Readers want to consume the news as quickly as possible; they don’t want to excavate nuggets of meaning from mountains of words. The news needs to be written clearly, concisely and correctly – THE 3 BIG C’s. Illustrate with the following: Write on the board ‘FRESH FISH SOLD HERE’ The fishmonger had a sign which said ‘FRESH FISH SOLD HERE’. The fishmonger had a friend who persuaded him to rub out the word FRESH – because naturally he wouldn’t expect to sell fish that wasn’t fresh; to rub out the word HERE – because naturally he’s selling it here, in the shop; to rub out the word SOLD – because naturally he isn’t giving it away. And finally to rub out the word FRESH – because you can smell it a mile off. Using the same principle, you can ask students which words they could remove and why. Explain that vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a machine has no unnecessary parts. This doesn’t mean that the writer should make every sentence short, or avoid all detail. It just means that every word should TELL. Issue Wasteful Words sheet. Discuss the example; check understanding. Students to complete the sheet by giving the sentences a good butchering. Students to to try to make the sentences crisper, shorter and more to the point. The underlined words indicate where wasteful words are being used. After activity, ask students to complete the following sentence in their book. Writers have to be economical with language when writing the news because… This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

This is a resource to coincide with a unit of worked based on teaching the history of the English language. It is a dictionary for Lincolnshire Dialect. There is a lot of scope with this resource, e.g students could find out different versions of the word in alternate dialect. Or, alternatively, students write a play script in Lincolnshire Dialect - often with hilarious consequences, and mostly including farmers. Students then perform their plays which could become a speaking and listening assessment.

This is a glossary of terms / features of spoken language. This is far from an exhaustive ‘list’ – just some basic terms that you should be familiar with for analysis of spoken language data. It's organised in alphabetical order. It can be used as a guide for students to annotate and identify features in spoken language date. Example of resource: Accent: the ways in which words are pronounced. Accent can vary according to the region or social class of a speaker. Adjacency pairs: parallel expressions used across the boundaries of individual speaking turns. They are usually ritualistic and formulaic socially. For example: ‘How are you?’/ ’Fine thanks’ Back-channel features: words, phrases and non-verbal utterances [e.g. ‘I see’, ‘oh’, ‘uh huh’, ‘really’] used by a listener to give feedback to a speaker that the message is being followed and understood. Blend word: words that are formed by combining parts of other words – e.g. jeans + leggings = jeggings.

Fun little starter to get students thinking. They're asked to look at 8 different objects and try to group them into pairs and explain their reasons why. Students can work individually, in a pair or in a group depending on their ability.

Spelling activity based on unstressed vowels. Students learn what unstressed vowels are before trying to come up with tricks to remember spellings with unstressed vowels.

KS3 English Shakespeare Macbeth - 10 Characteristics of a Shakespearean Tragedy

Place these facts around the room. Students have five minutes to search for the facts in the room and write them down. Allow time to feed back and discuss afterwards. This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Will Christopher get to London? Christopher is about to face a situation that will be very difficult for him. How will he cope? Will he manage to get to London? In this resource students are asked to consider how Christopher's Asperger's Syndrome will affect his experience at the train station. They're to consider challenges he'll face and strategies he'll use to cope. This will take students 10-15 minutes to complete. Using either thumbs-up, thumbs-down or thumbs in the middle, vote as a class for whether Christopher will cope at the train station or not. This resource is taken from my KS3 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Students are to correct a sentence which has used several incorrect homophones. They are then asked to create their own sentences using incorrect homophones for their partner to correct.

This resource contains two documents: the student version is a blank table for students to complete; the teacher version is already filled in using Bridget Jones's Diary and When Harry Met Sally as examples. Students are to attempt to identify the features of a romantic comedy in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and complete the table using modern romantic comedies to assist their understanding.

Put students in pairs and give each pair a piece of A3 paper. Ensure that each person in the pair has a different coloured pen. Explain that students are going to have a silent debate. One person will write down reasons why Macbeth should kill King Duncan; the other person will write down reasons why Macbeth shouldn’t kill King Duncan. Allow students 10 mins to do this exercise. Students write down reasons one at a time; students should try to respond to what’s been written previously. Use the resource above as an example. This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Listen to Iron Maiden’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (8 minutes). This is an edited version of the original track as the original track has a lot of instrumentals! Issue lyrics. Students are to follow in order to gauge an understanding of the story. Issue the pictures on A4 paper to individual students. On a sticky note, they’re to describe what’s in the picture. They’re to then try and work out in what order the pictures go. They can refer to the lyrics to help them. It’s all speculation at the moment; try to work it out. This should help them to understand the narrative structure. Afterwards, students are to discuss what they think happens in the story from beginning to end. They should write their plot summary as a list on a piece of A3 paper as a pair and/or group. This should give them an understanding of the narrative structure.

This PPT looks at new words and where they come from, which includes looking at blended words (jeans + leggings = jeggings), clipped words and new, organic words. They begin to understand how new words are added to the dictionary. If possible, allow students access to computers and let them explore the Oxford Dictionaries website which has lots of information about new words added to the dictionary.

Students complete two starter activities in the PPT that ask them to improve sentences to make them more dramatic and impactful. Students then look at Chapter 25 in which Michael's sister is described. Issue the Worksheet and two different coloured highlighters. Students are to highlight the important features of language and structure in the extract. Allow 10-15 minutes. Discuss students' findings. Ask students what impact the features have. Display slide 6 which explains how to write an effective PEE paragraph. Students are to write 3 PEE paragraphs about what they've found in Chapter 25 in their books. After 10-15 minutes, ask students to share their best PEE paragraphs.

Looking at both tragic and comic features, students decide whether Act 4, Scene 1 of Much Ado About Nothing conforms more to a tragedy or a comedy. Students find evidence for each feature before making a decision. This could lead into some effective class discussion and debate. Students are asked to consider the phrase 'tragicomedy'.

The idea of this exercise is to show students how a writing-to-describe question can be answered in a clever and interesting way. The question being 'Describe an average day at school', and the answer being given from the perspective of a pair of scissors.

Drama Assessment Use this grid to assess students in drama. Simply write the student’s name in the left-hand column and put a tick or ‘T’ in some of the boxes on the right to indicate whether the drama skill is something they do really well, or something they need to work on. You can write additional comments if you wish. The idea is that after the drama assessment you can give students praise, their level and their target in an efficient way. All students then need to do is write down their level and target on the blue sheet at the front of their small yellow exercise books. This grid focuses on nine key skills in drama, including facial expressions, spatial awareness, voice projection etc.

This will ultimately be a revision aid for students studying texts through a narrative lense. They are asked to break a text down into its narrative building blocks and create a summary for each narrative block. On the actual resource there are prompts for each building block to help elicit a response. THE 7 NARRATIVE BUILDING BLOCKS: SCENES AND PLACES TIME AND SEQUENCE CHARACTERS VOICES IN THE STORY POINT OF VIEW DESTINATION

Print off the slides in the PowerPoint and issue them to pairs or groups. Students are to analyse and annotate the opening lines with their ideas about what makes them effective and what makes them draw the reader in.

Print off the slides in the presentation, mix them up, and issue them to pairs or groups. Students to match the opening line to the correct story.