Get SET to teach secondary English with Sian's English Toolkit.
These resources are based on my experience teaching secondary English for thirteen years. During this time I gained experience teaching language and literature to all ability levels within the age range 11-18. I also have extensive experience of writing schemes of learning as I was a department lead for ten of those years.
Get SET to teach secondary English with Sian's English Toolkit.
These resources are based on my experience teaching secondary English for thirteen years. During this time I gained experience teaching language and literature to all ability levels within the age range 11-18. I also have extensive experience of writing schemes of learning as I was a department lead for ten of those years.
Creative Writing Prompt Cards | Upper Primary School-Lower High School
These creative writing prompt cards would be useful for upper-primary or lower-high school aged students.
There are five categories of cards: main character, setting, season/weather/time, emotion and object.
The intention is for students to pick one card from each category and use these to create their own original story. This task can be differentiated up or down, depending on the needs of the students in the class, as outlined on the first page of the resource.
If this product is helpful to you, you may also like to have a look at these products in my shop:
Punctuation of Speech Activity: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/punctuation-of-speech-peter-pan-worksheet-12979465
Capital Letter Challenge Sheet: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/capital-letters-worksheet-the-secret-garden-12979226
Group Reading Task Sheet Bundle: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/inference-worksheets-12974999
GCSE English Language Revision Checklists (WJEC)
These checklists are to support learners in the build-up to mock exams and external exams.
They can be used by individuals to identify gaps in their own knowledge, or they can be used on a whole class level to identify areas of concern across the class to guide targeted teaching/learning/revision in the build-up to exams.
If a student cannot tick all columns for a skill, they should focus on that skill until they can. Once all columns have been ticked, they can move on to the next row.
The first checklist focuses on reading skills required across Units 2 & 3, including the editing section of Unit 2. The second checklist focuses on the writing skills required across Units 2 & 3, including the proofreading task on Unit 2.
Once gaps have been identified, some of these resources may be useful in addressing them:
Revision Pack: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/gcse-english-language-exam-revision-pack-wjec-12969501
Reading Skills Success Criteria Card Sort: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/gcse-english-language-reading-skills-wjec-12979433
How to plan writing task responses effectively: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/gcse-english-language-writing-planning-wjec-12984776
A GCSE English Language Resource Bundle, containing the above: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/gcse-english-language-bundle-wjec-12986501
Library Lesson Time Out Tasks
We have all been there when a learner has become overwhelmed or struggled to focus during a Library lesson. For some, the expectation to sit quietly and read can become too much, and they need a break.
Here are some quick activities that can help learners engage with the Library in a different way, whilst taking a quick break from sitting quietly to read. Each card has eight quick activities designed to provide a break from silent reading, whilst ensuring that learners are still engaged and not becoming disruptive to others.
Learners can either take a card and complete a couple of the activities, or they can aim to complete multiple tasks until they are calm enough to sit back down and read. This can be learner or teacher led, depending on the needs of the individual learners.
Group Discussion Activity Worksheets comprises of two discussion activities. Each sheet is set up similarly to the WJEC GCSE assessment sheets to help students familiarise themselves with the format. There are five sources on each sheet, including two links to audio-visual clips. **Note - your school must have enabled YouTube access for staff for you to access these clips.
The first worksheet promotes discussion around the question, ‘What makes a good citizen?’ which is directly linked to one of the speaking and listening topics given by the exam board for the individual researched presentation. The second worksheet leads students to discuss, ‘What makes a hero?’ which can be connected to the novel Heroes for any pupils studying that text as part of the Literature course.
Whilst there are strong connections to the WJEC English courses, both resources stand in their own right to support pupils in developing their discussion skills and can be used with higher ability KS3 pupils in addition to KS4 pupils.
The Merchant’s Tale annotated extract. This resource will help GCE English Literature students analyse extracts. There are differentiated versions of the worksheet depending on pupils’ ability and the learning intention of the lesson.
The duration of the worksheet will depend on the learning intention of the lesson, but would take approximately 15-25 minutes to annotate and go through as a class as a revision activity. The extract is the description of the Merchant taken from the General Prologue.
