This lesson introduces students to the monster Cthulhu through pictures and a listening quiz using the parody song "Hey There Cthulhu". The lesson focus is on using impressive vocabulary, so there is a thesaurus race at the start and a cloze (gap filling exercise) to use new vocabulary in as well as a descriptive writing task. Nothing too spooky here, but enough to get students interested.

Tonnes of activities, games, quizzes, a worksheet on themes, a Poem in a Box revision resource making activity and flashcards to be completed by students, a PowerPoint on structuring essay responses and closely analysing language, essay sentences to scaffold responses, vocabulary for playing games like Go Fish or Give Me A Clue or Pictionary. This should keep exam revision interesting and help students stay engaged and focused in these last few weeks.

A full lesson with starters, outcomes for the CIE Exam Board, biographical information from a range of sources, activities to guide students' reading and a plenary with self-assessment criteria.

A fully resourced lesson with guided analysis of the poem, different activities to get students reading the poem independently and writing about the poet's background and the context of the poem. There is a stanza analysis carousel and a self-assessment plenary.

A complete and thorough lesson or two on Praise Song with several activities to get students actively reading the poem and analysing word choices and imagery. The outcomes focus on aspects of the poet's culture and background as well as language, structure and form.

My favourite fairytale of all time! Read it with the students (or watch the animated version here on YouTube which uses the words from the text) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Aank8bDtcE and then let them answer the comprehension questions. I find this is a great story to tackle before Christmas as it deals with themes of charity, poverty and the value of our lives in service to others. It creates really interesting critical discussion with more able students on the didactic nature of fairytales and how they express morals. The PowerPoint then asks students to organise the traditional structure of a fairytale and then plan their own fairy tale with a moral element.

I like to have inspirational quotations on the board while my students read. We often make time to discuss them at the end. These were simply compiled in one place and cost me nothing but time, so enjoy!

Designed for my bottom set year 9 group who are learning about Victorian England and Romantic Poetry, these lessons became their final reading assessment. The activities are straightforward and engaging, the language is simple, yet asks them to reflect on their own expression and the final assessment has scaffolding including sentence openings and gap fills.

These lessons will have students prepared and confident for any assessment you give them! Great preparation for unseen poetry at GCSE.

A poetry assessment lesson suitable for KS3 or KS4 focusing on the poem The Cry of the Children by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Too often we concentrate on the famous men of the Romantic era and bypass significant works by their female counterparts. Redress the balance with me! A starter on historical context, objectives and clear assessment criteria are given to help students achieve an empathetic and critical response to the poem. This was used in both my middle ability and top set classes, but I have also included a PowerPoint on inference to support their answers.

One of my favourite poems from Wordsworth, this lesson is structured as a mystery, encouraging students to find clues from the poem to work out what happened to Lucy Gray. I used to find it hard to get students to write about structure, even though they could recognise its effects. This poem makes it so easy for them to spot the features and discuss techniques used to build tension in the poem. This is a complete set of resources which could span at least two lessons. I have included everything you need, from games and activities to language analysis questions and contextual information. Just walk in and teach!

At least two lessons of in depth study of London by William Blake. There are tonnes of activities here to guide students of any age through the poem's background, the language, structure and form and write responses based on the meaning and message of the poem. Outcomes and objectives are included throughout with a meaningful plenary to help students see their progress. This is part of my larger SOW on Romantic Poetry, but it is a beautiful poem to study on its own as well. Enjoy!

A complete lesson with a range of activities to engage students with learning about Romantic poetry, introduce Victorian Literature or focus on Blake. There is a substantial amount of context and varied activities from videos, drawing, mind-mapping and, of course, analysis and annotation. This was designed as part of a year 8 scheme of work, but would be suitable for any study of this poem. Starters, objectives, plenaries and differentiated activities are all included.

A complete set of resources and a carousel lesson to accompany the poem which is featured in the iGCSE Songs of Ourselves Poetry Anthology. Starters, plenaries, background information, language analysis, imagery, outcomes, essay question, peer-analysis and essay structuring: everything you could need.

