you like them to see models of grade 9 writing, fully explained? How about grade 6 writing which gets improved to grade 9?
Will you give them a glossary of all the skills they will need, and numerous examples of each one, so that they can begin to use them themselves?
Would you like more than 50% off?
How to write an article.
This shows students how to move from grades 5 to 6, 6 to 7, 7 to 8 and 9.
It also teaches 10 techniques that will get students grades 7 and above:
Start each sentence with a different word
Write about the future
Not only…but
Show me…show me
Pair your verbs for emphasis
Extend your simile or metaphor
Anecdote
The contrasting power of ‘but’
Humorous comparison
Go to town on triplets. More anecdotes. Load your sentences with techniques which fit
Teach from part of a sample answer.
Go through the 9 skills that students need for a grade 5.
Then teach the same skills to grade 6 using the same essay, with an extra one - skill 10 which tips the balance between grades 5 and 6.
Finally, exemplify a crucial tactic to approaching the question which makes grades 5 and 6 so much easier to get. Should students start with the extract or the whole text? There really is a right answer!
What does the examiner’s report have to tell us about teaching Romeo and Juliet?
Learn how to write about more than one interpretation for the top grades.
Take opposing views about the role of the Friar in bringing peace to Verona, but upsetting the social order.
About Romeo and Juliet’s love representing the passion of the individual, or the error of challenging social conventions.
Relate their marriage to the potential tragedy of Shakespeare’s marriage to Ann Hathaway.
Or alternatively, understand the play as a celebration of his own marriage in contrast to social conventions of Verona and Shakespeare’s audience.
Find alternative perspectives on the Nurse, so that she is both hero and villain.
See how a contemporary audience might well have seen Capulet as a model father.
Follow the link to my video to see how to use the presentation to teach your students.
All the themes of Jekyll and Hyde, with precise quotations to teach them. A 42 minute video showing you what to teach if you want it. Great to set for homework.
A beautifully presented PowerPoint which you can teach from or print off as revision cards for your class.
As always, the presentation links to my videos on Mr Salles Teaches English, so you can get even more tips on how to teach from it.
Includes themes of women and femininity, duality, hypocrisy, repression, violence, duality, friendship, appearances, the house as a metaphor, science and evolution, and Christianity, curiosity, drug taking…
This is a unique resource, an anthology of original short stories to teach your 14-16 year old students how to craft short stories.
Each one is utterly different, filled with real voices, amazing plot twists, and description you’ve never met before.
Each one will act as a springboard to your students’ imaginations.
You will also be able to deal with issues of the day: celebrity culture, feminism, homophobia, vegetarianism, drug abuse, cheating in sport…
Each story is in a different genre. This really is a collection like no other.
And all for an utterly amazing price, at 60% off!
What this resource includes:
Mnemonic to remember rhetorical, persuasive techniques: MAD FATHERS CROCH
How to plan an answer
9 skills necessary in a top answer
The mark scheme explained
Model answer, grade 6
Model answer, grade 9
Model answer, annotated and explained
Why exam topics will never be interesting
Sample topics and question
Here is the beginning of the model text:
Annotated 100% Model: Writing to Inform
Every actor wants to be Tom Cruise, and every actress longs to be Jenifer Lawrence. So why settle for Danny Dyer and Letitia Dean?
1. Contrasting pair
2. Rhetorical question
3. Alliteration
You wouldn’t, and you shouldn’t. It’s exactly the same thing with revision guides. Yes, they come with pretty pictures, and jokes, and everything is chunk sized so that it fits a single page.
Emotive language
Repetition
Triplets
Creating an enemy
But do they push you, pull you, and propel you to get a grade 8 or 9?
Alliteration
Contrast
Triplet
You’ve spotted that’s a rhetorical question, but do you know the other 14 rhetorical devices?
Direct address
Contrasting pair
Rhetorical question
Mr Salles won’t just list them: by the time you finish his guide, you will know them by heart. Fact.
Contrasting pair
Direct address
Opinion
Mr Salles believes that all students can ace the English language exam; that every student can learn from beyond grade 9 answers that are properly explained; that every student can remember if they are shown how.
