Encourage your students to write a powerfully persuasive formal letter from a choice of five letter writing tasks. After studying an extract from Mahatma Ghandi’s 1940 open letter to Hitler, designed to persuade him to stop World War Two, students choose a subject that they are passionate about from the following choices: A letter to your local council arguing that the building project should not go ahead. . Write a letter to the organisers of an expedition persuading them that you should be on the team. Write a letter to a well-known person persuading them to visit your school or college for the benefit of the students. Write a letter to a celebrity of your choice persuading him or her to support a campaign to end world poverty. Write a letter to the Manager of the School Meals Service in which you offer your advice. Key persuasive features are identified on a twenty slide powerpoint. Students are encouraged to use emotive language; antithesis; rhetorical question; simple sentences; repetition and direct address. Perfect for teaching GCSE transacational writing.

Designed as a follow-on to the powerpoint on colons, this lesson explains the three uses of semi-colons with activities for students, complete with answers. Activities then become more complicated as students are given passages to punctuate with both colons and semi-colons, helping them to become supremely confident in the use of these two pieces of punctuation.

This powerpoint provides pieces of information about ten classic films, which students have to build into multi-clause complex sentences. All answers are provided.

Did you know that sixty percent of words in English are derived from Greek and Latin? This thirty-six slide Powerpoint contains clues to at least two words derived from fourteen different Greek roots. Students work independently or in groups to guess the words from the clues. A brief explanation of why there are Greek roots in English is provided at the beginning and the answers are provided at the end. Designed to engage your students as an interactive quiz.

Two lessons using an extract from Bill Bryson’s travelogue “Notes from a Small Island” in which he describes his disappointment at visiting Blackpool. The lesson sequence is as follows: In the first lesson the students attempt the question “How does the writer use language to show disappointment?” in preparation for AQA English Paper One Question 2 on language. A WAGOLL answer is provided demonstrating how the answer should be marked. A mark scheme is provided and students peer assess each other’s work following the model, giving each other a mark and written feedback. The second lesson uses the theme of disappointment as a springboard. Students write a story about disappointment in preparation for Section B: Writing on English Paper One. An example of planning a story with a 3 part story structure is included, as well as a further extract from Bryson on Weston-Super-Mare in which he shows disappointment. 23 slides and two extracts included.

A twenty question quiz on spelling words ending in “ible” or “able”. Students are given some guidelines and a look/cover/spell/check worksheet to learn the spelling before the quiz. All answers provided on the powerpoint, so students can mark their own work. A consolidation worksheet is included to complete at home or in class.

These spelling activities are divided into four rounds. In Round 1 students have to guess if the word ends in “tion” or “sion” from the pronunciation and the clue. In Round 2 students have to choose the correct spelling from a choice of two. In Round 3 students are introduced to the “cian” ending and have to guess the profession from the clue. Round 4 is twenty-two clues to words ending in either “tion”,“sion” or “cian”. Cartoon graphics add interest and help second language speakers. All answers are provided on the slides, so students mark their own work. A worksheet is included for consolidation in class or at home. Approximately 100 slides in total.

English spelling is tricky enough with the historical divergence between pronunciation and spelling. Then there are those strange Latin and Greek plurals that we can never seem to get our heads around. Never fear. This powerpoint explains the rules of words such as criterion, data, formula and almnus followed by a fun twenty word quiz for students to apply the rules. Cartoon graphics are included to help any second language speakers. This activity would also benefit science students to master some key terms. A worksheet to consolidate the learning in class or at home is included.

Using two sources, students imagine that they were a soldier at the Dunkirk evacuation and write an eye-witness account of it. The first source is a powerpoint with two with background information and historical contest. The second source is a an extract from Churchill’s famous "We shall fight them on the beaches speech. This could be used as stimulus for creative writing for English or empathetic writing for history.

Twenty-two lessons on JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone aimed at weak Key Stage 3 students, so it would be suitable for Key Stage 2 students also. Activities include designing your own sweet and selling it ; mapping out and labelling Diagon Alley; creating your own potion; creating your own wand; creating similes; selecting text to fill in the blanks cloze exercises. As you progress through the scheme, students create a silly name for themselves which they develop into a character who will have to defeat a monster. They create their own monster and then write a story where they imagine themselves running through the corridors of Hogwarts to defeat it. Full of supporting resources and examples to get them writing. My Harry Potter name is Sally Silly Sausage. What will yours be?

