KS3 English language: Heroes and Villains - Unit of Work

This unit is intended to be a transition scheme for Year 7 students. The main focus is writing and the four week unit focuses on refreshing, reiterating and consolidating the skills that students left primary school with at the end of KS2 (as well as building up new skills). By the end of the unit you will know what writing level your students are working at and how this relates to their KS2 SAT grades. The unit is designed to help with target setting. There is also the opportunity to do an informal speaking and listening assessment that will serve as an opportunity for students to get to know each other. The writing assessment can be given a level. There are some lessons that focus on reading skills; these lessons serve as an introduction to inference and deduction.

Lesson 1 Students are to work in small groups/ on their tables to discuss/ mind map the personal qualities of heroes and villains.

Lesson 2 Students should then spend some time annotating and unpicking the textual evidence

Lesson 3 Students could use the cut up clauses resource to experiment with different openers.

Lesson 4 What is a storyboard? Why can it be useful? Explain how a comic book can be likened to a storyboard.

Lesson 5 Introduce denotation and connotation.

Lesson 6 Peer assessment sheet where they identify what went well and what could make the costume/ presentation even better.

Lesson 7 Students are then to work their way through a range of simple sentences, improving them by adding challenging adverbs and adjectives.

Lesson 8 Pupils are to write a synopsis, describing in lots of detail what their up and coming blockbuster entails.

Lesson 9 What was the effect of adding the connectives? Were they easy or difficult to use?

Lesson 10 This lesson they will be writing a formal letter to their hero.

Lesson 11 Students will be looking at the representation of:-War heroes-Politicians-Drug scandals-Sporting heroes/ sporting villains

Lesson 12 Find out as much information as possible about the life and times of King Arthur.