An Inspector Calls: The Context of the Play

These interesting and engaging resources enable students to build their understanding of the context of J.B. Priestley’s play ‘An Inspector Calls.’ In particular, students learn how to make clear and appropriate links between the social and historical context and the play itself. This gives students a really stable knowledge-base from which to make inferences and interpretations about other parts of the play.

The lesson follows a clear, logical, bite-size learning journey, which guides students towards differentiated learning objectives. Over the course of this journey, they become able to:
- Recall the main events that occurred between 1912 and 1945, through an interactive group activity;
- Remember some key information about J.B Priestley and his beliefs;
- Read and understand the opening of the play;
- Make links between the opening of the play and the historical context - both in term of when the play was set, and when it was written;
- Analyse how Priestley links historical context to his characters, in order to get his messages across to the audience;
-Peer/self-assess learning attempts.

This resource pack includes:
- A visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint presentation;
- A clear and interesting worksheet for the development task;
- The opening of the text for students to read and interpret;
- Context information cards for the card-sorting game;
- A detailed lesson plan, complete with what the teacher and students should aim to achieve at each stage of the lesson.

All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the PowerPoint.