Lesson on writing dialogue that sounds real and is funny. Was originally based on a family meal extract from ‘Black Swan Green’ by David Mitchell, so do use that if you can! I removed it for copyright reasons.

As Out of the Bag is long, I’ve divided it into 2 lessons. Here’s the first. For use teaching the poems of the decade collection for Edexcel

This lesson (written spring 2023) has a list of the genres used in the Edexcel iGCSE transactional writing questions up to June 2022 and suggests students consider what patterns they can see and focus their revision and practice accordingly. It also includes some past questions to plan as a revision technique.

Here are 8 Keats essay questions my class enjoyed trying. The poems featured have not yet (in Spring 2023) been used on an exam, neither have the themes.

My mnemonic for the most commonly used poetic techniques is Shampoo Traces and here is a table of the devices as well as some definitions, examples and potential effects. You can follow it up with the powerpoint (answers are in the notes on each slide) and the answer sheet.

2 lessons on marriage and proposals for teaching The Importance of Being Earnest, along with an essay writing frame.

These 2 lessons bring together resources about what has been on the Edexcel iGCSE in recent years (and implied prediction about what could come up in summer 2024) My notes on the exam texts are available through TES to buy separately - these are mentioned in one of the slides so either delete, edit or get notes… There’s a resource to cut up and sort for students to think about genre contentions and the mark scheme as well as which transactional genres have been used in recent years. The other lesson is about which anthology texts have been used in recent years.

A powerpoint to do a Whoosh activity with a class about the overall plot of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

This is lesson 2 in my mini scheme of work on The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. I’ve included my own annotations too. This short story is used for the Edexcel iGCSE English syllabus in the coursework anthology.

This lesson gives students some example paragraphs along with the mark scheme and an explanation of what it means. The paragraphs include ones written about ‘A Passage to Africa’ and ‘A Game of Polo with a Headless Donkey’ (likely to be used in summer 2023) as well as ‘Young and Dyslexic’ and ‘The Danger of a single story’.

This powerpoint and the hand-out which duplicates it give students detailed notes about which contextual ideas they should use for each of the poems in exam essays. The powerpoint is designed as a traditional lecture from which students can take notes. Later the teacher can give out the word version so they have full details. I’ve suggested that students take notes from the powerpoint in a way which makes them focus on something specific like - what they didn’t know before or key details, rather than attempting to take detailed notes.

This lesson stimulates students to consider what exam questions might be asked (you might need to have all the exam questions asked so far ready for them) and reminds them of how to plan and write an essay to fit the mark scheme for the Edexcel A Level. I’ve written some exemplar paragraphs for them to critique too.

Hand-written annotations for the poems on the Edexcel iGCSE coursework poetry anthology: Out out Disabled The Bright Lights of Sarajevo Still I rise an Unknown Girl

This lesson focuses on writing essays on Keats in the Edexcel English A Level exam. It includes planning tips, mark schemes, suggestions about essay structure, using a line of argument, including context, and exemplars from the exam board with the examiner’s report about them. It’s big, hence the price!

This is a fun lesson, especially if you can spread it across a few rooms where you put up posters of the texts for students to read. Print out lots of extracts from various texts and send students round to read them and steal bits. They then re-work what they’ve stolen along with their own ideas into something new.

This 29 minute recording gives detailed annotation on ‘My Last Duchess’. It is geared to AQA GCSE conflict cluster but will also work for general study of the poem.

It’s a bit pricey because I put lots of information into it and there are loads of examples of plastic theatre and links to the music in the play. It’s really good! Each scene has notes on stage directions and how Williams has used set, costume, lighting and sound as part of his plastic theatre concept.

This presentation gives detailed notes on language, form and structure in Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci. It’s got a few references to the AQA exam of a few years ago but can also be used just to help students understand the poem.

This is a set of ten lessons on Black Swan Green. I wrote it for students at my school where we do our own alternative to GCSE English Literature. It could be adapted to work as a literature focus for years 9-12.