If you have a top set or set 2 who have aspirational grades - 8/9 - like I did then you need to support them with their vocabulary when writing about the Literature texts. Essentially (as I understand it), according to the exam report students need to be able to write like A level students - their crafting of their ideas into an answer is as important if not more important than the knowledge they have about the text/context/and so on. From my research I produced booklets on each of the texts which I provided to my set. The booklet was used as a whole lesson - a ‘read through’ with short activities within the booklet for them to complete in silence. Students were encouraged to offer me critique of the booklet sharing their ideas about what would have improved it for them, this is a great bit of reflective responsible learning and consolidating of what they have actually taken away from having read it, as well as this, it helped them identify gaps in their knowledge. Their homework and following lessons consisted of essay writing practice in groups of 4, in pairs and independently as well as timed essays, peer assessing and self assessment. My students remarked that these resources were “helpful” and “challenging”. They used them as a reference point when planning and writing essays. As well as this they really liked the extracts from the examiner report and exemplars.

Exemplar essay questions handout for Jekyll and Hyde, Romeo and Juliet and An Inspector Calls. Aimed at high ability stretch and challenge. Does not include extracts.

With this power-point, you can guide your top set learners or stretch and challenge any learner, as you demonstrate the connections between relevant CONTEXTUAL elements, events and information and the play - key scenes and quotations and characters. You can dive into this or go through as a revision lesson.

A powerpoint from a revision class I held in June. It runs through Language Paper 1 and 2 looking at the SKILLS and cross-overs between the papers. Section 1: analysing language skills (Paper 1 Q2 and Paper 2 Q3), Section 2: Paper 2 - comparison (Q4) and finally Section 3: a 45min session on building an argument which are the skills required for Paper 1 Q4 and Paper 2 Q5. Most extracts included in the ppt. They are from past papers or the text title is included for you to look up.

My top set were keen to have some advice about how to write an introduction to their Literature Essays. As I don’t like to teach by rote, I said no initially. But then after some consideration, I came up with these - the lesson that followed was fun as students played around with writing their most impressive introductions. The exemplars helped them to identify that they needed to adopt a ‘writing voice’ and bring together their knowledge/ideas/response to the question in a purposeful and worthwhile way. Included are ‘An Inspector Calls’, ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’.