This is an activity that I created for a year 7 class as part of their home learning. It uses an excerpt from Alice in Wonderland in which Alice meets the Caterpillar and a worried pigeon. There are five tasks, four for reading and one for writing. The reading tasks increase in difficulty and focus on (in turn) information retrieval, inference, analysis and evaluation. The writing task asks the children (hopefully inspired by the extract) to write a short descriptive piece, describing the landscape of a dream. Could be used for cover or set as homework.

This straightforward activity uses Sara Teasdale’s poem, “Summer Storm”. There are 12 multiple-choice questions. Answers are provided. This quiz could be used to embed knowledge and understanding once the poem has been taught. Alternatively, it could be set as pre-reading or used to structure a guided reading session, as some questions could be used as a springboard into further discussion.

This straightforward activity uses Sara Teasdale’s love poem, “Come”. There are 11 multiple-choice questions. Answers are provided. This quiz could be used to embed knowledge and understanding once the poem has been taught. Alternatively, it could be set as pre-reading or used to structure a guided reading session, as some questions could be used as a springboard into further discussion.

This straightforward activity uses Sara Teasdale’s “Central Park at Dusk” and there are ten, multiple-choice questions (answers provided). Could be set as homework after teaching the poem to embed and consolidate knowledge. Could be set as a pre-reading activity so that subsequent teaching can be more sharply focused. Could be used to structure a guided reading session.

This is a straightforward multiple-choice quiz (answers provided) on Sara Teasdale's "There Will Come Soft Rains". There are 14 straightforward questions. Could be set for homework either after having studied the poem or as a pre-reading activity to identify any gaps that need particular focus in the lesson. Could also be used to structure a guided reading activity, in which case you will find that several of the questions invite follow-up questioning.

A short and simple multiple-choice quiz based on a brief description of the graveyard that Scrooge visits alongside the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in stave 4.

A multiple-choice quiz on Stave 3 of “A Christmas Carol” inviting students to consider Dickens’ message about family and how that message is communicated. 23 questions in total. Answers provided.

This is a simple powerpoint intended to teach or embed the skills of analysis of an unseen poem. The aim of the lesson is to explore an unseen poem using ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. The poem used is Edna St Vincent Millay’s ‘Witch-Wife’. There are ten slides using questioning - and modelling on slides 6 and 9. Could be used at KS3 or at KS4.

This is a 28 slide powerpoint planned for stretch and challenge in y7 exploring Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”. There is lots of questioning to support the reading of the poem and there are two writing tasks (Ulysses’ imagined farewell letter and Penelope/Telemachus’s persuasive speech to encourage Ulysses not to leave). The two writing tasks require the pupils to use Tennysons’ methods in their own writing.

This lesson uses four stanzas from Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”. In these stanzas, there is a very clear, critical viewpoint about the prison system and its impact. The stanzas contain a wealth of language methods which should enable less confident pupils to find something to explore and give more confident pupils the opportunity to link ideas. Planned for a year 9 class to build and hone the skills of analysis of previously unseen poetry, this lesson uses close questioning and modelling to support the pupils in a response to a question requiring analysis of the writer’s methods. The wording of the question echoes the question to be found on AQA’s English Literature GCSE Paper 2. Slide 3 of the ppt can be used as a printable.

Planned for year 9 with a focus on building and polishing skills in the run up to GCSE, this lesson uses Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “An Obstacle”. Pupils are led through questions with a tiny bit of relevant context (Gilman’s gender and the year of the poem). There’s a slide focused on the use of the indefinite article in the title and what might be inferred from this. The first two verses of the poem are explored via questioning which asks the pupils to focus on a couple of features in each verse. In the run-up to the pupils’ written response, there is an ‘I do’ slide providing a model and a ‘We do’ slide providing sentence openers for discussion and completion. After this, the intention is that the pupils should work independently to write their response. This could also be used with year 10 to build their confidence and skills in responding to unseen poetry.

A simple and straightforward comprehension activity on Walt Whitman’s poem, “The World Below the Brine”. Questions focus on language, structure, viewpoint and ideas. There are 11 questions in total. Could be used for homework or set as cover. Alternatively, the questions could be used to structure a guided reading activity or prompt class discussion.

A basic comprehension activity on “Snow” by Walter de la Mare. There are ten questions focusing on the writer’s methods and their effect. Originally created as a homework. Could also be used as a cover activity, for exclusion work or for distance learning.

This is a straightforward worksheet. It uses the narrative poem, “The Farmer’s Wife” and there are questions alongside each verse. These questions could be given to pupils for independent work or alternatively could be used to structure a guided reading session. Planned for a year 7 class as part of their distance learning - but might be of use for year 6.

The aim of this lesson is for the children to explain a writer’s viewpoint and to write effectively to describe. The text used is “The Spell of the Yukon” by Robert W.Service. The lesson begins with an image of a prospector and there are questions to prompt some really basic knowledge of the context and then to prompt the building of a word bank. The focus then changes to the poem itself. There are four slides taking the pupils through the first verse and the effect of its verbs, simile and metaphor. The pupils are then asked to explain the speaker’s viewpoint - as expressed in the last two lines of the first verse - in their own words. The pupils are then asked to read the whole poem with a focus on the writer’s viewpoint and how it’s communicated. One slide provides an opportunity for a recap on abstract nouns - as Service uses plenty in the poem. Finally, there is a writing activity which takes the pupils back to the original image and asks them to write a description inspired by that image, using a simile, a metaphor and an abstract noun in each paragraph of their writing.

This is Belloc’s cautionary tale of Jim who was eaten by a lion and there are 16 multiple-choice questions focusing on vocabulary with some basic comprehension. Originally set for h/w but could be used as a pre-reading activity to identify and address any misconceptions prior to some more work on the poem.

A short and bog-standard revision powerpoint on “When We Two Parted”, from the AQA GCSE English Literature Love and Relationships poetry cluster. There is a slide offering some brief information about context and then one slide per verse, each slide offering five notes. Created for my year 11 class to support their revision. If you find this useful, it would be great if you could take the time to leave a review.

This is a very bog-standard powerpoint using some questioning to support students’ recall of Hardy’s ‘Neutral Tones’ and ‘Singh Song’, “Love’s Philosophy” and Sonnet 29 - prior to asking them to tackle a question about the presentation of feelings about romantic relationships. Might come in useful as a starting point for revision. If you find this of use, I would very much appreciate you taking the time to leave a review.

Made for my class as part of their revision, this extract is longer than they’ll have in the exam - to give them more scope for choosing evidence - and is Romeo’s long speech as he enters the Capulet tomb. The question, divided into two bullets as in the exam, asks the students to focus on Shakespeare’s presentation of the effects of love.

This is a comprehension activity - structured for increasing difficulty - with the tasks and questions divided into four sections: vocabulary, information retrieval, inference and explanation of methods. Useful for cover or for homework. Useful for a focused study of this particular section of Stoker’s novel.