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.

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.

This beautiful song in Spanish with the English translation on a separate sheet is suitable for all age groups as the language is simple and there is lots of repetition. The video shows the Spanish lyrics. It is by Jesús Adrián Romero, a Mexican Christian singer/songwriter, and he sings it here with his wife, Pecos.

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'.

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.

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...

The Lesson Plan tells you how to help pupils to create their own fairy tales using a series of simple choices of character, description and plot. The videos are examples of some of tne many cartoon versions of famous fairy tales in German. Finally, a feisty German Rapunzel finishes this set of resources!

Tells you about the structure and content of Pindar's Olympic Victory Odes and then tells you how to write your own! You can write about a sporting celebrity such as Rebecca Adlington and there is an excellent example at the end of these sheets. &'English - Prize poetry&'; is the article I wrote in Resources with more ideas about how to use these worksheets: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6257863

These are the lyrics to an Italian song about pirates, but I have so far been unable to find the tune. (I find that if I ask the class if anyone would like to make up a tune there is always someone who offers!) In any case, the rhythm is what helps pupils to remember the words, so speaking or chanting it and it works just as well. Great for revising first person plural verbs. Fun to get the class to write new verses for this song using the vocabulary of everyday life. So pirates are not only the demons of the sea - they also do the washing up!

A filmed parody of the Kate Bush song, 'Wuthering Heights&', which sends up the original novel as much as it does the song! Fun to watch as part of a term&';s work on the Gothic genre: pupils can spot the elements of the Gothic in the whole style in which the film is shot as well as the performance itself. Good for teaching them what parody and satire are as well. Fun if you've studied &'Wuthering Heights&';, too! I enclose leadsheet (lyrics and chords) and video script. There may be some differences between the leadsheet, script & final film.

This sheet is designed to help students to think of the play they are studying as a drama to be acted onstage, not a book to read in silence. You can do some of the exercises in class or as a homework. Reading a section of dialogue with sock puppets is a fun way to explore who is speaking to whom, who has power in a scene and who is silent. Encouraging students to do this at home can make revision stimulating and memorable. Theatrical observations start to creep into essays as a result.

Link to YouTube audio of Juliette Greco singing this dramatic song by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. There are some extra contractions in the lyrics so it is worth letting students know this. Pupils could write diaries or letters after listening to the song. There were a few female pirates, so pupils could write a letter from a pirate to a girlfriend or boyfriend. Or they could write a reply from the pirate to the woman in this song!

This two-page worksheet uses explanations, quotations and cartoons to help students grasp that the murder of Duncan is a crime against God that upsets the whole natural order. ‘Macbeth’ is stuffed with animal references which are fun for students to look out for in lessons and extract questions, but they need help first to grasp why Shakespeare uses them. These sheets are designed to do this. You can use these sheets at any point during your study of the play. Act 2 Scene 4 is a good moment for them, though. You can show my video - ‘MACBETH - ANIMALS IN CHAOS!’ after going through the scene, then give them the worksheets. I have also included two images from the video: the simple diagram of the Great Chain of Being and my cartooned extract from Act 2 Scene 4.

These sheets turn the apostrophe into a cartoon character. It knows it's unpopular because it confuses people. 'Apostrophe's Brain' tells you that the apostrophe only knows about two things: missing letters and things belonging to something. 'Apostrophe Unpopular' lets the apostrophe explain itself: how to use it's and its; when to use clown's shoes and clowns' shoes. Pupils can then write their own examples with explanations underneath of what the apostrophe knows and is telling us in each sentence. All this gives you a way of talking about apostrophes that makes sense to a child, e.g. 'What does it know here?' 'What is it trying to tell us?' Note: If the colours do not come out in your copy, just get the pupils to use coloured highlighters for the different functions of the apostrophe: missing letters and belonging to. See also my PUNCTUATION PEOPLE resources.

