English teacher for the last decade; huge passion for teaching and creating interactive resources that lead to better engagement, better outcomes and better classroom environment! Have a look through my items for sale!
English teacher for the last decade; huge passion for teaching and creating interactive resources that lead to better engagement, better outcomes and better classroom environment! Have a look through my items for sale!
This ideal one page resource gives eight different ways to start a sentence and is really useful with weaker Key Stage 3/4 students, as well as those who continually start a sentence with the subject of the verb.
Ideas for use: simply as an aide memoir, a revision tool, descriptive writing homework or to help with descriptive writing.
Has been invaluable with my year seven and eight students!
This is a resource that I put on a whole-school display for students to reflect on their revision. I also asked form tutors to discuss revision strategies with their students in order to ensure students were not wasting their time making lots of notes that didn’t really help them.
This resource is perfect for students to stick in their books, discuss with their form tutors, include on a whole-school display or simply give to students to get them thinking about how they revise.
Now with an automatic PowerPoint that loops continuously - ideal to prompt students during assessments and writing!
9 Posters that I made for my students to encourage them to consider the effect of language; they helped students to consider language rather than simply writing things like 'it makes me want to read on...'
Happy to adjust and adapt on demand but these are a really great way to encourage students to analyse language and work independently.
Techniques/Features:
Anecdote
Alliteration
Facts
Opinions
Repetition
Rhetorical Questions
Emotive Language
Statistics
Triplication
Other features mentioned on one slide: first person, second person, hyperbole, expert opinion, conditional tense.
Would work perfectly for other exam boards as well as AQA!
I created this wheel in order to give students some kind of autonomy in terms of their essay writing. It outlines what students might say for AO1/2/3 in order to sound sophisticated.
In my lesson, students absolutely loved it! They were able to use the wheel to inform their own topic sentences, AO2 analysis and essentially, write an independent essay.
Two files: PDF/PPT (same file) so you can edit it if you like!
Students present the stave themselves using this prompt sheet. They use the middle of the page to plan and the questions on the outside as prompts.
You can either allow them to make notes in their books or simply make a few notes on the page itself before presenting.
A lovely visual worksheet.
This document is a two-page help sheet for students, teachers and parents that outlines common errors made in English such as:
- Fused sentences
- Hanging clauses
- Comma splicing
... and many more.
I usually give this to students when they are responding to feedback - or I give it to parents at parents' evening so they can help their children at home.
This is a simple slide that I use with my students as a prompt when they are responding to feedback. I have it in front of them so they have a reference and prompt when responding to comments.
I usually laminate these and put them on desks - that way, they last the whole year!
* This is a wonderful little resource if you are trying to encourage your students to become more independent; the poem just goes in the middle and you're set for just about any poem - just slot it in there and there's a lesson! *
I crated this resource in order to support my year 11 students analysing poetry - both unseen and otherwise.
Usually, I cut out the white section so students can simply put the poem in the middle. If you really want to go to town, you can laminate them once you've chopped the middle out. Simply print it on A3 and you're ready to go. I've also included the original file so it's fully adaptable should you need to change anything at any point. Like I said though, it's ready to print and go!
I've also included a non-fiction text analysis grid as a bonus!
I hope you find it as useful as I have.
A quick reference guide for students answering the English Language (8700) exam paper. It's an easy read, which includes activities.
I printed them out in A5 booklets and they looked absolutely fantastic.
Grab a bargain.
This is a language analysis of Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Independence speech that she gave in March 2017. It is a really engaging lesson and comes with the following:
- Overview of features to argue/persuade
- A debate on the topic of independence with reasons for and against (meant as a quick speaking and listening activity)
- A model annotation for students
- Features of language associated with Sturgeon’s rhetoric
- A model essay paragraph
- An essay question
- A fully annotated extract from the speech itself
Loads of resources and enough work for a week or more. Great for English language or even a lesson on British Values if you want a cross-curricular link.
If you like my resource, please review it! Also, take a look at my Trump or Emma Watson speech resources too.
Thanks!
* Tremendous resource to simply give to the students as a revision prompt; put them out as desk mats, send them home with students, allow struggling students to use them to support mock exams - really useful little document to support progress and embedding knowledge for the new spec GCSE exam *
I created this resource in order to help students with their sentence starters and responses to the exam questions in Paper 1 and 2 for the new AQA English Language papers (reading only).
The resource covers what students should say for each question, how long to spend on answering them and any banned terms to avoid using.
This can be used by students when sitting mocks, responding to feedback or just as a revision helper. It has been great for feedback too as I can signpost students to where they need to look/where they need to revise/where they have gone wrong!
Please review if you find it useful!
This resource begins by drawing a comparison to analysing a film trailer - first of all, you will look at a spooky trailer and then comment on the transitions, the fades etc. and discuss how it creates a spooky effect.
The lesson works well if you really engage the students and get them talking about the effect of the transitions, fades, spooky sounds. Following that, a similar link can be drawn to the attached text. Students think about the way they are guided through the text in the same way they thought about the film trailer. I found it really effective. A number of my students who didn't get question 3 said this really made it click for them!
Following on from this, you will look at the attached resource and comment on how the changes of focus give a particular effect.
This went down incredibly well with my year 11s and helped them to finally understand the requirements of the question!
A quick reference list of features to persuade:
- Anecdote
- Alliteration
- Facts
- Opinions
- Repetition
- Rhetorical Questions
- Emotive Language
- Statistics
- Triplication
- Hyperbole
- Direct Address
- Conditional Tense
See my Trump analysis which has this resource thrown in for free!
These are student-friendly resources that are intended as a revision helper. There are instructions on the first slides that let students know they need to be proactively analysing these poems in their own time. The resources are intended as an aide memoir for students to simply sort the poems into categories and verbalise how they will compare in the exam.
There are several points for AO1 and AO2 to help students compare the poems (aimed at a middle-ability group). Having said that, you are free to adapt as I am including the template. My aim when creating this resource was to give some good prompts for AO1 topic sentences.
Enjoy!
Printing tip: Look great on A5 but if you can’t print to A5, simply select ‘Print’ in PowerPoint and choose the ‘2 slides per page’ option. Or just print them on A4.
These have worked really well with my year 11 class. I actually made them last year but modified them for the new specification.
The first resource is a great wheel (you also get the PowerPoint so you’ll have the template) that I made in order to put all of the AOs in one place. I wanted my class to understand the importance of sophisticated vocabulary in their exam response so I created this first resource in order to help them with their topic sentences. These look great printed in colour - or if you really want to go to town - laminated.
The second resource is a paragraph building tool which I used as a prompt sheet for students.
Both resources are fab - the first one took me ages to create (getting the lines right was a nightmare!) so just think, you won’t have to spend ages fiddling around to get it right!
Check out my other resources as I have something similar for A Christmas Carol.
I was struggling to find exam papers so decided to make one myself! This is a complete paper for AQA English Language Paper 1 of the 8700 (new) specification.
The great thing about this is that you will then have the template to use in the future!
Here is a Paper 2 mock I put together as my class have done all the specimen papers available!
Feel free to adapt and change; I have included the original exam paper file so you can make your own after you've used this one.
A great lesson (with a video clip) during which students investigate Meghan Markle’s speech on the topic of gender equality.
I’ve attached an annotated version of the transcript for the teacher or team leader if you want to set students up on an independent task.
The lesson structure is as follows:
Quick starter looking at some persuasive techniques in print media
Look at the transcript and video
Annotate the extract
Look at model paragraph structure together
Write an essay
Peer Review
Students loved it!