'Punctuation Marks Are People, Too' explains the main punctuation marks as characters. This clarifies the job that each one of them does. This sheet can be used to introduce a whole series of punctuation worksheets that will be uploaded here soon. Alternatively, this sheet can be used for revision. Capital letters, full stops, commas, semi colons, colons and the apostrophe are all in this cast of characters!

This uses cartoon people to explain the job of the semi colon. It’s like a door ajar between two sentences! Check out my HANDWRITING PEOPLE too! That resource is called HANDWRITING: A CLASS OF 26 LITTLE PEOPLE. I teach grammar, punctuation this way. Imagining the letters and punctuation marks as little people draws learners into the detail by bringing them to life. Each time you explain a rule and/or examine an example, it’s like telling a little story. This is easier to picture, easier to remember, and can be quite funny at times.

This uses cartoon people to explain the job of the colon in a sentence. Check out my HANDWRITING PEOPLE too! That resource is called HANDWRITING: A CLASS OF 26 LITTLE PEOPLE.

This sheet uses cartoon people to explain what a sentence is and how to punctuate it with capital letters and full stops. The companion worksheet to this is ‘PUNCTUATION DRAGONS - Practise Capitals & Full Stops’. I teach grammar, punctuation this way. Imagining the letters and punctuation marks as little people draws learners into the detail by bringing them to life. Each time you explain a rule and/or examine an example, it’s like telling a little story. This is easier to picture, easier to remember, and can be quite funny at times. Check out my HANDWRITING PEOPLE too! That resource is called HANDWRITING: A CLASS OF 26 LITTLE PEOPLE.

This worksheet goes with 'PUNCTUATION PEOPLE - Capital Letters & Full Stops'.

This uses cartoon people to explain how the apostrophe is used to show possession. Always ask yourself: what does this apostrophe know? Check out my HANDWRITING PEOPLE too! That resource is called HANDWRITING: A CLASS OF 26 LITTLE PEOPLE.

This detailed cartoon explains three stages of creating a play: 1. The playwright choosing lines and stage directions 2. The characters onstage with various props and effects of lighting and sound 3. The audience reaction with emotions ranging from tension to anger, sadness to disgust. You can print this off and give it to pupils and then get them to practise that three-stage analysis themselves. It can apply to any play. In essays, get them to include points & even start sentences with 'Priestley', 'The stage directions' and 'The audience' to help nudge dramatic insights.

This uses cartoon people to explain how the apostrophe is used to show that a letter has been omitted. The apostrophe is a spy who knows exactly which letter has escaped from a word! Check out my HANDWRITING PEOPLE too! That resource is called HANDWRITING: A CLASS OF 26 LITTLE PEOPLE.

This is longer than most glossaries, because I have included examples of each term. The title is just my opinion, of course! For homework, you could choose five terms and tell pupils to find their own examples of each. These could be from songs as well as poems. It is often examples we like that fix in the mind what a technique is, and even more importantly, what it can do. \nYou could then use this Amazing Glossary in conjunction with my POETRY FLOWER. This would help pupils to keep the bigger picture in mind and not get swamped in detail.

You can give this sheet to pupils to introduce them to grammar. Thinking of grammar as an octopus, with all his tentacles working together, is a way into thinking of a sentence as a group of words working together, each with its own job to do. \nPupils can talk in pairs about how they would describe the job that each word does in the sentence on the sheet. In plenary, you could get pupils' own descriptions of each &'word job&';. Then, when they’ve understood the concepts, you can ‘drop in’ the correct terms. See LESSON PLAN for more ideas!

This is written directly for students, so you can give out the whole thing or pages from it as you wish, at any stage of GCSE English. Getting pupils to write their own examples of techniques listed in these pages is a nice quick homework for you to mark and a great way to check that they have grasped something. It helps their knowledge about language to 'stick&': they are more likely to notice techniques in others&'; writing when they have used the techniques - and named them - themselves. Hope it helps!

These sheets use cartoons to explain when to write 'it's and when to write 'its'. Crazy Dog hates getting apostrophes stuck in his tail and loves rain... Pupils make up plenty of their own sentences using 'it's' and then plenty of their own using 'its'. Only then let them switch between the two! Note: the first page starts 'When does 'its' need an apostrophe?' Give that one first so that it makes sense as a little story.

A step-by-step study guide for GCSE and A Level students to help them study any novel for exams or coursework. It helps to give pupils the pdf first: this cartoon will help them to visualise the learning process. Then you can give pages 1-3 of the notes, 'How To Study A Novel'. You can add more topics to the final section on technique, e.g. present tense, flashbacks, fallible narrator, to suit the novel studied. By going up and down the pyramid, pupils build for themselves a sense of how form, structure and language shape meanings. They learn how to move between the big picture and the details when using quotes and references in essays. They produce their own set of notes, helping them become independent learners. This is particularly valuable in helping GCSE students prepare for A Level, and A Level students prepare for university. Above all, they won’t keep asking you for examples – they will have their own! See also my poetry sheet, 'THE POETRY FLOWER'.

