Here's a little something to challenge your top students: persuasion the classical way. The Ancient Greeks worked out how a persuasive speech should be structured to make it effective, Shakespeare played around with the form in many of his most famous speeches and even Barack Obama's speech writers follow the formula. Along with their connectives and persuasive devices, give your most able a tried and tested structure to lift their persuasive writing above the ordinary. There's a handout explaining the structure, a PP to test it's been understood and a worksheet to guide preparation for students to write their own speeches.

‘Practise makes perfect’ is the idea behind this resource: I believe in the ‘drip-feed’ approach because it is important to keep doing something until it becomes second nature. These starters cover all types of reading: poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, modern and 19th century. Essentially students should pick out what they see as key features to write about - you can decide whether their annotations should be formulated into paragraphs as a plenary or homework. The two opening slides on the PP bear repeating a few times to remind students what to do and get a strategy to become second nature. Each quote slide is followed by a ‘possible ideas’ answer slide and supported by a handout of the quote which can be annotated, either as differentiation for slow writers, or generally to speed the process. If speed and cost is an issue, the task can be done as a ‘whole class’ exercise, especially if you have an IWB or a way of annotating the projected text.

The advantage of this ‘jigsaw’ way of preparing students to write an essay answer is that they will write much more, it will be well thought through and weaker students will benefit from working collaboratively, while more able students will spark each other. It can work with any text with a bit of tweaking and the resource can be adapted to suit your class. This work will cover several lessons, with the lesson PP giving clear instructions. The written guide gives the teacher the steps to follow as well as sharing friendly advice born of experience. The 'Methods' sheet lists the methods if required and the checklist helps students make sure their essays meet the criteria for top marks. A 'Targets'PP facilitates your marking and feedback to students. A print version of the targets enables you to give a set to each student if you don't think writing out their own target warrants the time.

It might not seem like much if you don’t follow the links, but this is the portal to the world of unseen poetry! This booklet will save you and your students hours of trawling the Internet. My thanks to Caro Evans, my colleague and friend who asked me to compile this list and selected the poems- we decided that the most logical way to prepare for the unseen element of the exam was to look at other poems by the studied poets, to give students an idea of the context of the time and an ability to write about form and structure. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I’ve searched for information online and given you the links - so this works best as an e-book, where links can be easily copied and pasted. So this is something you can use for your own preparation and planning of unseen poetry - along with the sheet of possible comparison questions- or can mail to your students so that they can do their own exploring. There’s such a lot of treasure here to discover - Enjoy!

This resource contains a series of ideas for last lessons, whether the end of a topic or term. These can be used to revise previous units of work. Has a slant towards English and could be used with writing, reading and speaking and listening assessment foci.

This cluster of resources is rooted in two approaches to teaching: A] Flipped Learning – the students first go and find out about their topic. Your task is to bring all the threads together for them in a plenary lesson AND B] ‘Jigsaw’ – where students find out a piece of the whole then share information to get the complete picture. Allow several lessons and a homework session for this task as it involves research and feedback. The PP presents a useful way of introducing the poems, still keeping to the independent approach and providing a lead in to the tasks. On the Word docs are AO cards with links to guide students' search for information. To finish off, give students an idea of your exam board’s requirements for the poetry question, give them a mark scheme and ask them to write a model answer to a typical question using all the information they’ve gathered in their own research and from their classmates. Print out the planning sheet [assessment] on A3 so that students can plan to cover all the AOs in a trial question for each poem.

This fun, illustrated novel by David Almond is ideal for KS2 & weaker KS3 readers, especially those who don't like reading much. This first task is a word recognition exercise that helps improve spelling by getting students to notice words within words. This also makes a good homework task. To facilitate peer or self-assessment, the answers on p2 can be projected. You can extend the task by setting a spelling test on the words. The PP takes the challenge further: students are shown how to memorise the spelling of words and then asked to find 3-5 of their own errors to learn to spell correctly using the technique. Tip: let them use colours to show the words within words.

The best way to revise unseen poetry is by doing trial exam papers, so here is one in which students compare a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney with a sonnet by Christina Rossetti. A pp enables you to display instructions while handing out the papers and while doing the peer assessment. Indicative content is given to this end as is a student friendly summary of the bands. Two lessons worth of work here, or a homework and a lesson, plus lots of discussion and revision opportunities.