Emotive language
Triplet
Repetition
This resource includes a sample text, with a key for difficult vocabulary. It has a sample question and answers. It dovetails with the specimin paper you may have used as a mock, with different questions.
The best way to use this is as part of the bundle on Paper 2, Questions 1-4!
Here is the beginning.
Question 1
Remember, you will get a 20th or 21st century text to go with your 19th century text in the exam. However, for copyright reasons, I will avoid a modern text. This does have the added benefit for you of getting familiar with the kind of convoluted sentences older texts use, so that you will be better prepared for the exam.
Here is an example of a text from Dickens that is used in the specimen papers:
Greenwich Fair: Where Dickens let his hair down
Charles Dickens is writing in 1839 about a fair in London which was a popular annual event he enjoyed.
The road to Greenwich during the whole of Easter Monday is in a state of perpetual bustle and noise. Cabs, hackney-coaches1, ‘shay’ carts2, coal-waggons, stages, omnibuses3, donkey- chaises2 - all crammed with people, roll along at their utmost speed. The dust flies in clouds, ginger-beer corks go off in volleys, the balcony of every public-house is crowded with people smoking and drinking, half the private houses are turned into tea-shops, fiddles are in great request, every little fruit-shop displays its stall of gilt gingerbread and penny toys; horses won’t go on, and wheels will come off. Ladies scream with fright at every fresh concussion and servants, who have got a holiday for the day, make the most of their time. Everybody is anxious to get on and to be at the fair, or in the park, as soon as possible.
The chief place of resort in the daytime, after the public-houses, is the park, in which the principal amusement is to drag young ladies up the steep hill which leads to the Observatory4, and then drag them down again at the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement of their curls and bonnet-caps, and much to the edification of lookers-on from below. ‘Kiss in the Ring5,’ and ‘Threading my Grandmother’s Needle5,’ too, are sports which receive their full share of patronage.
Teach your students how to use the indicative content to write their revision essay.
Then show them how to refine this to a grade 9 essay which can be done under exam conditions.
Next teach them from the model.
Show exactly how it meets all the exam criteria for AQA and Edexcel.
Here is an extract:
Propel students to top grades in their full understanding of the context of this poem. It is propaganda, we know. But teaching the rhyme scheme and dactyl metre reveals a surprising alternative, that Tennyson is horrified at the senseless slaughter of the soldiers. Students who understand ‘form and structure’ achieve at least grade 7.
A video also explains everything, so your students can follow up the lesson with homework, or can use it as flipped learning before you teach the poem.
This comprehensive and beautiful resource teaches all the themes of An Inspector Calls. It is filled with detail which will help most students access grade 7, and the more able to get grades 8 and 9.
It summarises most of The Mr Salles Guide to An Inspector Calls, which you can see on Amazon https://amzn.to/2DDPl91
Each PPT slide can be printed as a revision card there are 32 in total.
A video showing you how to teach from it is also included. You can play this to your class, or pick out the salient points you want to cover yourself.
This powerpoint teaches 5 key skills which are necessary to get full marks when writing about the structure of the text. The resource includes a full 8 mark answer, with annotations and explanations of how the answer meets all the criteria for Grade 9.
This appears in both PPT and Word form, so is fully editable, and can easily be printed so that students can easily make relevant notes based on your teaching.
Every to grade idea you’ll ever need. Boost students’ grades, because top level analysis is just knowing stuff. Understand interpretations you’ve not met before and help your students stand out from the crowd.
This amazing bundle is better than anything else on the market. CGP, York Notes, Collins, Mr Bruff all aim to the middle.
These analyses show your students who to get grades 8 and 9 with each character.
They’ll discover new interpretations they’ve never met before. They’ll see how to explore alternative viewpoints about each key moment in the play.
They will decide whether the Inspector is supernatural, why the younger generation ultimately fail, how Priestley was even more worried about war than about capitalism and consider whether Priestley himself is an early feminist.
Every page models essay writing in such a way that your students will move beyond PEE, and write in a more fluent style.
And you get 67% off!