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!

Help your students ‘cast a spell’ on exams by making sure they know the criteria each question is judged on, the time available to answer questions and have a strategy for approaching each task - all summarised on this mat/poster [A4 or A3 printout]. The PP serves either as a quick class quiz to make sure they’ve taken note of the information - could be a quick starter for every lesson focusing on one question at a time - or as the answers to the question handout, which in turn could be a quick test, plenary or homework. If you’re handing back mock exams, this is a timely reminder of what you were looking for: useful for corrections. Otherwise, revision for the next exam!

Buy the lot at a discount price: 10 weeks' worth of homework or starters to nail spelling. These are the 200 words the DfE claims primary pupils should be able to spell in y3/4 and 5/6 – of course older pupils could do with a bit of revision too. They are divided into groups of five spelling words and after five groups there’s a test, But here’s the difference… Being dyslexic myself, I’ve written the words out in a way that makes learning them easier for others with a similar condition – by looking for patterns and words within words – without being a problem to good spellers. Use as a weekly homework, a fill-in starter while you call the register or an occasional filler for a quick worker. At the end of the list there’s a revision opportunity and words to find in a string of letters along with some unscrambling to do. Work is set out for ease of printing/photocopying and teacher’s answers are on the last pages of each set – print or project as suits. A PP gives end of list answers to the strings and unscrambles. Y5&6 have an additional task – words to fill into a script, similar to SATs tests. If you do these with older students, just do remember to remove the ‘year’ label with each test.

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 non-fiction media paper is the same as for the literature paper and visa versa. Emphasizes the basic skill of comparison and contrast.