Created by students, each slide focuses on one critic’s viewpoints and gives links to read more.

This was created by students as a class revision guide, with slides on characters from the novel, some key themes and contextual information. The slides are colourful and could also be printed for display.

Year 9 inference square activity using an extract from Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong. War thematic unit.

This Powerpoint looks at creating a question to structure a speech around, and uses Just a minute as fun table activity and potentially whole-class game.

This bundle contains a Powerpoint with key terminology, a Powerpoint with slides on chapters 1-8 with focus on identifying character flaws, a notes handout to help students prepare to write an essay on Austen’s social values in Chapters 1-8, and a handout with some critical extracts from Helena Kelly’s very accessible ‘Jane Austen the Secret Radical’.

The Powerpoint identifies six key features of Austen’s style for pupils to look for in an extract question. The whole of Chapter 1 is included on a handout. Then there is an extract booklet which can be used in class or set as homework with extracts from the first eight chapters of the novel, with practice extract questions.

I used this with a Year 7 MAT group. They read the blog post ‘10 reasons to take a survival course’ then answered the reading questions. They then planned and wrote an essay on ‘Should schools teach survival skills’.

Works well as a homework challenge over the holidays. The challenge leaflet contains a list of classic novels suitable for Year 7 students to read. They have to choose one (many are free to download on Kindle), read it and then fill in the leaflet with their thoughts and get a parent or guardian to sign it. I collect them in after the holidays and then everyone who has completed it gets a raffle ticket for a prize draw. It’s been a great way to get kids reading more challenging books and I also use a system where they can use it throughout the year, getting a different colour to ‘upgrade’ each time so that if they read all the books on the list they become a ‘master reader’ and get an additional prize.

One side of the postcard has an image of the ‘learning pit’ and the other has questions for students to answer about their own learning.

Suitable for Ks2 and Ks3 and low ability Ks4 Four extracts from Dickens’ original text with blanks _ where punctuation should be, and a key at the end of each line with the punctuation marks required eg. 2x ! or 2x" Answer sheet included

There are GCSE style questions to answer on the ‘voluntourism’ article and then a comparison grid to fill in to compare that article with the other one on volunteering abroad. Students can then write a 10-mark style answer : ‘Compare the attitudes of the writers to volunteering abroad.’

Key characters in Pride & Prejudice, with points for wealth, wit, influence and attraction so that students can see how characters compare to one another in their social status. These make for a nice classroom display too.

When I was teaching the WJEC Larkin/Duffy AS poetry unit, I bought a number of critical texts on Larkin and these are my typed up notes with extracts from a range of critics. Ideal if you don’t want to purchase critical books which can be expensive and time consuming to work through.

This resource was created for a low ability Y8 group. The ‘Bourne Identity’ extract leads to a vocabulary-building task then a sentencing task, then a write-on creative task.

Created for a Year 8 group. There are 3 texts on terrorism as a stimulus for group discussion. The ‘thinking hats’ sheet gets them to consider the topic from different angles and can be a useful preparatory tool before they complete a group oracy task. It can also provide a scaffold for less able students who can use the questions to structure the group discussion.

Created for a top set Year 9 group to start preparing them for GCSE ‘How’ questions. Teaching them what to look for in an extract question using ‘Great Expectations’ and a question on mood and atmosphere.

Based on WJEC style questions, this mock Language paper uses four texts on the theme of Child Soldiers and gives low-tariff and high-tariff questions such as text purpose, summary and synthesis.

6 aspects of Golding’s style to look for in an extract question: dialogue, characters, mood, relationships, actions, symbols.

Using 4 images to represent 4 key aspects of context for Lord of the Flies, this PPT helps students to understand what historical or social contextual details can help them with the essay question on the text. I asked the students to draw a simplified version of the icons into their books to remind them to include each aspect in their essays on ‘Lord of the Flies’. The images help them to remember these key points.

This handout gives three extracts from Gothic fiction: ‘Frankenstein’, ‘Dracula’ and ‘Great Expectations’. I used this with a Year 9 group who did a mini-essay on how Dickens creates mood in the final extract, and I am also planning to ask them to use two of the extracts, alongside a non-fiction extract, to synthesise ‘What is Gothic fiction’?