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Pedagogy and professional development

Of Mice and Men: Characterisation of Crooks
This engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge and understanding of the character of Crooks in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: His dreams, his loneliness, and how his plight is a product of living in 1930s America. The lesson also aims to improve students’ analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character.
This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with tasks and key information, an extract from the text with close reading questions, a writing to analyse help-sheet, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of increasingly more difficult tasks, including:
- An opening task to ascertain what is known about Crooks, and racism in 1930s America
- An extract from the text that highlights some of his characteristics and his loneliness.
- Questions to encourage students to infer and deduce hidden meanings, and understand Steinbeck’s message,
- Joint creation of an analysis success criteria;
- An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Crooks;
- A chance to peer assess against the success criteria.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation.
You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

An Inspector Calls Pointless Game (and blank template to make your own games!)
Based on the popular game show 'Pointless', this resource is perfect for use as a whole lesson resource, enrichment option, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. (I've also added a blank template so that you can make your own games from scratch). Containing almost 30 slides of sound clips, engaging visuals, and suitably challenging questions, this resource is effective at both promoting engagement and enhancing learning. There are several full rounds of questions to build or revisit knowledge of characters, plot, and themes in 'An Inspector Calls.'
Round 1. The characters in An Inspector Calls (takes approx 10 mins)
Round 2. Quotations from the text (takes approx 15 mins)
3. Settings, themes, and objects (takes approx 15 mins)
4. Themes in An Inspector Calls (takes approx 10 mins)
The nature of this game ensures that the resource can challenge students of all levels.

Creating Engaging Starters - CPD Session and Resources
This CPD session is designed to enable teachers and learning support to facilitate highly engaging and motivating lesson openings. The session is interactive, rooted in educational theory, and contains video/collaborative resources to encourage staff participation. Participants learn to:
- Understand the key features of meaningful engaged learning;
- Identify and analyse these features in video examples of lesson starters;
- Discuss/evaluate these concepts with regards to their own practices/settings;
- Design, plan, and implement their own engaging lesson starters, using the provided handy prompts and planning materials;
Provided in this pack is:
- Visually-engaging presentation with embedded videos.
- Engaging Starters checklist;
- Planning sheet for engaging starters;
-Teacher/Trainer guidance.
NB: Internet connection needed for embedded videos. Bibliography/further reading on last slide.

A Christmas Carol: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come!
This engaging and informative lesson enables students to make insightful and developed interpretations of Dickens’ use of language in describing ‘The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come’ in A Christmas Carol. In particular, they explore how the descriptive language used to describe the appearance, mannerisms, and movements aid the haunting portrayal of the ghost.
The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through:
- Reading and understanding the key plot elements of stave 4 - in which The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come appears;
- Identifying and exemplifying the key language features used by Dickens in describing the ghost, including its appearance, actions, and mannerisms;
- Analysing the extent to which the language used creates a haunting and imposing image of the ghost;
- Peer assessing each other's learning attempts.
Included is:
- Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive;
- Extract - Stave 4 of A Christmas Carol;
- Dickens' Language: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come Worksheet (and completed answer sheet for teachers);
- Analysis template with success criteria for creating well-structured responses;
- Comprehensive lesson plan.
There are also opportunities for group learning, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. This was originally taught to mixed ability year 10 groups, but can easily be differentiated for groups of different ages and abilities.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.