A wordsearch with a difference - find the synonyms in the text, write them down and find both clue and answer in the wordsearch. 'The Undoor' is a short story in Chris Priestley's 'Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror. This task promotes literacy and could be a homework activity. The answers are on p2 and can be projected or handed out. A useful starter activity could be a quick re-cap of synonyms and antonyms, using some of the words from the wordsearch [don't tell them thhe words are coming up, but do link them to the story; that way the alert students feel rewarded when they notice some work has already been done for them] Apart from the activity given on slide 2, students could make a note of the definitions on slide 1 for future reference.

The focus of this exercise is the contrast in feeling between Ernie and Stan. Some of the words appear in the chapter, some are inferred. This task could be done as a plenary after reading the chapter or as a simple homework. Page 2 gives the answers and sets an extra challenge as extension work. This novel by David Almond is published by Walker Books and is suitable for KS2 & KS3 reluctant readers. The starter, which could be be done as a way of introducing the homework or as a starter when the homework/ plenary is being marked. Suitable for using individual white-boards as well as for exercise books.

One of the unusual things about this novel is that author David Almond not only speaks to the reader in various places, but also invites them to mention how the strands of the story end. Here students are invited to imagine - and then write in 3 -5 paragraphs - what happens to Clarence P. Clapp. Before they do, they create success criteria for themselves [pitch to class ability - 'Begin every sentence with a capital letter' to 'Use a wide range of punctuation for effect': you know what your class needs to work on] and collect useful words and imagery from the text - the foundations of 'close reading'! As an additional challenge or homework, students can find more information on websites given and a PP slide allows the teacher to project the information. This also makes it easier to go to the sites as a class if preferred.

Descriptive writing is soon to be a major part of the English exam [from 2015 for 2017 exam], so it is a good idea to start 'drip feeding' techniques for top grades to more able KS3s as well as KS4s still doing course-work or just aiming to write more effectively. Each of these lessons uses short reading extracts too, to help students recognise techniques they could use, thus providing some preparation for the fiction reading portion of Paper 1 [new AQA English spec]. The PP outlines the lesson plan and the handout gives students a copy of the text extracts looked at. Notes on the relevant slides prompt less experienced teachers to notice relevant techniques. Peer marking ends the session. Photographs are once again used by kind permission of Graham Hobbs.

The thing for teachers to emphasise in preparing students for this task is that alliteration works by sound, not letter - so 'cough' and 'kill' have the same sound. The advert draws on specific descriptions in David Almond's novel and chapter and page numbers are given for the 2012 Walker Books edition. Some students like to get on and read the book in one go after the initial chapters, so let them do the more creative tasks when they've completed the story. Best pieces can be displayed - encourage students to be creative as well as to use slogans, alliteration, rule of three etc.

With no past papers, it is useful to have a 'trial' exam paper {based on the AQA specimen paper for the 2015 Spec to be examined in 2017} to use as revision. The tasks are different, but the style is similar, so KS3s could familiarise themselves with the type of task, or it can be used as revision with KS4 in the future. The PP runs a strategy for thinking about the tasks, with some questions and examples to stimulate ideas. The last slide offers a quick correction task; with an extra click, the answers will be revealed.

This worksheet makes a quick plenary or homework for KS2 or KS3 reluctant readers or less able spellers. Although it can be used without reading the novel, the context does give it more appeal. The story is written by David Almond and published by Warner books, 2012. Using the PP, students check their work or peer assess if that is easier than projecting the answer page, then move on to a short homophone task. If the spelling was done as homework, this makes an ideal starter for the 'hwk due' lesson.

If you're sick of suggesting alternatives to 'weird', this is the starter you need! Everyday 'bland' words are given synonyms in a sort activity. To differentiate - or speed things up - there's a handout version to highlight. This series of starters focuses on building up the student's word-hoard [as the Anglo-Saxons called it]. Little and often is the best way to extend vocabulary and if it’s a game, so much the better.

All these starters are designed to build students' vocabulary, familiarising them with words, getting them to build words and helping them to choose apt vocabulary: the right word in the right place. All are self-check, with clear answers that enable self- and peer assessment, minimising your workload. All have an element of differentiation in a worksheet option. Each is available separately as part of the 'Word-hoard series 1' starters, but as a bonus, all 6 are available here, so you get one free!

The aim of this series of starters is to show students that they do possess the skills required for the course; also, that the skills required for the nonfiction media paper is the same as for the literature paper and vice versa. There is also a quick test to see if they've got the hang of inference.

The aim of this series of starting activities is to show students that they do possess the skills required for the course; also, that the skills required to study non-fiction media is the same as for the literature and visa versa. there is also a quick te