A series of worksheets that provide students with extracts from the text depicting characters' words and actions. For each extract, students must record their impressions in the corresponding box. A straightforward but useful exercise in helping students to move from text to sub-text.

Revision activity in which students plan a five episode TV mini-series of the novel. The planning sheets lead them to look back to the novel to revise the settings and characters involved in each chapter and scene. Students must also consider physical and personality aspects of the characters to select suitable actors to play each part (as this is a hypothetical exercise, I usually give them the option of choosing any actor -- living or dead -- at any age to gain a better idea of how they visualise the characters).

Fully resourced grammar for writing lesson; teaches students what participles are and how they can be used to enhance description and sentence variety, useful on Section B of both English Language Paper 1 and Paper 2. The worksheet consists of sentence combining exercises designed to give students practice in constructing participles and participle clauses. The powerpoint includes a starter activity, an explanation of participles and participle clauses with examples, instructions on how to complete the worksheet with examples, possible answers and a plenary.

A fully resourced grammar-for-writing lesson that teaches students what adverbs and adverbials are and then gives them practice with placing adverbials in different places within sentences (i.e. at the front (fronted adverbials), in the middle or at the end). I have found it particularly useful in preparing students for Section B of GCSE English Language Paper 1 and Paper 2. The powerpoint includes a starter, an explanation of adverbs and adverbials (with examples), instructions for the worksheet (with an example), a list of possible answers and a plenary.

Fully resourced grammar-for-writing lesson that teaches students about prepositions and prepositional phrases, then uses sentence combining exercises to provide practice in placing prepositional phrases at different points in the sentence. Very useful in helping students to achieve sentence variety on Section B of Paper 1 and Paper 2. The powerpoint includes a starter, an explanation of prepositions and prepositional phrases (with examples), instructions for the worksheet (with an example), a list of possible answers and a plenary. It also provides examples of misplaced phrases/modifiers to help students to recognise when they have not placed prepositional phrases in a sentence correctly.

Worksheet that teaches students to identify the subject in sentences with unconventional word order (questions, imperatives and inverted sentences); concludes with an exercise to give them practice. This helps them to better understand sentence structure and to maintain subject-verb agreement when writing.

A series of peer editing sheets for use after students have finished drafting descriptive or narrative texts. Sheets are organised into Bronze, Silver and Gold levels with increasingly challenging criteria included in each. Criteria are based on the Literacy and Numeracy Framework for Wales, with Bronze corresponding to Year 7, Silver to Year 8 and Gold to Year 9 expectations.

This fully resourced grammar-for-writing lesson teaches students how to use coordinating conjunctions (and, when applicable, joining commas) to combine simple sentences to form compound sentences. *NOTE: Instead of using the American acronym FANBOYS in this lesson, I have included the more UK-appropriate ANTBOYS (most American dictionaries do not recognise 'then' as a coordinating conjunction, whereas the British council and most UK dictionaries do. Also, although 'for' is recognised as a coordinating conjunction on both sides of the Atlantic, it is almost never used in contemporary writing. As this is a grammar for writing rather than a sentence-parsing lesson, the archaic 'for' has been omitted and the British conjunction 'then' has been included, thus 'ANTBOYS'). With this in mind, teachers in North America or ESOL teachers teaching North American English may wish to hide, delete or replace the slide in the powerpoint in which I have listed the coordinating conjunctions most commonly used in the UK.

A series of peer editing sheets for use across the curriculum, designed to develop writing proficiency without sacrificing attention to subject-specific content. Worksheets are differentiated into bronze, silver and gold levels, with increasingly challenging targets for each level in organisation, grammar, punctuation and use of language. There are separate sheets for explanatory, instructional and persuasive writing. Students simply follow the instructions on the sheet, looking for specific features in their partner's work and circling the corresponding recommendations accordingly. No specialist knowledge is required on the part of the classroom teacher. For teachers in Wales, the targets are in line with those of the National Literacy and Numeracy Framework, with bronze targets aligning with the objectives for year 7, silver matching those of year 8 and gold matching those of year 9.