After the first ‘getting to know you’ lesson, you want to get the measure of your students as well as help them get into your routines. This booklet contains 3 lessons that include self and peer assessment, SPaG, Reading and Writing tasks with answers, instructions, explanations and examples on the PP. The sections you need to mark are short, but quickly give you a sense of the student’s abilities, personality and emotional state. So don’t get tripped up by missing registers, not enough books or any of the other things that prevent a crisp start: print a set of booklets for your next y7s before the summer break and ease them into secondary school with bitesized tasks that form the basis of all KS3 tasks, but are KS2 friendly. On the back page of the booklet are handy reminders of the acronyms that students may’ve come across at primary school to help them proofread and correct their work.

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.

Ideal for KS2 & 3, this quick starter has 3 slides taken from public signs and adverts where language ‘errors’ exist. From this, students can be encouraged to find errors in the signs, adverts and texts they encounter.

Prepare your A-level students for AQA’s Section B unseen poetry question with this trial assessment, including an instruction PP with a link to an outstanding reading of the Keats; student friendly band descriptors; possible content with AOs and, of course, the question, based on both the 2017 and 2018 formulations. Ideal for use in a mock exam or test along with the feedback discussion of how to improve afterwards.

A bundle in itself, this resource has 13 units to it. Teachers’ notes on each chapters resources navigate you through the exciting end of this great novel. Homework, starters, main lessons and assessments with answers cover similes, persuasive S&L as well as writing, mystery solving and taking life-lessons from literature. Activities range from debating to poster making via questions, intuitive leaps [signalled] inference and formulating an opinion. In chapter 34, for example, the starter introduces a learning question, answers to which are found during the lesson through reading the chapter and the plenary and homework address formulating an answer as an essay.

The penultimate cluster of resources for this excellent novel. Activities range from PEA paragraphs, creative and autobiographical writing to report writing. Inference and analysis are the key skills practised and even spelling is covered. Teacher notes outline lesson ideas and in some cases task options to suit different class types. At least 4 lessons worth of material.

Assuming you are reading with this brilliant novel with your class in part of the lesson [the chapters are very short] there is something for five lessons, each focusing on both a chapter and a skill. Retrieval and synthesis are practised by writing a police report, while in other tasks sayings, titles, structure and implications are explored through starters, plenaries and PEAL paragraphs. Each task builds on skills visited in previous tasks so that they become familiar and increasingly independent strategies.

These resources cover chapters 18 to 21 and take a closer look at characterisation, allusion, structure and inference, making language analysis accessible to younger, less able students, boys with no former interest in literature as well as enthusiastic, more able readers. Answers enable peer and self-assessment. All the tasks are focused and succinct, assuming reading of the text will also be happening in the lesson. Some choice of activitiy is also offered for chapter 21.

If you’ve got to this point, you know what an excellent novel this is, ideal for short reading extracts and lots of teaching opportunities. This set of resources offers teacher notes to help with planning and pacing your lessons. Tasks cover characterisation, vocabulary, imagery and structure. While tasks are aimed at younger or weaker readers in the main, the skills taught are aimed at building a profound understanding of crafting and ‘active reading’. Links are made to students’ own writing, improving writing skills from literary devices to SPaG. Throughout the series skills are revisited to inculcate them via different tasks. Answers are provided and most tasks are self-or peer assess.

This third set of resources covers chapters 9-13 and a note to the teacher outlines how each of the resources can be used. Chapter 9 is a creative writing task that revisits structure: all the words from a description at the start of the chapter have been placed in alphabetical order and students create there own images from these words. Discussion can then move to justifying the choices and from thence to Segdwick’s description as students read the chapter. Information from Chapters 10 & 11 is retrieved and summarised for a police report on Einar’s intended robbery, while chapter 12 leads to a debate on guns, introduced by a PP. Chapter 13’s worksheet returns the focus to imagery, close reading and analysis by looking at a brief description and picking out key words.