Zeus or Poseidon? Let your class decide! Is he throwing a thunderbolt or a trident? Photo 3 shows his arm: what do you think was in it? Get pupils to look at the rest of him, & stand up, maybe look at other sculptures of both gods, to help decide. Apologies, I am hopeless at PowerPoint - but I took these photos, so you can them as you wish. This incredible bronze statue was found at the bottom of the sea off Cape Artemision (aka 'The Artemision Bronze&'.) C. 460 B.C. &';Severe' Classical Style. One of the few preserved original works of the Severe Style. National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

Writing non-fiction such as an article or opinion piece for AQA Language Paper 2 Question 5 involves abstract ideas and technical terms. Young learners can struggle with these. Dave the Dog, a writer for Sports Hound, describes each stage of writing a non-fiction piece. How to get ideas, planning the bones of an argument and writing with flair - Dave the Dog walks us through it all. There are three worksheets: How to Plan and Article, How to Plan an Article if Your Mind Goes Blank, and How to Write an Article. Download each one as a PDF or a Word Document so you can edit it if you like. These three sheets provide a clear and memorable way into non-fiction writing. Once learners have gone through them, you can set simple topics for opinion writing, such as ‘Which make better family pets - dogs or cats - and why?’ ‘Which would you rather be - a cat or a dog - and why?’ You can get some quite moving pieces from a title such as ‘What My Dog Taught Me About Love’. Learners can focus on what they want to say and how to say it - drawing on their own experience and/or that of their peers. The third worksheet has spaces for learners to fill in their own examples of each technique. It’s well worth making sure that learners do these, maybe in pencil so they can change their minds! It’s a quick mark to check their grasp of the techniques. They often come up with some wonderful sentences, free from the pressure writing a whole piece. If a child who struggles can come up with a really good simile that makes the whole class laugh, this can boost their confidence no end. This can also lead to great discussion about reader response. You can give Dave the Dog to young learners and then bring him back for revision in Years 10 or 11. That way, GCSE learners will be drawing on long-term memory, which is stronger than short-term memory. Exam students may also feel surprisingly nostalgic about something they were given so many years ago, when they were young!

This video can be used with my ‘MACBETH’ - ANIMALS IN CHAOS! Worksheets. Two puppet horses explain ‘Macbeth’ with reference to beliefs about natural order in Shakespeare’s time. They focus on ‘Macbeth’ Act 2 Scene 4: 'Duncan’s horses…Turn’d wild in nature…‘Tis said, they eat each other.’ The horses then explain the Great Chain of Being, to help us understand the whole play in the context of its time. This eight-minute film will help anyone studying Shakespeare’s tragedies or history plays to grasp the beliefs about God, man and nature that underpin the plot, characters and language. It is particularly helpful to GCSE English Literature pupils who need to place Shakespeare’s plays in context. I’ve included two images from the video: the Great Chain of Being Diagram and the cartooned extract.

You can use all three pages of this worksheet or just sections of it. There is a version with cartoons and without. It aims to inspire pupils to read old books - fiction or non-fiction - and give them a method for understanding an extract from one of them. There is so much technical jargon in the teaching of GCSE prose analysis that it can turn pupils off reading books altogether. This worksheet - or 'thinksheet' as you can also call it - aims to explain some of the reasons why picking up a book that was written a long time ago can be worth doing in the first place. See also 'MORE TIPS ON READING OLD BOOKS' for more practical advice. Analysis using technical terminology is vital, of course. Other sheets will deal with that. However, these sheets mainly aim to motivate wider reading for enjoyment, and make students realise that they can pick up any old book and see where it takes them.

A study aid to help pupils connect a poem's techniques to its overall impact and meaning. Helps them to see how techniques work together, e.g. a metaphor may change the tone. By connecting the petals (techniques) to the centre (overall impact/meaning), pupils write more than just 'Look! A simile.' What is it doing? How does it relate to the rest of the poem? Pupils learn to move between the overall force of a poem and its details. They just need to think: 'I'm a bee. I can fly where I like!' To compare poems, fly between two flowers. Blank version is for your use or for their own notes. See also my 'HOW TO STUDY A NOVEL'.

This is a traditional ballad which dates back at least as far as 1611. So it is contemporary with Shakespeare e.g. 'Macbeth&'. Pupils could write a modern version with the talking crows, or poems to lament the mysterious dead knight. GCSE students could compare different interpretations of the imagery. See my Lesson Ideas for more things to do. Enjoy using the song as a resource for lessons & concerts! This is my own song é recording so I own the copyright. See base of lyric sheet for details.

This lesson gives pupils ways to dig themselves out of ‘going blank’. You can give the Worksheet to pupils & put up a choice of photos for them to write about. Example from Worksheet: Start by asking yourself some simple questions. There are no right answers. Just see what comes up in your mind: 1. Am I warm or cool? Hot or cold? See Worksheet for more ways to get ideas from your own mind! Note: You can use the Worksheet with any photos of places. (These were all taken in Greece; the tomb pix = Mycenae.) See my ‘WORD WITCH’ for another way to get ideas: rub two words together like sticks...