A full lesson designed to lead students through the poem Half-Past Two by U. A. Fanthorpe which appears on the Edexcel IGCSE Literature specification. The visually-pleasing resource includes: a choice of starter activity; an ‘exploding’ quotations activity with detailed exemplar; guided language analysis with questions on key lines; a PETAL paragraph writing frame to support students in writing a response to an exam-style question. The cover image was created by AI and is included in the resource.

An updated version of this lesson, now containing a web quest and group tasks on the form and structure, and imagery in John Keats’s O Solitude. The lesson is designed for A level students studying Edexcel English Literature. It is highly visual and engaging. At the end of the PowerPoint are the previously used slides containing key contextual information, which are useful for reference and revision.

Contained in this resource are a PDF document and PowerPoint version of display material and quote banks for each major character in Of Mice and Men. The quote banks are divided into four sections according to some of Steinbeck’s main themes and feature a small AI-generated image of the relevant character in the top right. Students can then populate the quote banks with key quotations for each character as they relate to the key themes. Please note: the quote banks are blank for students to fill in. The last slides/pages of the resource contain much larger versions of the AI images (one example can be seen in the cover image), which can be printed in colour and used for display.

An upgraded version of this lesson. A full lesson on Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, covering context, form and structure, themes and language. The resource now contains a three-round quiz testing students knowledge of content and context.

An upgraded version of this resource. The approach is to compare Ode on a Grecian Urn to Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn by Tim Turnbull. Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn is one of the modern poems studied on the Edexcel A Level Literature course, so this lesson provides an opportunity to revise the poem and develop students’ knowledge of Keats’s Grecian Urn. There are tasks on theme, language, form and structure, and the infamously nebulous final lines of the poem. Also included is simple table for comparing the themes and ideas in the two poems.

An upgraded version of this resource with more activities, including exemplar material, a quiz, and support material for extended writing. 2-3 lessons worth of content on Significant Cigarettes, an excerpt from Rose Tremain’s 2007 novel The Road Home, which appears in the Edexcel IGCSE Anthology. These lessons were used to help produce the poetry and prose coursework. Students wrote on the theme of ‘identity’ in three texts. There is a wide range of activities, including guided annotation, discussion questions, analysis and practice paragraph writing. The PowerPoint is 19 slides in length (with an additional 4 slides at the end unused by me in recent teaching), so there should be plenty for you to pick and choose from. The excerpt is not supplied with the lesson.

A lesson sequence on Wilfred Owen’s poem Disabled. The lesson is designed with the coursework element of the Edexcel IGCSE in mind. Students answered a question on the presentation of ‘identity’. The lesson is highly visual and contains video clips. Also included are slides on Jessie Pope’s Who’s For The Game? and Owen’s most famous poem, Dulce et decorum est, as they provide students with a strong foundation for their study of Disabled. Included in the lesson are writing support materials such as word and phrase banks and a writing frame. Also included is an exemplar response. There should be enough material for 2-3 lessons.

Two lesson’s worth of material on Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise, designed to get students to get students to engage with the poetic language and structure of the poem. These lessons were put together with the Edexcel IGCSE Language A coursework in mind. There is an array of activities, including a webquest with links, group work, analysis of form and structure, and a focus on imagery. The resource is highly visual and includes a video of Maya Angelou reading her poem. There is also some support material in the form of a word and phrase bank to help students write their coursework essay. We wrote on the presentation of the theme of identity. However, the resources would easily be adapted to another question.

An updated version of this lesson, now with more activities and greater aesthetic appeal. The presentation contains key context, activities on form and structure, language analysis, and comprehension questions. The final part of the lesson provides questions to prompt comparisons with other poems by Keats, so that students begin to forge connections and understand Keats’s prevailing themes and motifs.

This resource is a full lesson, which covers the background, form and structure, and imagery of Moniza Alvi’s An Unknown Girl. The lesson was designed for use with students writing their coursework for the Edexcel IGCSE Language A qualification. We wrote our essays on the theme of identity, but the resource could easily be adapted for any question. The presentation is highly visual and word banks are included to support students in the writing of their coursework essay. Analysis of imagery is conducted via group task, where groups have a short section of the poem surrounded by prompts and questions, which they need to annotate their answers to and then present back to the class.