There are three versions of the worksheet:
blank extract and the question for use as an individual assessment
differentiated highlighted version to guide less confident students towards important quotations
highlighted and annotated version as a teacher guide, a good example of annotation to display to pupils/for self-assessment, or a revision handout to give to pupils
Further annotated extracts are available here - https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-13040315
Inference Worksheets 5 - Little Women / Black Beauty
These worksheets support learners in developing the skills of reading for meaning and making inferences. The teacher guide at the start helps you navigate through a series of activities that support learners in understanding a text. Each text will take approximately an hour to complete. These work particularly well with groups of 3-6 learners but can also be used 1-1 and with larger groups.
These activities help learners to practise:
making connections with current knowledge
visualising
questioning
word meaning
explaining subtext
empathy
prioritising
summarising
The two texts in this pack are extracts from Little Women and Black Beauty.
Also available in my shop are:
Inference Worksheets 1: Peter Pan & The Wind in the Willows
Inference Worksheets 2: Treasure Island & The Secret Garden
Inference Worksheets 3: A Christmas Carol & The Wizard of Oz
Inference Worksheets 4: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & What Katy Did
A bundle offer including six extracts
A Christmas Carol annotated extract. This resource will help GCSE English Literature students analyse extracts. There are differentiated versions of the worksheet depending on pupils’ ability and the learning intention of the lesson. The duration of the worksheet will depend on the learning intention of the lesson, but would take approximately 15-25 minutes to annotate and go through as a class as a revision activity.
There are three versions of the worksheet:
blank extract and the question for use as an individual assessment
differentiated highlighted version to guide less confident students towards important quotations
highlighted and annotated version as a teacher guide, a good example of annotation to display to pupils/for self-assessment, or a revision handout to give to pupils
There is another resource available containing five more extracts - one from each stave - to further support extract analysis. [https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-annotated-extracts-12933695]
There are also revision materials for the text available in my shop:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-revision-board-game-12989845 - a board game is a brilliant way to encourage revision without it feeling like hard work!
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-revision-worksheets-12942672
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-quotes-revision-12938348
Capital Letters Worksheet - The Secret Garden
This worksheet comprises an extract from ‘The Secret Garden’ which contains 19 errors with capital letters. There is also an answer sheet. This is a good starter activity for learners who are developing confidence with capitals or a more substantial activity for those who are less confident.
The errors include:
starting new sentences
use of the pronoun ‘I’
proper nouns
punctuation of speech
Sentence Punctuation Colour by Number worksheet, including answer key. This worksheet is designed to help KS2-3 pupils learn more about sentence punctuation. This resource is suitable for upper ability KS2 and lower ability KS3 pupils. It will take about 30 minutes to complete.
In this task, pupils will select the correct punctuation mark to end different sentences. Correct answers will provide a key to use to colour in the image. The image is of a number of presents so is suitable as a general or a festive activity. An answer key for staff is included for both elements of the worksheet.
Heroes by Robert Cormier Narrative Overivew is a four page account of the novel.
This is particularly useful to give to GCSE English Literature students prior to reading the text, to provide them with an overview of key characters and events.
This is also helpful during the revision stage when students can get confused about the order in which events appear in the text as the narrative isn’t linear.
Common Spellings Colour by Number Christmas theme worksheet, including answer key. This worksheet is designed to help KS3 pupils learn/revise common misspellings. This resource is suitable for KS3 pupils. It will take about 30 minutes to complete.
In this task, pupils will select the correct spelling to fill in the blank. Correct answers will provide a key to use to colour in the image. The image is of Santa going down a chimney in the snow so is a perfect festive activity. An answer key for staff is included for both elements of the worksheet.
For other festive activities, you might want to try:
Christmas anagrams: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/christmas-anagrams-12942667
A Christmas Carol characters CBN: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-colour-by-number-12942738
GCSE English Language Writing Tips & Tricks (WJEC) is intended to give specific instructions for less confident students to follow to help improve their mark for accuracy in the written elements of the exams. In my experience, this has a positive impact, in particular, with learners who have C targets or below.
