I made this for use with middle and lower ability Year 9s. It is the complete story, but now and then are boxes with questions in about the text and room to write notes. It also contains a writing task which focuses on the use of direct speech.

This is a copy of the poem, broken into clear, manageable chunks. After each section there are boxes with prompts and lots of space for notes. It can be used in class, but it is very useful for students working from home if, say, they have had to self-isolate…

This is a short unit I use with Year 8 when doing ‘Hamlet’. We tend to focus on Act One, so I start by exploring the opening scene. Students: Read the scene aloud in groups (or as a whole class, if you like) Complete a cloze exercise about the scene Investigate how they would stage the ghost if they were producing the play in 1608 I usually show a YouTube clip of what the Globe Theatre would have been like at the time to help them visualise the scene.

This resource is intended for A Level Lit students, but could work with able GCSE students studying ‘Hamlet’. It works best if the pupils already know the whole plot (from, say, watching a production) and who are now embarking on the nitty-gritty of studying each scene. It is presented here as a Word document whose boxes expand as they are typed in. I find this helps the students’ revision because the questions are near the answers, and can easily be added to as their knowledge grows. I encourage the students to include as much quotation as they can and to do so in a different colour text, again to aid revision later.

This resource is intended for A Level Lit students, but could work with able GCSE students studying ‘Hamlet’. It works best if the pupils already know the whole plot (from, say, watching a production) and who are now embarking on the nitty-gritty of studying each scene. It is presented here as a Word document whose boxes expand as they are typed in. I find this helps the students’ revision because the questions are near the answers, and can easily be added to as their knowledge grows. I encourage the students to include as much quotation as they can and to do so in a different colour text, again to aid revision later.

This is a copy of the poem, broken into clear, manageable chunks. After each section there are boxes with prompts and lots of space for notes. It can be used in class, but it is very useful for students working from home if, say, they have had to self-isolate…

This is a copy of the poem, broken into clear, manageable chunks. After each section there are boxes with prompts and lots of space for notes. It can be used in class, but it is very useful for students working from home if, say, they have had to self-isolate…

This is a copy of the poem, broken into clear, manageable chunks. After each section there are boxes with prompts and lots of space for notes. It can be used in class, but it is very useful for students working from home if, say, they have had to self-isolate…

Because Edexcel have not been too great about creating SAMs for the new IGCSE Language spec I decided to have a go myself. This one is a Paper 1 which closely follows the format of the SAMs. The unseen text is one from the old spec, and the Anthology Text is Chinese Cinderella.

Because Edexcel have not been too great about creating SAMs for the new IGCSE Language spec I decided to have a go myself. This one is a Paper 1 Reading section which closely follows the foramt of the SAMs. The unseen text is one from the old spec, and the Anthology Text is The Explorer’s Daughter.

Each of these is an A4 sheet covering one of the poems from the Lit exam. Included are: Blessing; Half Past Two; Hide and Seek; Poem at Thirty Nine; War Photographer. They are very useful for revision purposes. They can be enlarged and used as posters, too.

Because Edexcel have not been too great about creating SAMs for the new IGCSE Language spec I decided to have a go myself. This one is a Paper 1 which closely follows the format of the SAMs. The unseen text is one from the old spec, and the Anthology Text is Beyond the Sky and the Earth. There are two writing questions, too, and the whole thing looks just like a real paper.

Because Edexcel have not been too great about creating SAMs for the new IGCSE Language spec I decided to have a go myself. This one is a Paper 1 which closely follows the foramt of the SAMs. The unseen text is one from the old spec, and the Anthology Text is Between a Rock and a Hard place. There are two writing questions, too, and the whole thing looks just like a real paper.

Because Edexcel have not been too great about creating SAMs for the new IGCSE Language spec I decided to have a go myself. This one is a Paper 1 which closely follows the foramt of the SAMs. The unseen text is one from the old spec, and the Anthology Text is Passage to Africa. There are two writing questions, too, and the whole thing looks just like a real paper.

Because Edexcel have not been too great about creating SAMs for the new IGCSE Language spec I decided to have a go myself. This one is a Paper 1 Reading Section which closely follows the foramt of the SAMs. The unseen text is one from the old spec, and the Anthology Text is H is for Hawk.

This resource contains 11 key extracts from Book 1 of the novel. They have been selected because: they are, in themselves, interesting and revealing moments which shine lights on the settlings and characters of the novel; they are often good examples of Braddon’s style and techniques; and they match very well with extracts from The Cutting Season, which is the novel I pair this one with. Each extract is followed by two boxes: one which allows the students to make notes on any relevant social, historical or biographical contexts which shed light on this extract; the other which encourages the students to make explicit links between this novel and The Cutting Season. If you are pairing Lady A with a different novel, you can easily change the wording in these boxes so they match your choice.

This is the full extract for the Edexcel IGCSE Language specification with boxes at various points for the students to write in. The boxes contain questions, prompts and ideas to help focus their notes on language and structure. I find them very useful in the classromm, espcially with lower ability pupils. They would also work really well for pupils forced to learn at home because of Covid outbreaks, for example.

This is the full extract for the Edexcel IGCSE Language specification with boxes at various points for the students to write in. The boxes contain questions, prompts and ideas to help focus their notes on language and structure. I find them very useful in the classromm, espcially with lower ability pupils. They would also work really well for pupils forced to learn at home because of Covid outbreaks, for example.

For Edexcel IGCSE Literature, pupils need to include lots of relevant context in their exam essays on the novel. I have designed this booklet as a handy way for students to collect lots of context stuff in a way that makes it easy to refer to and revise from. There’s a page for exploring how the title, taken from Burns’ To a Mouse links to each chapter in the novel. Next, there are pages dedicated to each chapter, with plenty of room for recording textual examples and quotations as well as context. The final pages are organised by character, so the students can quickly revise the relevant context connected to each of them. Please note: I haven’t included the contextual information in the booklet. This is merely a handy way of organising what they find out.

In my school, lower ability students only do Language at GCSE which leaves a little free time which we are starting to use to increase their media literacy, with the aim of increasing numbers for A Level Film Studies. This brief unit (which should only take a couple of weeks) builds on their existing knowledg of literary techniques, and uses extracts from ‘Kes’ to improve both their understanding of film and their creative writing. It involves: revising and using common literary devices; exploring the 5 elements of film form (as contained in the Eduqas spec); an analysis of how character and setting are established in the opening scene; narrative writing based on the scenes where Billy trains Kes; descriptive writing about an animal of their choice. It is written with Edexcel IGCSE Language students in mind, and is a great lead-in to the H is for Hawk Anthology extract. However, it could easily be adapted to suit any spec. It would also work well with bright Year 9s.