This lesson focuses techniques for effective openings and introduces the concepts of: Setting exposition Character introduction Plot clues or revelations Effective hooks Carefully resourced and scaffolded tasks guide students to an understanding of how writers create effective openings

This bundle of 14 lessons uses rich and interesting resources and key extracts from The Hobbit to explore, identify, evaluate, practise and apply a wide range of fiction analysis and writing skills as well as giving students an early grounding in genre and context.

The opening lesson of a unit of extracts from The Hobbit. Students are introduced to genre and convention through film posters then they apply this to the fantasy genre.

A journey through the life of JRR Tolkien to prepare students for contextual reference in literature study

This lesson introduces deus ex machina and encourages students to critically evaluate the climatic moment in the novel.

This lesson uses Bilbo’s encounter with trolls to explore the features of language and structure that Tolkien often used in his writing to gain an overview of his style.

This lesson asks students to compare two extracts - one from the opening and one from an encounter with giant spiders - which both describe Bilbo’s character in action. Students are asked to identify examples from each to map his change and growth as a character through the story.

This lesson takes a deep dive into how authors create compelling characters using Gandalf and Bilbo as examples.

This lesson focuses on sentence types and how they are used for effect in The Hobbit

Using an extract from The Hobbit, students apply skimming, scanning and inference techniques to answer a range of questions.

This lesson uses Bilbo’s meeting with Gollum to explore summary skills and to reflect on how to effectively structure extended fiction writing.