It includes some very specific rules to follow to help show accuracy with some aspects of spelling, punctuation and grammar that were recurring issues amongst some of the learners in key classes.
It includes:
some key spellings
aspects of sentence structuring
including different vocabulary/language features
If you are interested in this resource, you may also want to look at the detailed GCSE English Language exam revision pack also available from my shop:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12969501
Sense and Sensibility Narrative Overview is a comprehensive account of key events within each chapter. It is divided by volume and chapter. When a new character is first mentioned, their name appears in bold so that students can create character webs/lists prior to reading the novel.
This is ideal for:
students to read before they read the book so that they can be clear on character and plot points
for essay writing when they need to practise quickly locating key scenes
as a revision guide (plot overview and to locate key extracts)
An Inspector Calls Narrative Overivew is a three page account of the play.
This is particularly useful to give to GCSE English Literature learners prior to reading the text, to provide them with an overview of key characters and events.
This is also helpful during the revision stage to ensure that learners remember in which order the characters are questioned, which can become a point of confusion.
The Time Machine H. G. Wells - this resources is a thorough narrative overview of the novel, divided by chapter.
This four page resource is a useful resource that can be used in different ways:
to have a clear overview of the narrative prior to reading the novel
to support tasks and assessments through being able to identify the location of key scenes within the text
to revise the text once it has been studied
A Valentine’s Day Colour by Number worksheet, including answer key. This worksheet is designed to help learners practise the key homophones there/their/they’re and to/too/two. This resource is suitable for pupils in primary, but could range beyond that depending on ability. It will take about 30 minutes to complete.
In this task, pupils will select the correct use of the homophone to complete each sentence. Correct answers will provide a key to use to colour in the image. The image is suited to a Valentine’s Day activity. An answer key for staff is included for both elements of the worksheet.
‘A Christmas Carol’ Colour by Number is a revision activity to support recollection of key characters and plot points. Whilst learners of all abilities can complete this activity, it may support revision amongst lower ability pupils best.
It will take 15-30 minutes to complete, depending on the learner’s level of confidence with the book. An answer key is included for both elements of the worksheet.
If you like this activity, have a look at the other ‘A Christmas Carol’ resources in my shop:
Revision activities
Quotes revision
Extract analysis
There is also a board game, which I find particularly useful in engaging learners in revision in a less traditional form:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-revision-board-game-12989845
Reading Records for Different Abilities contains seven different types of reading record, categorised using the colours of the rainbow. They encourage pupils to read, in school and/or at home, and include a space for a parental/teacher signature. There are seven spaces for pupils to enter what they have read - one space per weekday, potentially.
There is also a reading task on each type of record, differentiated according to ability, to encourage pupils to engage with the material they’ve read. Tasks range from recollection (Indigo level) to inference (Red level). This enables a teacher to differentiate across the class, whilst the colour system enables this to be more discrete than a numbered system.
Language Features Colour by Number worksheet, including answer key. This worksheet is designed to help KS3 pupils learn/revise definitions for key terms relating to figurative language. This resource is suitable for KS3 pupils. It will take about 30 minutes to complete.
In this task, pupils will select the correct term to match the definition. Correct answers will provide a key to use to colour in the image. The image is of crackers, a present and a Christmas bauble so is suitable as a festive activity. An answer key for staff is included for both elements of the worksheet.
A Christmas Carol Cut & Paste Quote Revision Activity | High School
This cut & paste activity will support learners with their quote revision. It will also show how well they know each of the characters and the key points about them.
There are two ways to complete this activity:
Print and give it straight to students. They cut out the character names and glue them into the appropriate boxes.
Print and laminate. You could cut up the character names, and students have to place them on the correct section. Alternatively, give your students wipeable markers and they write in the names. It will save you time laminating and cutting, but still means you can use them over and over again!
There are three different worksheets in this activity:
character speech
character descriptions
a ‘best-fit’ combination of speech and description
You may also be interested in the other ‘A Christmas Carol’ products in my shop:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-annotated-extracts-12933695
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-quotes-revision-game-13120979
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a-christmas-carol-revision-board-game-12989845