A View from the Bridge: Greek Tragedy - Eddie's Downfall!
This interesting and highly-stimulating lesson students to demonstrate a developed, sustained understanding of the structural features of the Greek Tragedy which are utilised in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. In particular, students engage analytically with Eddie’s ‘hamartia’ and catastrophic downfall at the end of Act II. Students examine how Eddie’s role as a tragic hero, his fatal flaw, and the sense of fate which runs throughout, mirrors the features of Greek Tragedies.
The lesson follows a clear, logical, bite-size learning journey, which guides students towards differentiated learning objectives. Over the course of this journey, they become able to:
- Define and identify the features of Greek Tragedies;
- Understand Miller’s views towards Greek Tragedies, and his intentions for writing the play in this form;
- Identify the features of Greek Tragedy in A View from the Bridge;
- Critically engage with text as a Greek Tragedy, considering how Eddie’s downfall is constructed by his fatal flaws, hamartia, and catastrophe;
-Peer assess each other’s learning attempts.
This resource pack includes:
- A visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint presentation;;
- Paper copies and online links to the extract needed for the lesson (end section of Act Two);
- Greek Myths Definitions Cards;
- Greek Myths worksheet (including answer sheet for teachers);
- A logically scaffolded essay template;
- A detailed lesson plan, complete with what the teacher and students should aim to achieve at each stage of the lesson.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the PowerPoint.
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CPD Training Sessions Bundle!
These CPD sessions offer engaging and original approaches to introducing or revisiting a range of effective pedagogical strategies. Grounded in educational research, these sessions are interactive, well-structured, and have been successfully tried and tested.
The aim of each CPD session is to develop the knowledge, skills, and strategies needed in order to utilise in practice in each key area, and as an aid in achieving these aims, the trainer is supported with:
-Colourful, engaging, and comprehensive PowerPoint presentations;
-Videos for analysis of key techniques;
-A wide range of interactive resources for CPD activities;
-Instructions and plans to assist delivery.
All images and videos are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of each PowerPoint.
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Of Mice and Men Huge Bundle!
THIS BUNDLE CONTAINS ALL OF THE OF MICE AND MEN LESSONS, THE COMPREHENSION BOOKLET, THE KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZER AND THE POINTLESS GAME!
This engaging, varied, and informative scheme of learning is designed to help students gain understanding, assessment skills, and key interpretations of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Made up of a wide-range of interesting and exciting lessons, students should complete this scheme having gathered vital skills in: interpreting the significant meanings of the text, understanding the writer’s ideas within the text, identifying the traits of key characters, settings, and themes, and relating the text to its social and historical context.
Stimulating, visual, and easily adaptable, these lessons provide suggested learning objectives and outcomes for students of a wide-range of abilities - The vast majority of tasks are differentiated to allow for different abilities and needs in your classroom. Each lesson loosely follows a logical learning journey to ensure that students learn in bite-size steps:
- Engaging
- Defining/ Understanding
- Identifying/Remembering
- Analysing/ Creating
- Peer or self evaluating.
All of the lessons are interactive, employ a variety of different teaching and learning methods and styles, and are visually-engaging. Resources, worksheets, and lesson plans are all provided. There is also a fun ‘Pointless’ Game included, to test your students’ knowledge of the text!

Frankenstein: Shifting Narrative Viewpoints
This engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of the various narrative perspectives used to develop the plot and characters in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’ The lesson places a particular focus upon the reporting of William’s death from different narrative points-of-view, focusing on the accounts of Alphonse, Victor, and the Monster. By the end of the lesson, students demonstrate an ability to make sustained and original interpretations of Shelley’s structural choices.
The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through:
- Defining the key terms ‘author’, ‘narrator’, and ‘narrative point of view;’
- Identifying the different narrators within the text;
- Reading and understanding key extracts from chapters 7 and 16 - extracts that detail the same event (William’s murder) from multiple perspectives;
- Inferring, interpreting, and analysing the effect of Shelley’s structural choices in altering the narrative viewpoints;
- Imagining and describing the events surrounding William’s murder from another perspective;
- Peer assessing each other’s learning attempts.
Included is:
- Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and substantial; (including an animated Frankenstein’s monster to guide them through the lesson);
- Descriptive devices worksheet (and a teacher answer sheet);
- Extract from the beginning of Chapter 5;
- Inferring and Interpreting worksheet;
- Analysis template with success criteria for creating well-structured responses;
- Comprehensive lesson plan.
There are also opportunities for group learning, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. This was originally taught to middle-ability year 9/10 groups, but can easily be differentiated for groups of different ages and abilities.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.

Animal Farm: Dictatorship
These resources enable students to understand and analyse the characteristics of Napoleon’s dictatorship in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In addition, students learn to make clear and accurate interpretations regarding the events of the chapters 5 and 6, (as Napoleon’s dictatorship begins to emerge) and make appropriate links to individual characters and their allegorical relationship to context. As these chapters signal the end of the animal democracy on the farm, and the start of Napoleon’s totalitarian dictatorship, a heavy emphasis throughout these resources is placed upon the character of Napoleon - particularly with regards to his similarities with Joseph Stalin.
There are easily enough resources for two lessons within this pack. Students learn through the following tasks:
- Gauging and collaborating prior knowledge through a discussion-based starter task;
- Gauging their knowledge of key terms such as ‘totalitarian’ and ‘oppression’ through a collaborative card-sorting activity;
- Reading chapters 5 and 6 and demonstrating their understanding through an apt and informative worksheet;
- Developing their understanding of the main character of Snowball, and his allegorical equivalent, Joseph Stalin, through a comparison task;
- Analysing the links between Napoleon and Stalin in chapters 5 and 6, using a templated writing frame;
- Peer assessing their partners’ learning attempts.
The following resources are provided:
- Engaging and colourful step-by-step PowerPoint;
- Cards for card-sorting activity;
- Teacher lesson guidance/plan;
- Analytical paragraphs worksheet;
- Pictures for comparison task;
- Copies of Chapters 5 and 6.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the PowerPoint.