A full lesson on Patience Agbabi’s ‘Eat Me’ from the Edexcel A level Literature anthology ‘Poems of the Decade’. This is a highly visual resource with tasks on the poem’s themes, imagery, form and structure. The lesson is highly task-based, providing opportunities to flip the learning and have students collaborate and think hard. This resource will be bundled with lessons on the other modern poems from the specification in future.

A full lesson on Simon Armitage’s Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass, designed for teaching students studying Poems of the Decade on the Edexcel A Level syllabus. There are meta-thinking activities for students getting acquainted with the study of poetry, and activities on theme and imagery. A simple worksheet (a table) is provided for students to engage with the imagery. Since, on this unit, students are required to compare a named poem to an unseen poem, Robert Frost’s Out, out- has been selected as a companion poem. A straighforward task is provided so that students can begin engaging with comparison. The text of Out, out- is easily sourced online for free.

A lesson on An Easy Passage by Julia Copus designed for the Edexcel A level qualification. The lesson begins with a simple starter on stereotypes of adolescents and adults. Following this is some information on ‘liminal space’, the literary concept of thresholds which applies to this poem, and students should take notes. Can they think of any examples of liminal spaces in literature? Then, some observations about the presentation of adolescence versus adulthood are provided and students are asked to gather evidence from the poem supporting these impressions. This leads on to students writing an analytical essay paragraph in response to a question on the theme of adolescence and adulthood, and an exemplar response is provided.

A lesson on the poem History by John Burnside designed for the Edexcel A Level Literature qualification. The lesson begins with a reading of the poem September 11th, 2001 by David Herd (p.85 of Poems of the Decade) without the title. Students give their impressions on what the poem could be about before the title is revealed. This provides a good stepping off point for discussion - why was 9/11 such a history-stopping event? Following this, there is a video where people recount where they were when 9/11 happened. Perhaps unlike other tragedies on a global level, everyone remembers vividly where they were when the terrorist attack occurred. Some brief information is offered, outlining what happened on 9/11, since students were not born when the events took place. The main activities for the lesson are: A ‘theme web’, where students identify the central themes in the poem and then mindmap a theme of their choice in a guided way. A ‘visual imagery map’, which encourages students to sketch (or generate) a key image from the poem and analyse the language by following prompts.

A lesson designed to teach the poem The Deliverer by Tishani Doshi for the Edexcel A level Literature qualification. The lesson begins with a video covering the abandonment of female children in India and then provides information on the Indian caste system. There is a group language analysis ‘jigsaw’ task, for which a separate worksheet with a set of instructions is provided. Following this, students can engage in a simple activity where they match elements of form and structure to their definitions, and then explore these features in the poem, commenting on their effects. Activities and a simple table are provided for the comparison of The Deliverer to either Child Burial by Paula Meehan or Refugee Mother and Child by Chinua Achebe as unseen poems. Due to copyright, the text of neither poem is supplied but they are easily sourced online. A warning that both poems contain sensitive subject matter and are very emotionally hard-hitting.

Up to two lessons’ worth of teaching material on The Lammas Hireling by Ian Duhig, designed for the Edexcel A level Literature qualification. There resource includes: An activity on the central themes of the poem A jigsaw language analysis activity with a separate worksheet An exemplar paragraph responding to a question on guilt and repression A series of structured comparison activities to get students to compare The Lammas Hireling to The River God as an unseen poem An exemplar paragraph comparing the two poems Please note that I have not included the text of The River God due to copyright, but it is easily sourced for free online.

A full lesson designed to teach Helen Dunmore’s To My Nine-Year-Old Self for the Edexcel A Level Literature specification. The lesson contains: An engaging starter where students are asked to write to their nine-year-old self Information on the etymology of the word ‘nostalgia’, which will lead to better discussion of the emotion An activity where students complete a table to analyse language in relation to the theme of childhood versus adulthood An activity which guides students to explore the form of the dramatic monologue and how it influences the language and ideas in the poem The resource is highly visual and activities are all student-led.