A mini-scheme of work, taking three or four lessons, focused on The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Students develop their skills for GCSE by finding quotations, developing their ability to comment on the environment, characters, relationships and then tackle questions in timed conditions. Each lesson has a starter and self- or peer-assessment plenary. My students loved the plenary for the environment question where they had to make a mask (outline provided) which would protect them from the dystopian world The Road is set in. Their creativity and ingenuity, putting their learning into practice was wonderful to behold. Please don't miss out on it. I found that this lesson was highly accessible for middle ability students and wonderful for high achievers or G&T learners, giving them the range of language and intrigue to explore possibilities and methods. My less able students (predicted 2 or below) achieved expected results and understood what was happening. With them we watched the trailer for the movie first before we read the first chapter together (popcorn!) and then slowly tackled the straightforward questions. I have included answers to the quotation finding exercises and an extra lesson on writing stories associated with dystopian or apocalypse fiction . This was the end of term assessment for reading and writing dystopian fiction. If you want to see more, check out my huge Dystopian Futures SOW at my shop.

Designed to teach Wilfred Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth and Seigfried Sassoon's Attack, this bundle is full of structured 4 or 5 part lessons with differentiated outcomes and activities, varied to keep every student engaged and challenged, making excellent progress. Whether analysing these poems for CIE iGCSE Songs of Ourselves, Unseen Poetry or WW1 Poetry, they are accessible for KS3 and KS4 and lead to structured and scaffolded essay responses suitable for exam preparation or coursework. It includes a whole lesson contextualising WW1 and analysing the language of recruitment posters persuading soldiers to enlist. This is a great way to have students thinking critically and engaged from the first moment! The following lesson goes on to challenge students to compete to read and answer questions on the two poets through their biographies. This is a really fun strategy to get them reading and can get really competitive! Students have never failed to empathise with these two soldier-poets who wrote about their experiences on the front line and the reflection afterwards has created some very rewarding responses. The next lesson is a full lesson of analysis in the form of a snooker game. Students will be active, working independently and pushing themselves, but won't even notice how much hard work they're doing! All you have to do is sit back and check their answers as they bring them up! This lesson has always gone down so well with the students and I achieved an Outstanding in a lesson observation with it too: I'm really excited to pass it on to you! Finally, I have included an example of a student's war poetry essay for iGCSE (on two different poems) so students can see a modelled example of how to structure their responses and get to act as the teacher and mark an anonymous piece of coursework. Everything you need to study these poets and poems is here in one place. Enjoy!

Hi! This is a compilation of resources to help students read and closely analyse the meaning, language and tone of Larkin's poem 'The Trees'. My students are reading this as part of the Songs of Ourselves anthology at iGCSE, but it could be an unseen poem for your students or part of a study of Larkin or of modern pastoral poetry. Everything you need is included including critical opinions of the poet and this poem, games, questions, language feature recognition, group work and paired work, all leading to differentiated outcomes by the end of the lesson.

Hi everyone! One of my favourite poems from the Songs of Ourselves anthology! I have included a collapsed version of the text for students to create their own poems out of as well as answer some guided questions on. The PowerPoint guides the students through their reading of the poem and analysis, gives some background information on the poet's life and contextualises the poem. There are objectives, a four part lesson and then an essay question with scaffolding to differentiate and an example of a war poetry essay which students can analyse too. In short, plenty of resources and activities to suit every secondary group. Good luck in the exams, everyone! x

A lesson on the poem Meeting At Night by Robert Browning. The lesson opens with a game, then there is guided analysis and a creative project for students to tackle. Objectives, an essay question, potential ideas and a mark scheme are provided for students to practice their essay writing skills. This is a relatively simple poem for students to understand and the language features are fairly obvious. This should free up some time for an exciting creative project which could be completed for homework and seen the next lesson. Why not record them and put them up on your school's website or on YouTube? Tag me in if you do!

THE ONLY END OF TERM QUIZ YOU WILL NEED! There are celebrity names, cropped pictures, cartoon silhouettes, lateral thinking puzzles and an English Literature round and a music intros round just for fun! This goes well with the Speech and Characters video also available in my shop. This multiple round team quiz will keep every student interested. Some rounds could be printed out (I would recommend that for the first picture round so students can keep working on it) but the rest can just be put up on screen for three to five minutes each. Prizes for winners always go down well! After the quiz there are some extra activities to get students thinking about how authors (and real life humans!) create characters and why we do this, comparing quotations from Shakespeare, Russell Brand and Eminem on creating your personal character and place in the world. High ability groups would gain a lot from comparing and contrasting these ideas. Enjoy!