Animal Farm Pointless Game! (and blank template to create your own games!)
Based on the popular game show ‘Pointless’, this resource is perfect for use as a whole lesson resource, enrichment option, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. (I’ve also added a blank template so that you can make your own games from scratch). Containing almost 30 slides of sound clips, interesting tasks, and suitably challenging questions, this resource is effective at both promoting engagement and enhancing learning. There are several full rounds of questions to build or revisit knowledge of characters, plot, and themes in ‘Animal Farm.’
Round 1. The characters in Animal Farm
Round 2. Quotations from the text
Round 3. Settings and Objects
Round 4. Themes in Animal Farm
The nature of this game ensures that the resource can challenge students of all levels.
A blank template has also been added, so that you can create your own games!

Pupil Progress Data Analysis Template (Automatic percentage formulas and pie charts!)
This neat, compact, and visually-engaging data analysis template is an invaluable tool for school leaders, teaching and learning leaders, curriculum leaders, or any other school-based staff responsible for the inputting and analysis of pupil progress data.
All that the resource requires is for users to input raw pupil progress data, and it will automatically calculate percentages, and create colourful pie-charts to provide detailed yet easily-readable headline figures. Each excel sheet has been designed to fit onto one A4 page, for easy reading, and this includes space for users to input analysis of the data and plot interventions.
5 sheets have been pre-populated with example data, but the user can create as many extra sheets as they want by simply right-clicking the tabs, selecting 'move or copy', and then ticking the 'create copy' box. The sheets that are created will contain all of the same formulas and pie-charts, to enable you to create page after page of detailed progress analysis!
All of the columns and row names in the tables can be edited to suit the language used by your school, but please avoid altering the percentages rows, as you may lose the formulas.
If you have any further questions after purchasing this product, please contact me at tandlguru@yahoo.co.uk
Thanks!

Marking and Feedback Performance Grid
For use alongside book monitoring/ work scrutiny, this succinct performance grid enables observers to gauge and categorise marking and feedback using OFSTED guidance for effective feedback. The first page of the document provides descriptors of 'outstanding', 'good', 'requires improvement' and 'inadequate' feedback within appropriately considered focus areas, for example: Frequency, Constructive Feedback, Marking for Literacy, etc. Schools that already employ this tool often opt to highlight the descriptors on this page as they complete the scrutiny, thus creating a bigger picture of the strengths and areas for improvement in the feedback observed. This can also be a helpful aid in arriving at an overall judgement, should your school opt to arrive at one. The second page allows observers to further pinpoint and describe the 'www' (what went well) and 'ebi' (even better if) aspects of the feedback, to aid teacher in improving their practice.

Teaching and Learning Performance Grids
This resource pack is comprised of:
1.) Observation & Learning Walk Performance Grid
2.) Marking and Feedback Performance Grid
For use alongside lesson observations, learning walks, and book monitoring, these succinct performance grids enable observers to gauge, categorise, and feedback on teaching and learning sessions using OFSTED guidance for effective teaching. The documents provide descriptors of 'outstanding', 'good', 'requires improvement' and 'inadequate' practice within appropriately considered teaching and learning focus areas, for example: Questioning, Positive Feedback, Use of Additional Adults, etc. Schools who still grade individual teachers have noted that these are helpful aids in arriving at an overall judgement.

