A puppet lobster explains the bizarre imagery that Dickens uses to influence our feelings throughout ‘A Christmas Carol’. ‘Like a bad lobster in a dark cellar,’ for example. This five-minute film engages pupils in finding their own examples of Dickens’ figurative language. It emphasies how important it is not just to label them ‘simile’, ‘personification’ and so on, but also to feel their emotional power. This in turn helps pupils to remember them and to write more perceptively about them.

This two-page worksheet uses explanations, quotations and cartoons to help students grasp that the murder of Duncan is a crime against God that upsets the whole natural order. ‘Macbeth’ is stuffed with animal references which are fun for students to look out for in lessons and extract questions, but they need help first to grasp why Shakespeare uses them. These sheets are designed to do this. You can use these sheets at any point during your study of the play. Act 2 Scene 4 is a good moment for them, though. You can show my video - ‘MACBETH - ANIMALS IN CHAOS!’ after going through the scene, then give them the worksheets. I have also included two images from the video: the simple diagram of the Great Chain of Being and my cartooned extract from Act 2 Scene 4.

This set of handouts, illustrations, websites and spooky photos of ‘Strawberry Hill House’ includes an editable Word Document. Together, they tell the story of how the Gothic Novel began - and how its author, Horace Walpole, unleashed a host of strange, entertainingly frightening and imaginative elements into the English Novel! Students can read the handout with its illustrations, then lose themselves in the photos of the House in its many moods. These could then inspire their own Gothic stories. Students could even decorate the classroom - or part of it - to make it more Gothic, just as Walpole did with his ‘little Gothic castle’. The handout starts with a list of Gothic elements. The drawing ‘WALPOLE LET THEM IN’ does not label the strange creatures. So get students to discuss their own ideas of what they all are, what’s happening, and what the images remind them of in popular culture today! The final document is a list of four useful Gothic websites for further research. The drawings may also be helpful with students who might otherwise find this quite a disturbing topic. I don’t think my zombie would scare anybody. SEE ALSO ‘UNUSUAL FRIENDSHIPS IN CASTLE SPOOKY’ - CREATIVE WRITING.

This single-page sheet helps students to spark an idea for a great story about an unusual friendship. It can be used at any time of the year, not just Halloween. They can discuss in pairs or groups what they think the different creatures in the picture are like and maybe think of names for them. Names make characters seem real in the mind and give them a life of their own. You could have fun with alliteration, e.g. Bob the Bat, and with setting a mood, e.g. Snooty Candle. Old-fashioned or unusal names can sound mysterious, e.g. Winona the Witch, while nicknames can sound funny and approachable, e.g. Mike the Monster. It can also be funny if a name has absolutely nothing to do with the nature of the creature, e.g. Colin the Coffin or Tim the Ghost. ‘The Something of Something’ is another useful pattern, not just for a character’s name, but for a story title, e.g. ‘The Creatures of Castle Spooky’, ‘The Mummy of Mortlake’, ‘Mutterings in the Moat’. Letting your characters talk to each other is fun and unpredictable: you can never be quite sure what they are going to say. Don’t let the difficulty of punctuating direct speech inhibit learners. After all, if they type this, they can always correct things like paragraphing and punctuation marks afterwards. They could illustrate their work or even turn a key scene from it into a storyboard or a strip cartoon for a younger audience than themselves. Have loads of spooky fun! SEE ALSO ‘HOW GOTHIC BEGAN AND WHAT IT UNLEASHED!’

These two illustrated sheets explain a way of looking at handwriting which transforms the task of improving it from a vague worry to a fun task. Instead of saying ‘I have terrible handwriting,’ learners are encouraged to think of their handwriting as a class of little people. Very often, I find that there are just a handful of letters that are unclear. When these are noticed and practised, the handwriting as a whole improves. Learners can find it quite fun as well as helpful to think of their own handwriting as a class of little people over whom they have friendly but firm control. This creates a way of talking about handwriting in a way that is easier to visualise and remember. Your marking can be included in this, too. For example, ‘Can you see which letters are falling asleep here?’ or ‘Your ‘g’ is kicking the letters on the line below again’ are comments that create a vivid yet also helpfully specific image for a learner to act upon. I always find it a pity if someone ‘hates their handwriting’, as an unruly blob that cannot change and over which they have no control. Instead, these two pages describe an approach which combines friendly curiosity in the small details that can make a big difference. Check out my PUNCTUATION PEOPLE too!

This uses cartoon people to explain how the apostrophe is used to show that a letter has been omitted. The apostrophe is a spy who knows exactly which letter has escaped from a word! Check out my HANDWRITING PEOPLE too! That resource is called HANDWRITING: A CLASS OF 26 LITTLE PEOPLE.

The pupils’ activity is simply the lyrics for the song ‘When This Lousy War Is Over’, with guitar chords. The MP3 is a recording of a female voice. Also find the song on YouTube from the film, ‘Oh What A Lovely War’, with male voice choir - the link is included here. The other website has lyrics for the same song and a few others.

A Powerpoint about Pindar’s Victory Odes at the Greek Olympics, prepared by Professor Edith Hall, Kings College London, for a Poet in the City event: Poetry and the Greek Olympics. Teacher can tell the class how the athlete’s training was military, the victory odes were performed for the victors in front of thousands and some of the games were very violent!

Writing non-fiction such as an article or opinion piece for AQA Language Paper 2 Question 5 involves abstract ideas and technical terms. Young learners can struggle with these. Dave the Dog, a writer for Sports Hound, describes each stage of writing a non-fiction piece. How to get ideas, planning the bones of an argument and writing with flair - Dave the Dog walks us through it all. There are three worksheets: How to Plan and Article, How to Plan an Article if Your Mind Goes Blank, and How to Write an Article. Download each one as a PDF or a Word Document so you can edit it if you like. These three sheets provide a clear and memorable way into non-fiction writing. Once learners have gone through them, you can set simple topics for opinion writing, such as ‘Which make better family pets - dogs or cats - and why?’ ‘Which would you rather be - a cat or a dog - and why?’ You can get some quite moving pieces from a title such as ‘What My Dog Taught Me About Love’. Learners can focus on what they want to say and how to say it - drawing on their own experience and/or that of their peers. The third worksheet has spaces for learners to fill in their own examples of each technique. It’s well worth making sure that learners do these, maybe in pencil so they can change their minds! It’s a quick mark to check their grasp of the techniques. They often come up with some wonderful sentences, free from the pressure writing a whole piece. If a child who struggles can come up with a really good simile that makes the whole class laugh, this can boost their confidence no end. This can also lead to great discussion about reader response. You can give Dave the Dog to young learners and then bring him back for revision in Years 10 or 11. That way, GCSE learners will be drawing on long-term memory, which is stronger than short-term memory. Exam students may also feel surprisingly nostalgic about something they were given so many years ago, when they were young!