Lots of words in English drop the -e when adding a suffix. This eighty slide Powerpoint contains two exercises - one where you decide whether to add an -e or not and another where you take the word back to its root, with or without the -e. All answers provided on the Powerpoint and a back up worksheet is included to reinforce the learning. Designed to be completed individually or as a class.

Engage your students in creative writing with this eight lesson student workbook and accompanying powerpoint. Students imagine that their car has broken down near the haunting and mysterious Howley Hall Hotel. Just like Brad and Janet, they knock on the door, whereupon they encounter a strange old lady. Little do they know that inside a strange presence lurks. They are guided to write a gothic story at the same time as revising basic skills, such as sentence demarcation; capital letters; homophones - their/they’re/their; your/you’re; punctuation speech; commas in lists; vocabulary enrichment; complex sentences; sentence variety. Suitable for primary students or secondary students who need to revise basic skills.

More than four lessons worth of material on this 80 slide Powerpoint on William Blake’s deceptively simple, yet brilliant poem ‘London’. A full lesson on historical context, plus two further lessons on language and sound effects. A final lesson on how to write a contemporary pastiche of the poem with a template included. Five worksheets are included on this poet’s masterpiece.

This twenty-one page student workbook contains twelve poems on the theme of football, designed to engage reluctant readers. Each poem has an accompanying activity. The culminating activity is for students to write a letter to their local newspaper arguing either for or against the case that the job of a football manager has become too stressful today. Stimulus material to promote discussion on this includes newspaper reports on sacked managers. This is an absolute bargain, even if I do say so myself! Poems include: Boys’ Game Give us back our ball, missus Oi, Ref Goalpost Blues Several haikus - write your own haiku England v Germany A Manager’s Tale Letter to Newspaper There’s only one Michael Owen It Makes You Think Hard Man

This twenty-slide Powerpoint guides you through the poem beginning with historical context and then annotated notes on each of the verses. Follow-up activities concentrate on Owen’s use of contrast and narrative writing from the point of view of the disabled man. A timeline of information about Owen is included in the folder also.

Harriet Tubman not only liberated herself from slavery, but helped at least a further seventy people to escape from enslavement in nineteenth century Maryland, using the Underground Railroad. Later she worked as a nurse, spy and scout for the Union during the Civil War. All this despite suffering from debilitating injuries suffered from her brutal childhood in slavery. Find out more about the life of this truly remarkable woman with this sixty-slide Powerpoint full of interesting information and images. Activities include writing a ballad to celebrate her life with an example of a four verse ballad included as Word document; writing a promotional webpage for the museum dedicated to her life and ideas for further investigation.

In May 2021 the Minderoo Foundation published a ground-breaking report into the problem of single-use plastics. They discovered that a mere twenty global companies were responsible for over fifty percent of the non-recyclable plastic in our world. The report created the first ‘Plastic Waste Makers Index’. This lesson is based on this report, simplifying complex terminology so that students can understand the shocking detail and the contribution of single-use plastic to the climate crisis, which is predicted to grow even further in the coming years. Activities to engage students are interspersed throughout the 39 slide Powerpoint and the final activity is a letter to government to persuade policy-makers to legislate to curb the prolific production of this noxious product. There is a suggested letter structure and a reminder about persuasive language techniques.

In February 2021 the government announced that it was going to open a coal mine in Cumbria. This horrified the climate expert Professor James E Hansen who wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson to persuade him not to go ahead with the policy and to reconsider his climate policies. This letter uses a simplified extract of this letter to introduce the fossil fuel climate crisis that is currently emerging and focuses on the persuasive language techniques that the writer uses to persuade the Prime Minister to his point of view. A clean copy and an annotated copy of the abridged letter are included. A twenty-slide Powerpoint accompanies the lesson with introductory activities, context and a choice of post-analysis activities: exam-style question on writing to persuade article for school magazine leaflet for younger students further research on the ‘fee and dividend’ economy described in the letter.

This fourteen-page Word document contains all you need to design your own box of chocolates containing eight unique chocolates that have come from your imagination. The booklet begins with information on the history of chocolate with a timeline to fill in. Then there are opportunities to analyse the language features of real chocolate box advertising campaigns. Your brief is to rescue the floundering Thornbury Chocolate Group with your new box of chocolates and marketing campaign. Can you rise to the challlenge? The booklet includes hours of fully-guided fun.

Spanish is spoken widely around the world and many words have passed into English from this language. Have fun with your class guessing the forty words that have enriched English. The powerpoint first gives a clue and then the first letter of the word is given if needed. All answers are provided on the slides. A back-up worksheet is included to consolidate the learning.