An Inspector Calls Initial Characters and Themes Act 1

A fully-adaptable PowerPoint for the opening of An Inspector Calls before the Inspector arrives aimed at higher-level groups.

Prior reading up until the stage-direction ‘We hear the sharp ring of a front door bell’ will need to have occurred before the PowerPoint is used.

The PowerPoint contains:

1. LOs followed by a slide outlining the four key themes in this section: Privilege, Class Struggle, Snobbery and Self-Serving Idealism. Foreshadowing and Dramatic Irony are also introduced and will need to be explored by the teacher.
2. A table in which students are asked to consider key character language and place the language under either Privilege, Class Struggle, Snobbery or Self-Serving Idealism. This can be done either as a cut-and-paste activity or on the computer as a drag and drop. The slide could be printing out and students could write answers in also if the two above options are not available
3. A completed slide of the above task for the teacher to talk through/take feedback etc.
4. Further discussion of Foreshadowing and Dramatic Irony
5. A table in which students explore key language from the opening act and decide whether it is an example of foreshadowing or dramatic irony. They then need to give an insightful comment as to what the device is demonstrating/why it is an example of such a device. There are two differentiated slides here. The harder one asks the students to identify who said the line before analysing it, and there are no hint questions. The other identifies the speaker and asks ‘Withholding of further information or contextual events the audience would have knowledge about?’ as a guide for students to explore which of the two devices the language is an example of
6. The next slide gives example ‘insightful comments’ which students can check against their own or add to during a class discussion / feedback.
7. The final slide is a reminder of their LOs and some questions to explore the skills they used in the lesson to analyse the play today.

Best wishes,
Englbee x