War Photographer - Carol Ann Duffy
This engaging, comprehensive lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of Carol Ann Duffy’s contemporary war poem ‘War Photographer’ with particular focus upon the language and structure used within the poem to depict the photographer’s experiences. By the end of the lesson, students demonstrate their knowledge of the text analytically, through assured, appropriate, and sustained interpretations.
The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through:
- Defining the role of the war photographer, and understanding difficulties in their job;
- Securing contextual understanding of Carol Ann Duffy - the poet;
- Reading and interpreting the poem, using a provided line-by-line analysis, and interactive group activities;
- Developing their understanding through inferring and analysing key language and structural choices;
- Understanding how the war photographer's life varies between war-torn locations and 'Rural England;'
- Analysing how language and structure are used to portray the photographer' experiences;
- Peer assessing each other's learning attempts.
Included is:
- Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and substantial; (including hyperlinks to informative and engaging videos)
- Copy of poem;
- Deeper thinking worksheet (including a scaffolded version, and a teacher answer sheet);
- Analysis template with success criteria for creating well-structured responses;
- Comprehensive lesson plan.
There are also opportunities for group learning, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. This was originally taught to middle-ability year 9/10 groups, but can easily be differentiated for groups of different ages and abilities.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.
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Teacher Quality Monitoring and Tracking Big Bundle!
Contained in this bundle are all of the teacher performance grids, (lesson observations, book monitoring, and pupil progress) in addition to the teacher quality trackers. Used in combination, these resources enable school leaders and data managers to easily and precisely monitor teacher quality over time.
The Teacher Performance Grids contain:
1.) Observation & Learning Walk Performance Grid
2.) Marking and Feedback Performance Grid
3.) Pupil Progress Performance Grid
For use alongside lesson observations, learning walks, book monitoring, and discussions about pupil progress, these succinct performance grids enable observers to gauge, categorise, and feedback on teaching and learning using OFSTED guidance for effective teaching. The documents provide descriptors of 'outstanding', 'good', 'requires improvement' and 'inadequate' practice within appropriately considered teaching and learning focus areas, for example: Questioning, Positive Feedback, Use of Additional Adults, Noticing Data Trends and Plotting Interventions etc. Schools who opt to grade individual teachers on their performance have noted that these are helpful aids in arriving at an overall judgement.
The Teacher Quality Trackers allow teaching and learning leaders to monitor the quality of teaching across their departments/ schools over time, focusing on the triangulated performance indicators of: Lesson Observations/Learning Walks, Book/Folder Monitoring, and Pupil Progress. Users can easily view changes in individual, department, key stage, and whole school teaching and learning quality over time.
The tools are automatically formatted to colour code entries from the codes 1 (Outstanding = Green) to 4 (Inadequate = Red) Each entry also updates the 'average school performance' table, which in turn alters the line graph showing quality over time. This enables leaders to easily identify trends in performance data. Furthermore, there is also space in which users can give details of CPD sessions and interventions, in order to a provide a foundation to evaluate their impact.
Individual pages are provided for observations, book monitoring, and pupil progress.
'3 captures per year' and '6 captures per year' versions are provided, to allow for schools that measure quality at variable intervals.
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Descriptive Writing Huge Bundle! (All PowerPoints, Lesson Plans, Worksheets, Help-Sheets, Games, and More!)
This giant bundle pack offers a comprehensive range of descriptive writing lessons, (everything that you will need for them - whole lesson PowerPoints, worksheets, lesson plans - everything) help-sheets, writing templates, and activities.
Included are whole lesson resources for:
-Amazing verbs and adverbs
-Adventurous adjectives
-Astonishing alliteration
-Capturing the readers’ attention
-Exceptional expanded noun phrases
-Perfect personification and awesome oxymorons
-Structuring and organising creative writing
-Stupendous similes and miraculous metaphors
-Wondrous writing - seven wonders of the world
-Writing about Emotions
-VCOP - vocabulary
-VCOP - openers
-VCOP - connectives
-VCOP - punctuation
All images are licensed for commercial use and are cited on the final slides of the PowerPoints.
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Lord of the Flies Huge Bundle!
This bundle contains all of the Lord of the Flies lessons, the comprehension activities booklet, the knowledge organiser and the Pointless game!
These engaging, varied, and informative lessons have been designed to help students gain a valuable understanding of the plot, characters, language, and key messages in William Golding’s novel ‘Lord of the Flies.’ The lessons enable students to gain a comprehensive understanding of the key features of content, language, and structure, in addition to considering Golding’s key intentions in writing the novel.
All of the resources that you need to teach are included in the bundle: Whole lesson step-by-step PowerPoint presentations, informative and engaging , worksheets, activities, and lesson plans.
Contained in the bundle are lessons based on:
- 1. Savagery vs Civilization;
- 2. Ralph, Jack, and Piggy;
- 3. Golding’s Language Devices;
- 4. The Beast
- 5. Simon and Roger
- 6. The Ending
Plus the 30-page comprehension booklet, the knowledge organiser and the Lord of the Flies Pointless Game!
Stimulating, visual, and easily adaptable, these lessons provide suggested learning objectives and outcomes for students of a wide-range of abilities - The vast majority of tasks are differentiated to allow for different abilities and needs in your classroom. Each lesson loosely follows this logical learning journey to ensure that students learn in bite-size steps:
- Engaging
- Defining/ Understanding
- Identifying/Remembering
- Analysing/ Creating
- Peer or self evaluating.
All of the lessons are interactive, employ a variety of different teaching and learning methods and styles, and are visually-engaging.
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Macbeth Huge Bundle!
THIS BUNDLE CONTAINS ALL OF THE MACBETH LESSONS, IN ADDITION TO THE COMPREHENSION ACTIVITY BOOKLET, THE MACBETH KNOWLEDGE ORGANISER, AND THE POINTLESS GAME!
This engaging, varied, and informative scheme of learning is designed to help students gain understanding, assessment skills, and key interpretations of William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth.’ Made up of a wide-range of interesting and exciting lessons, students should complete this scheme having gathered vital skills in: interpreting the significant meanings of the text, understanding the writer’s ideas within the text, analysing key characters, settings, and themes, and understanding Shakespeare’s language devices.
Stimulating, visual, and easily adaptable, these lessons provide suggested learning objectives and outcomes for students of a wide-range of abilities - The vast majority of tasks are differentiated to allow for different abilities and needs in your classroom. Each lesson loosely follows this logical learning journey to ensure that students learn in bite-size steps:
- Engaging
- Defining/ Understanding
- Identifying/Remembering
- Analysing/ Creating
- Peer or self evaluating.
All of the lessons are interactive, employ a variety of different teaching and learning methods and styles, and are visually-engaging. Resources, worksheets, and lesson plans are all provided.