These two illustrated sheets explain a way of looking at handwriting which transforms the task of improving it from a vague worry to a fun task. Instead of saying ‘I have terrible handwriting,’ learners are encouraged to think of their handwriting as a class of little people. Very often, I find that there are just a handful of letters that are unclear. When these are noticed and practised, the handwriting as a whole improves. Learners can find it quite fun as well as helpful to think of their own handwriting as a class of little people over whom they have friendly but firm control. This creates a way of talking about handwriting in a way that is easier to visualise and remember. Your marking can be included in this, too. For example, ‘Can you see which letters are falling asleep here?’ or ‘Your ‘g’ is kicking the letters on the line below again’ are comments that create a vivid yet also helpfully specific image for a learner to act upon. I always find it a pity if someone ‘hates their handwriting’, as an unruly blob that cannot change and over which they have no control. Instead, these two pages describe an approach which combines friendly curiosity in the small details that can make a big difference. Check out my PUNCTUATION PEOPLE too!

This single-page sheet helps students to spark an idea for a great story about an unusual friendship. It can be used at any time of the year, not just Halloween. They can discuss in pairs or groups what they think the different creatures in the picture are like and maybe think of names for them. Names make characters seem real in the mind and give them a life of their own. You could have fun with alliteration, e.g. Bob the Bat, and with setting a mood, e.g. Snooty Candle. Old-fashioned or unusal names can sound mysterious, e.g. Winona the Witch, while nicknames can sound funny and approachable, e.g. Mike the Monster. It can also be funny if a name has absolutely nothing to do with the nature of the creature, e.g. Colin the Coffin or Tim the Ghost. ‘The Something of Something’ is another useful pattern, not just for a character’s name, but for a story title, e.g. ‘The Creatures of Castle Spooky’, ‘The Mummy of Mortlake’, ‘Mutterings in the Moat’. Letting your characters talk to each other is fun and unpredictable: you can never be quite sure what they are going to say. Don’t let the difficulty of punctuating direct speech inhibit learners. After all, if they type this, they can always correct things like paragraphing and punctuation marks afterwards. They could illustrate their work or even turn a key scene from it into a storyboard or a strip cartoon for a younger audience than themselves. Have loads of spooky fun! SEE ALSO ‘HOW GOTHIC BEGAN AND WHAT IT UNLEASHED!’

This set of handouts, illustrations, websites and spooky photos of ‘Strawberry Hill House’ includes an editable Word Document. Together, they tell the story of how the Gothic Novel began - and how its author, Horace Walpole, unleashed a host of strange, entertainingly frightening and imaginative elements into the English Novel! Students can read the handout with its illustrations, then lose themselves in the photos of the House in its many moods. These could then inspire their own Gothic stories. Students could even decorate the classroom - or part of it - to make it more Gothic, just as Walpole did with his ‘little Gothic castle’. The handout starts with a list of Gothic elements. The drawing ‘WALPOLE LET THEM IN’ does not label the strange creatures. So get students to discuss their own ideas of what they all are, what’s happening, and what the images remind them of in popular culture today! The final document is a list of four useful Gothic websites for further research. The drawings may also be helpful with students who might otherwise find this quite a disturbing topic. I don’t think my zombie would scare anybody. SEE ALSO ‘UNUSUAL FRIENDSHIPS IN CASTLE SPOOKY’ - CREATIVE WRITING.

This sheet helps pupils to visualise the different parts of an essay. The head is the introduction etc. The essay dinosaur keeps its mind on the question. It only starts moving when it knows where it's going. You can use it in your marking, eg: ‘Good bones, needs more flesh’ or ‘Why no tail?’ You can answer the question, &'How much should we write?&'; by saying how many bones you want. You could tell younger classes to start with three bones, working up to five for older pupils. The Essay Dinosaur can help you to start an essay and write a good conclusion, too. See Lesson Plan for more details

You can give this sheet to pupils and let them read all the words on the witch's cloak. They can then draw or write in words around her, to give her some things to fly over. Or give them the Page of Nouns, too, for lots suggestions! Finally, they can take one word on her cloak and partner it with one word that names a thing, eg &'The Ancient Tree&';, 'The Empty House&', &';The Secret Road' Later, use this in a grammar lesson (see my GRAMMAR OCTOPUS) - all the words on the witch&'s cloak are adjectives.