High-quality, value for money teaching resources covering English language and literature; literacy; history; media and Spanish. With twenty-seven years' teaching experience I know what works in the classroom. Engaging, thorough and fun, your students will love these lessons.
High-quality, value for money teaching resources covering English language and literature; literacy; history; media and Spanish. With twenty-seven years' teaching experience I know what works in the classroom. Engaging, thorough and fun, your students will love these lessons.
Teach your students the importance of the history of sailing and its effect on the language with three-part lesson.
First read a timeline of the history of sailing.
Then create sentences with seven idioms from the semantic field of sailing. (Both these terms are explained on the Powerpoint).
Finally, students create and educational poster to explain the origin of idiomatic expressions from the world of sailing.
Worksheet and Powerpoint that practises and explains these two confusing words. The Powerpoint includes a fun activity where students guess the correct word from a series of posters and film posters. In total thirty chances for students to practise getting the confusing words right.
Teach your students to think outside the box and the power of metaphors with the intense, five-line cinquain poetry lesson. The example poem compares anger to a bull, allowing you also to explore the nature of emotions and the representations of animals. A lot of lesson in just five lines! Enjoy!
Many students write stories in which they jump between the present and the past tenses. This Powerpoint explains the difference between the simple past and the simple present tenses and contains a variety of exercises to encourage tense consistency and to help them to feel more confident. The zipped file also contains two informative and practical follow-up worksheets which ask students to put a passage about William the Conqueror into the past tense. The other worksheet asks them to put information about the Titanic into the past tense also.
Designed to teach the Seamus Heaney poem “Death of a Naturalist” in the Eduqas Poetry Anthology, this zipped folder contains a powerpoint with starter activity, context, student activities and plenary. There are three student worksheets focussing on Heaney’s use of sensory description; a storyboard of the key events in the poem and an exploration of what Heaney’s original images make students imagine. There is also a colour-coded annotated copy of the poem for teachers’ reference and a relevant answer sheet for one of the student’s worksheets. An added bonus is an example of a comparison to another poem in the anthology. Overall this should take two lessons and explore the poem in great depth and detail, making it memorable for students.
Celebrate the life of the remarkable Edith Cavell with this two-page information sheet, accompanied by comprehension activities and a vocabulary extension worksheet. A Powerpoint with starter and answers to the questions with lots of ideas for further activities is also provided. Designed to commemorate both World War One and the sacrifice of women in that conflict, Edith Cavell is an inspiration to all.
Get your students using the exciting language of travel writing with this Powerpoint that guides them through the techniques to sell two different Spanish cities - Malaga and Alicante. Authentic adverts for each city are analysed on the Powerpoint and then students are given information about a third Spanish city - Valencia, so that they can create an advert using the same style as the examples. The texts on Malaga and Alicante are included in the folder so that you can get your students to analyse the techniques before showing them the Powerpoint, if you prefer.
Calling all budding journalists. This twenty-three slide Powerpoint helps your students to analyze the key features of headlines and the key language techniques used. They are then prompted to write their own headlines for fictional news stories, culminating in them creating their own intriguing headline to grab the reader’s attention. Worksheet with techniques included. A fun lesson that might inspire your students to become the hacks of the future.
This fifty slide powerpoint on Sherlock Holmes could be used as background to the study of a Conan Doyle text; as part of a crime writing scheme of learning; or as a one off lesson to get students to create their own detective character. The folder includes:
A powerpoint with brainstorming activity on different fictional detectives; a ten question quiz on the character traits of Sherlock Holmes; historical background information about how Conan Doyle created Holmes and his popularity.
A worksheet to support students to create their own detective.
Follow-up comprehension questions to consolidated the learning for homework.
Engage your students in creative writing with this eight lesson student workbook and accompanying powerpoint.
Students imagine that their car has broken down near the haunting and mysterious Howley Hall Hotel. Just like Brad and Janet, they knock on the door, whereupon they encounter a strange old lady. Little do they know that inside a strange presence lurks.
They are guided to write a gothic story at the same time as revising basic skills, such as sentence demarcation; capital letters; homophones - their/they’re/their; your/you’re; punctuation speech; commas in lists; vocabulary enrichment; complex sentences; sentence variety.
Suitable for primary students or secondary students who need to revise basic skills.
Two lessons using the opening of 1984 to introduce students to the features of dystopian fiction with a particular emphasis on Orwell’s use of pathetic fallacy in the introduction. The lesson sequence is as follows:
Lesson 1
Starter on what students think makes a perfect world.
Explanation of origin of term dystopia.
Examples of dystopian fiction for children.
Overview of 1984 without spoilers.
Analysis of techniques used in opening to establish the dystopian atmosphere of the novel.
Zoom in on Orwell’s use of pathetic fallacy. Students identify examples. Answers on slide.
Discussion regarding living in this kind of world.
Lesson 2
Students return to their original thoughts on what makes a perfect world.
