English Literature GCSE 'A Christmas Carol': investigating the Cratchit family

This resource includes a starter activity encouraging students to look at how the rich and poor are presented in ‘A Christmas Carol’. Then, the main part of the lesson includes group work in the form of stations to look at how Dickens presents the Cratchit family.

Students would use the second slide of the ppt that includes a grid with 5 empty boxes entitled: Tiny Tim, Cratchit family way of life, Christmas Dinner and Cratchit family clothing. This could be printed, enlarged to A3, for students to make notes on. Then, on the word sheet documents are pages with 3-5 key quotes on about each of those five headings.

Students go o each of the five ‘station’ tables, noting key quotes and write their own explanations of how Dickens presents that element of the Cratchit family (e.g. Christmas dinner) in those specific quotes. This can then be linked back to what Dickens’ message about the rich and poor in Victorian times was.

This would then be a very useful GCSE resource in students’ books about how Dickens presents the Cratchit family / the theme of poverty.