Enable your students to focus on effective structure and language features by inspiring them to write a story with the title “The Rescue” by giving them a real life newspaper report on a dramatic mid-sea rescue of a cargo ship. The report contains all the details they need and all they have to do is to transform the structure of the report into the five-part story structure, enabling you to focus on what makes an effective narrative. The folder includes: A powerpoint with pointers and tips. A Word version of the report. A Word planning sheet. Designed for both AQA and Eduqas GCSE narrative writing.

Using an extract from Daphne Du Maurier’s eternally fascinating novel “Jamaica Inn”, teach students how master writers create characters. The lesson includes: Background information on the novel and writer. Extract from novel describing Joss. Worksheet on language analysis. Prediction exercise for how extract continues. Character Profile Proforma for students to create their own characters with quirky questions to provoke thoughts. Your students will be so fascinated by this rough villain that they will be desperate to read the book or watch the BBC adaptation at least!

Support students to write a persuasive speech on the subject of school uniform by analysing an extract from Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech”. Students then apply Mr King’s language techniques to a speech either for or against school uniform. Students never tire of this eternal subject. A twenty-two slide powerpoint guides them through planning and structuring the speech with some ideas for and against the issue. Perfect for teaching GCSE transactional writing.

Inspired by Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”, I have been searching for original sources that describe the battle. I’ve found diary extracts from the longest-living charge survivor, Sir George Wombwell. His vivid account of having his horse shot from under him, his capture, then escape from the Russian Cossacks makes exciting reading and is ample material to encourage your students to write about a desperate cavalry charge. Also included is an extract from William Howard Russell’s newspaper report on the Crimean War. As if that wasn’t enough, the folder also contains an extract from Michael Morpurgo’s “War Horse” which describes a cavalry charge. All of this is accompanied with a lively powerpoint with contemporary images to illustrate the key players in the drama. My lessons and worksheets on Tennyson’s poems are also thrown in free, so that your classes become absolute experts on this memorable battle in British history. Go forth and write!!

After the introduction to the definition of emotive language, students are given a series of newspaper headlines that they must make more emotive. Further tasks include ranking words in order of most emotive to least emotive. There are several example paragraphs from real texts to demonstrate how professional writers use emotive language. This then links to how professional texts use emotive images also and examples are included. All the introductory activities culminate in students creating an emotive leaflet where they have a choice of five tasks and a template to work from. This work will take at least two lessons.

Using Levi Tafari’s poem “Caribbean Christmas”, students read the poem as a class, then take a verse each to practice and perform. Finally students write their own poem about what Christmas is like in the region where they live. Tafari’s poem is great fun as it includes several “Call and response” verses that students love interacting with. Festive fun for all the class with a multi-cultural element. Don’t be all bah humbug this Christmas. Have some fun with your students! Folder includes powerpoint and hard copy of poem.

Students love writing limericks and this fun lesson contains a fully adaptable thirty-two slide powerpoint that gives some interesting background to the life of Edward Lear and then provides lots of examples of limericks for students to analyse. Next students have to guess the missing words in three limericks. Thirdly students complete the remaining three lines of limericks after being given the first two lines. By this time they will have mastered the rhyme scheme and the rhythm of the form, so they are then left to complete their own completely original limerick, which they they re-draft and illustrate for display. A fun lesson for second language learners also.

This thirty-four page student workbook contains twelve lessons covering: The history of magazines The production of magazines Marketing magazines Create your own front cover Representation - gender, race Stereotypes Institutional Values. Fully adaptable to your needs in Word format.

Using an extract from the brilliant Roadl Dahl’s memoir “Going Solo”, students analyse how he appeals to the senses to describe his arrival in Africa for the first time. Students are then given lots of ideas for places, times of the day, what they can see, hear, smell, feel and they write their own description, just like an expert. The folder contains a worksheet of the toolkit vocabulary and copy of the Dar Es Salaam extract. All you need to inspire your students to describe places like a professional.

A fun lesson on how many objects in the English language have been named after people. The powerpoint includes an explanation of the meaning of the term and then students complete a worksheet with clues to fifteen eponyms. The powerpoint then gives the answers with visually stimulating cartoons. Finally students are asked to create an educational poster for younger students to embed the learning. This is an enlightening and enjoyable lesson, ideal for when your students need a diverting break.

Engage your weaker students with this sixteen lesson workbook covering literacy topics, as well as creative and imaginative work, inspired by Dav Pilkey’s hilarious comic duo, George and Harold. As George and Harold attempt to foil another of Captain Underpant’s dastardly deeds, your students can create their own superhero. Supplementary Powerpoints include apostrophes of possession and complex sentences, all linked to the book. My class of boys with special educational needs absolutely loved this scheme of work.

Don’t you just hate it when students overuse the verb “get” in their writing? With this fun powerpoint, you can encourage your students to abandon this tedious and unimaginative verb. The powerpoint contains several quick-fire activities and the folder includes five worksheets to embed the learning. Great for teaching synonyms and how to vary your vocabulary.

This powerpoint contains three separate lessons on punctuating speech. First of all students revise the rules and then complete two exercises - adding punctuation to a dialogue, then using picture stimuli to write their own original dialogue. The second lesson covers speech tags and the three places tags can be positioned with exercises. The third lesson helps students to make writing dialogue more interesting using adverbs and character description. The lessons culminate in students creating their own dialogue from a scenario, all designed to support increasing independence with punctuating speech

Would you like your students to have more opportunities to practice their English GCSEs? If so this AQA style English Language Paper 1 exam paper, with mark scheme could help you. Using an extract from the novel “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery, published in 1908, this exam paper and mark scheme mirrors exactly an AQA paper 1 English GCSE.The PDF includes spaces for students’ to write their answers, together with the mark scheme. All you need to set your students on the road to success.

This powerpoint contains twenty sentences with a word beginning with the silent “k” missing. Students have to guess what the missing word is. They are provided with a visual clue to help them and the answers are included at the end. This activity would help EAL students as well.

How influential has the term “gothic” been throughout history? This powerpoint explains the origin of the term “gothic” and how it applies to architecture and fashion, not just to literature. It then explains the history and conventions of gothic literature with examples, followed by an explanation of gothic characters. It ends with a gothic writing task for students, imagining that they have been forced to move into a new spooky house and they must describe the exterior, interior and their bedroom using the conventions of gothic literature. Eighteen slides in total, which students find fascinating.

Covering pre-modification, post-modification and the use and creation of compound adjectives. This twenty-three slide powerpoint full of exercises and answers concludes with a fun activity where students are shown how Shakespeare used compound adjectives to be inventive. They are then challenged to be inventive themselves. The lesson would take one hour or two thirty minutes sessions.

Have fun with your students by teaching them how puns are used in many walks of life, from names of shops, to advertising and jokes. Then inspire your students to come up with their own jokes on the theme of death. Will work well for Halloween.

A comprehensive explanation of the various uses of colons. Several different activities for students to complete, with answers. A fun activity on colons in emoticons to complete the lesson. The lesson should last forty-five minutes to an hour. Twenty slides, fully adaptable for your classes.

Based on the idea that sentences can be more interesting if you bring the verb ending -ed to the front of the sentence, you can help your students to write in a more interesting way. After a clear explanation, students practise combining five sets of two sentences about Buckingham Palace, bringing the past participle to the beginning of the sentence. Answers provided. The lesson then increases in difficulty with students given information about five different places/artefacts, with which they have to build the sentence. The lesson will last at least 30 minutes.