Space Mission: Find us a New Earth!
The year is 2086, and the students are needed for a special mission!
This space mission has been designed to provide students with a fun and interesting group challenge, whilst also building key skills in critical thinking and collaboration, and essential knowledge for Science, English, and Mathematics.
Students are placed in a scenario in which Earth is no longer habitable, and humans must seek to move to another planet in the Universe. Compiled for them is information on each of the potentially most habitable planets that are known to man (these are the real planets that have been confirmed by NASA and other agencies as having the most potential for life). In reading the key information, students will be drawing upon their knowledge of Science terminology, and will need to make some Maths calculations to work out implications of living on different planets.
What will become clear fairly quickly is that none of the potential planets are perfect, and they must use reasoned judgements to determine which of them have cons that could perhaps be overcome. They then present their ideas, using clear and articulate speaking and listening skills, and write up their report, using appropriate written communication (a scaffold is provided to frame this).
Everything is provided for you to download, print, and teach:
- A comprehensive, whole-activity PowerPoint that guides the students through the mission;
- Detailed and colourful information sheets on each of the contender planets for being the next Earth (these include links to amazing websites that can provide the children with more information);
- A ‘Pros and Cons’ scaffold, to help students record their findings;
- An information sheet on the ‘habitable zone’ around stars;
- A scaffold for writing up findings;
- Sorting cards for help with determining the key features of habitable planets;
- Full teacher guidance.
Considering the time and effort that it took to create these resources, I think that they offer exceptional value. Whenever I have used this activity before, it has taken at least 2-3 lessons, including the introduction, starter challenge, main mission, presentations, and write-up. I originally have used this with mid-ability Year 6,7, and 8 groups, but colleagues have easily adapted it for students across key stages 2-4.
All images have been cited at the end of the PowerPoint presentation and are licensed for commercial use.

Learning Walk/ Teacher Development Checklists!
These comprehensive checklists have been created to aid school leaders when performing learning walks with a particular focus e.g. questioning, differentiation, etc. Clearly structured and organised, they present a central idea surrounded by a breakdown of a number of its key components.
For the user, this layout provides a simple reference list of each of the desirable skills, categorised appropriately. The checklists also provide an alternative to regular feedback methods, which often focus too heavily on the standard or ‘judgement’, as opposed to being a developmental tool.
Alternatively, these are really handy for teachers looking to develop their practice in the key teaching areas listed below. Included in the pack are checklists for:
-Questioning
-Differentiation
-Utilising Resources (including support staff)
-Engagement
-Building Literacy Skills
-Planning and Expectations
-Building Learning Power
-A blank template for you to design your own based upon your own focus
Note: The checklists are provided as both PDFs (for formatting stability) and Word (so that you can edit them easily) - the Word versions are in the zipfile.
Many Thanks