Diverse short stories teaching pack

Diversify your KS3 English curriculum with 12 lessons on 6 brilliant short stories, from wonderful writers including Alex Wheatle, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Koomson, Bali Rai, Jeffrey Boakye and Kit de Waal.

Our KS3 short stories teaching pack celebrates the work of Black and Asian writers and the short story as a unique form of literature.

Introduce your students to a range of exciting literary voices they may not have encountered before with an engaging and inclusive scheme of learning, plus lesson plans and classroom resources.

Engaging and accessible for year 7, 8 and 9 readers, these powerful short stories have been specifically chosen to encourage more reading for pleasure and to be more representative and inclusive.

About the selected stories and authors

All the selected stories are written by Black British and British Asian authors, with the exception of the celebrated Black American short story writer, Langston Hughes, whose unforgettable 20th-century story, ‘Thank you, Ma’am’, also features in this anthology.

The other five stories are contemporary, 21st-century stories and include new writers such as Jeffrey Boakye.

The settings range from New York in the 1950s to a science-fiction future world. Some of the stories have more familiar family or teenage contexts, but all share a focus on relationships and explore themes of race, identity and belonging, love and loss, and redemption.

The collection is divided into three groups for thematic teaching, allowing teachers to dip into the teaching pack to complement an existing scheme of learning, or to teach the stories as a complete short story anthology.

What’s included in the teaching pack?

Written by two experienced English teachers, the teaching pack includes a detailed scheme of learning with lesson plans, teaching notes, differentiation suggestions and homework activities, as well as printable classroom resources.

The 109-page photocopiable teaching pack is student-facing for use in the classroom, and is accompanied by 12 PPT lessons for classroom delivery, and 6 complete short stories for reading in class.

Each lesson includes:

• Do now activity
• Starter activity
• 3-4 main lesson activities
• Plenary
• Extension or homework tasks
• Many of the activities are carefully scaffolded, with differentiated, ladder up support and sentence starters for writing tasks, as well as a range of stretch and challenge suggestions for early finishers and higher-attaining students.

The pack includes a lovely range of fun and creative tasks, as well as a focus on developing learners’ reading comprehension and analytical writing skills. It also includes drama activities and engaging speaking and listening tasks to encourage lots of animated, on-topic classroom talk.

There’s also a list of diverse reading recommendations so teacher can encourage more reading for pleasure, and a word bank to help with disciplinary literacy and vocabulary development.