AQA GCSE students will benefit from this example ‘‘Power & Conflict’ essay using the latest question styles (May 2019). This would be useful as an independent stretch activity for more able students, and it would be possible to run through it as separate, timed class activities for less able students. It may be useful if students are failing to explain the writer’s language in depth. For students who are just coming across comparative poetry essays for the first time, it would be useful to run through how to plan as a class, modelling how to answer before encouraging students to write their own essay. Students approaching the exam could do this as a timed practice or it could be set as cover. Additionally, the formatting and layout has been influenced by ‘The Learning Scientist’ and their principles on how to make resources most accessible. Take a look at my other resources and blog: http://idealisticteacher.edublogs.org/

With assessments moderated and marked, one thing screamed out to the English department I’m a part of: the inference is missing. It wasn’t that student answers weren’t long enough, often they were. It wasn’t that quotes were missing, mostly they were well selected and supportive. It wasn’t that they’d missed the steer. It was that, where the inference should be, there were empty phrases: “*This makes the reader want to read on.” *“The writer uses language for emphasis.” * *“This creates more meaning.” I don’t know where students hear these phrases from but they seem incredibly universal! When I was thinking about a solution, it seemed clear that students struggle to know the difference between empty, space-filling phrases and actual analysis. Considering how to make this difference more evident, I realised that it might be worthwhile doing some phrase comparison and, thus, the ‘Inference Powerpoint’ was born. It consists of a series of slides, each one intended as a starter/bell work which should take five minutes. The aim is that students should select the phrase which includes the best inference and explain how they know it is the most analytical. Additionally, students can they decide on the flaws of the other answers. Not all of them have one obvious answer, in that the aim is that students are considering what makes inference effective, so it is worth sometimes warning students of that. Perhaps more usefully, it seeks to teach students about some other common errors. Often there are answers of exactly the same length or a really vague and meaningless longer answer so that students can rely on length as a guide. We’ve all had students who use that as a guide!

These are all paired AQA Language section B tasks, one for paper one and one for paper two. I’ve been using two per week throughout this academic year! Recently, our school has altered its behaviour policy and is running after school detentions. I’ve created these as purposeful writing tasks for our students to complete during these detentions. The aim is to develop students’ planning and writing abilities whilst getting them to consider the nature of their behaviour and the value of education. This means that all of these are about character development and SMSC in addition to exam preparation. There is a simple layout, inspired by ‘The Learning Scientists’ though I’m not sure that Oliver Caviglioli would approve of the boxes used in the design! Planning space is provided and, I would advise, should be used to ensure that students develop a structure prior to actually writing. I would print this on A3 paper for it to be most useful. Do get in touch with any feedback! I may well add more as time goes on… If you like these, check out my other resources, follow me on instagram/twitter or pop over to my blog: https://idealisticteacher.edublogs.org/author/idealisticteacher/

This writing challenge focuses on describing the festival Holi - it might be worthwhile showing students a video of a paint fight during the festival. KS4 students would benefit most from this writing activity which could be done as a stand alone lesson or to support the teaching of English Language paper one in general. This activity would be useful as stretch activities for more able students, although it would be possible to run through it as a class activity (perhaps planning together) for less able students. For students who are just coming across writing description for the first time, it would be useful to run through how to plan and write it up separately, before focusing on editing and improving. The Writing Revolution would suggest that approaching it through describing as a teacher (modelling how it’d done), then in pairs and then indvidually would lead to better responses too. Additionally, the formatting and layout has been influenced by ‘The Learning Scientist’ and their principles on how to make resources most accessible. Take a look at my blog and other resources! http://idealisticteacher.edublogs.org/