Narrative writing in preparation for AQA GCSE English Paper One Narrative Writing. Choice of writing a story about a perfect world or writing a story inspired by a picture of the Earth. Both with focus on using pathetic fallacy and sensory description.
Folder includes 24 slide powerpoint and copy of extract of opening.
Students are quite rightly fascinated by this amazing novel.
Have oodles of fun designing your own theme park. This step-by-step Word guide explains how to create a marketing campaign for your very own theme park. The steps include:
Create a name and a logo for your theme park.
Design four new rides for your park and write a sentence to sell each of them.
Create two areas to appeal small children.
Create a new on-site hotel with themed rooms.
Put it all together in a leaflet to publicise the theme park.
This sixteen-page booklet contains example texts which have been marked-up to highlight key features.
This student workbook contains activities based on poems from Benjamin Zephaniah’s poetry antholgy entitled “Talking Turkeys”. There are twelve lessons covering the following poems - “Greetings”, “Bodytalk”, “Running”, “Fear Not”, “Little Sister”, “According To My Mood”, “De Generation Rap”, “Civil Lies”, “For Sale”, “Who’s Who”, “Heroes” , “Memories” and “Pride”. There is also “Checking Out Me History” by John Agard included for comparison. Creative writing tasks include writing about a hero and writing about a time when you felt proud. This is designed to engage and enthuse low ability students with fun activities on the great Benjamin Zephaniah. An added bonus is a powerpoint that encourages students to write about a relative.
This twenty-six slide powerpoint contains two lessons on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. In the first lesson, students get to grips with the archaic vocabulary by translating the sonnet into modern English. They can then focus on the meaning and the extended metaphor of the weather. In the second lesson, students are taught the key structural elements of the Shakespearian sonnet form. They then have a go at writing their own love sonnet. For inspiration, Benjamin Zephaniah’s poem “I Love Me Mudder” is included, which they could turn into sonnet form. They are given three-step guidance to writing a sonnet and then time to reflect on the process and Shakespeare’s achievement of writing 154 sonnets in total. Included in folder are:
Copy of sonnet with glossary of archaic vocabulary.
Copy of Benjamin Zephaniah’s “I Love Me Mudder”
26 slide powerpoint with starters.
Three lessons using an extract from Bill Bryson’s “Notes from a Big Country” on the theme of junk food. The lesson sequence is as follows:
With a worksheet of devices, students learn the techniques that writers can use to create humour. They then identify these devices in the extract.
The second lesson is transactional writing where students write an article to persuade their class mates to eat healthily in timed GCSE exam practice conditions.
The third lesson is a feedback lesson after the articles have been marked. The folder includes a WAGOLL from a real GCSE student and exercises to help students make their conclusions more powerful.
Help your students to recognize and identify bias in newspaper reports. Students are presented with two newspaper reports which they have to make more biased using the techniques that they have identified throughout the lesson. Help your students to become more savvy readers of the media.
A basic scheme of work aimed at weaker students that you can build on and develop for students of higher ability. Eleven powerpoints guide you through the text with ideas for development. Many storyboards of the action are included to reinforce understanding of the plot. Background work includes a powerpoint on Mary Shelley and the history of the discovery of electricity.
This folder includes a powerpoint which guides students through the poem. The first activity helps them to work out what the Latin sentence “Dulce et Decorum est…” means. This is followed by looking at the poem in terms of Owen’s use of similes, metaphors and imagery. Two example paragraphs of analysis of the first lines of the poem serve as a model to encourage students to write some analysis of their own. A storyboard worksheet is also included which students could complete for homework.This lesson could be used in conjunction with the background lesson on Wilfred Owen, also found here.
Travel writing is one of the best ways to teach students to use language in a sophisticated way. In this project students choose a city or region of the world that they are interested in and create a travel guide on it using the example provided as a style model. The style model is about the Spanish city of Girona and the sections of the travel guide include:
An introduction
3 Days in your chosen destination.
Four of the best things to do there.
Essential information with top tips for visiting.
Final section original to the student.
Students’ attention is drawn to the use of premodifying adjectives and imperatives, which are typical of this style of writing. Students are able to see how travel writers sell destination through interweaving information about history, modernity and cuisine to make their locations sound exciting and attractive. There is also the possibility to turn the travel guide into a speaking and listening activity as students imagine that they work for the tourist board of their destination and wish to promote it.
Have fun exploring ideas about animal cruelty with Benjamin Zephaniah’s hilarious poem “Talking Turkeys”. This folder contains a cloze exercise on the poem to engage students directly with the text with follow-up comprehension questions. There are then three more powerpoint options for further exploration. Students can either create a leaflet to persuade people to give up turkey and eat something else at Christmas. Or if you are looking for a Christmas themed activity, students can use the poem as inspiration for their own Christmas poem. And don’t forget to watch Mr Zephaniah in action on Youtube, performing said poem in a bright pink shell suit. Not to be missed!