More Revolver resources as requested! I love this book and have read it many times - it balances memorable description, clever structuring and important life-lessons in a toe-sweating thriller. Short chapters - and the topic - make it ideal reading for boy heavy classes from y7-y9. The idea of the series is to make available a range of tasks to suit where you get to - doing every single task may get in the way of reading. We begin with a short self mark test on chapter 6 - ideal as a starter after previous reading. Alternatively, a wanted poster makes a good homework task. Chapter 7 introduces students to allusion with a note handout either to help the teacher or as notes for the exercise book. Chapter 8’s short self mark starter makes students aware of the novel’s structure through linking it’s opening sentence to both the previous chapter and the previous chapter of that story strand.

Ideal as homework or cover, these self-mark worksheets each give some brief information relevant to the poem and set three tasks, for which there are answers on the second page. If done in class, students can work in groups and then peer assess other groups, giving you a bit of breathing space! Perfect for embedding poems after class exploration. A-level students needing to brush up their poetry revision pre-exams would benefit from the tasks too. Covers the 1st eight poems in the AQA anthology.

Everything you need for a dynamic revision lesson! The lesson plan sets out each step with space for you to fill in your timings. There are 36 quotes to give your students choice and variety - ideal for popping into a ‘hat’ - all with their words in alphabetical order: students have to try to recognise and reconstruct the quote. Poems are identified for those who need help. The next step is to annotate the quote with AOs 2, 3 & 5, then glue it onto A3 for another student to add AO4 texts. Next round, students add AO2, 3 & 5 to those links. Students can photograph the final product on their phones as handy ‘night before’ revision notes - and all this is explained in clear step by step instructions to the students via the Power Point, which has a clear starter, with answers, the main activity explained, a plenary and even a home work task! What’s not to like?!

Something for older students: the lesson begins with a halloween word builder, with answers to self-mark; then there is a reading phase, where students are told about three different divination rites associated with traditional Halloween games. Students will choose one of these as a vehicle for their horror story. Next, they read 4 extracts describing horrific moments, to glean words and phrases they can use, as well as to see there is no need to be gratuitously graphic to create horror. Able and eager students can get straight on with writing, while a work sheet puts the lesson into perspective with 5 clear steps to follow as a planning stage for the story. For those who don't know how to begin, a line from either reading extract [divinations or extracts] will set them on course.

This differentiated quiz has 5 direct question as an easy round 1, 'connect 4' as round 2, round3 is 'odd-one-out', round 4 is 'true or false' while word-games will make round 5 slightly longer. the quiz itself will take 20-30 minutes allowing for team discussion, writing of answers and then marking, but it could easily take all lesson depending on the time you allow for the word-games: base that on the interest and ability of the class. Once the quiz has been marked there is the film story writing extension to ensure this fills a lesson, if not more. Further lessons can be spent reading each other's openings and outlines, pitching the best as S&L and then debating which should be made. Who knows, some may even be inspired to make their movies, in time for a Christmas viewing, it does happen when a group of students are keen on movie making in their own time.

Ideal for a last minute cover lesson, this task has a separate SEN version of the lesson, but also tasks get more demanding as they go, enabling non-specialist to use differentiation by work covered. Beginning with couplet descriptive sketches choosing words from a box, writing focuses of visual the auditory descriptions. Examples are given throughout, with quoted extracts to stimulate ideas. As a bonus, two extra photographs can be used to repeat the final written task at a later date as exam practice or to provide variety.

Because students work on paper and answers can be printed off so that no computer is needed, this differentiated work is ideal to set as last minute cover . The first set of tasks is linking words with their opposites, choosing from words provided, so that no cumbersome dictionaries are needed, though they can be used if desired. For those who finish that, there is a crossword puzzle. This contains clues from across the ability range, encouraging different abilities to work together and extending mid-ability students.

There are three sets of homophones here. In each case students first get the handout and learn the homophones as homework. Later they do the relevant exercise and use the answers to mark their own or a partner's work, which can be done as a starter. The exercise tests their knowledge of the homophones, but could also be set as another day's homework - useful if you're under pressure to set homework at a busy time and need something worth doing yet easy to mark [just check peer marking if required]. In addition, because students learn best by re-visiting work, there is also a test for each of the sets of homophones, also with answers. This work is best done drip-fed over a term or two. Use the miscellaneous homophone handout as an extension exercise when needed: students can make up their own 'test' sentences using them as a guide, to test one another.