• You will need the specimen paper for Unseen Poetry – p10 & 11, AQA/AQA-77121-SQP.PDF- for each student. • The Power Point will give students a strategy to follow for this paper – annotating the specimen paper, then writing the key ‘steps’ of the strategy is a good way of ensuring students engage with the strategy, but a handout has been made for revision. Some suggested questions can be used by you as a guide for setting essays or given to students for their own revision.

The new AQA English Spec. for teaching from 2015 includes a whole reading and writing paper [Paper 1 in the specimen material] given over to both reading and writing creative material. These exercises can be 'drip-fed' to KS3 and KS4 to help them hone the skills for this task. This set of tasks focuses on descriptive vocabulary and figures of speech. I've marked them A-C in order of how I use them, but they stand alone; the extract handout goes with PPT C. All photographs by Graham Hobbs.

This short novel is riveting, so ideal for a boy-heavy class or those not too keep on reading. The lesson begins with a true or false starter dressed up as 'Would I Lie to You': depending on the group you could invite students to come up with their own facts, perhaps researched for homework and present them with more spin, or divide the group into two opposing teams. These facts are chosen for their general relevance to the story. The next phase is looking at the opening of the novel to notice how succinctly so much is said - a good exercise in inference. The PP takes students through the thinking process and the handout sheet enables them to annotate the text without re-writing the sentences. The lesson ends with a writing exercise in which they try to emulate Sedgwick's concentrated writing in 75 words. These extracts could also be used to supplement a unit on 'survival', or a focus on reading: 'how does the writer use language to...'

This 'recreative' lesson prepares students in KS3 and KS4 for writing based on another creative text. Particularly useful for section B of the new [2015 for 2017]AQA English paper 1, where students have to write 'their own creative text, inspired by the topic that they have responded to in section A to demonstrate their narrative and descriptive skills in response to a written prompt, scenario or visual image'. In this case it is a poem, 'Down the Laundrette' , and they are given a range of writing options, culminating in peer assessment. 'Down at the Launderette' is from Hiding Out by Irene Rawnsley (Smith|Doorstop Books, 1996) and is used with the publisher's permission. Top Tip: when checking peer assessed work, give rewards not only for good work, but perceptive peer comments; that way you keep students taking peer assessment seriously and raise the standard of response- the last slide suggests the type of comment looked for.

Here's a little something to challenge your top students: persuasion the classical way. The Ancient Greeks worked out how a persuasive speech should be structured to make it effective, Shakespeare played around with the form in many of his most famous speeches and even Barack Obama's speech writers follow the formula. Along with their connectives and persuasive devices, give your most able a tried and tested structure to lift their persuasive writing above the ordinary. There's a handout explaining the structure, a PP to test it's been understood and a worksheet to guide preparation for students to write their own speeches.

Using AQA's 'Love through the Ages' poetry anthology, these resources aim to distinguish as far as one can, between Metaphysical poetry and Cavalier poetry, but also to show how blurred the line between them sometimes is: this is the focus of the first Power Point . The quiz quotes lines of poetry and asks students to decide whether the extract represents Cavalier or Metaphysical poetry to enable them to discuss how to recognise each school. Focus turns to 'The Scrutiny' in the work sheet and then there's a revision sheet that focuses on the AOs to ensure that they are met.

In this lesson, explore the power of choosing the right verb. The Power Point provides the lesson from start to finish and the word doc. provides a fill-in opening for weaker students, to get them started. The Lesson provides a definition, an 'odd-one-out' task, some quick physical activity [select someone to demonstrate if the class would be unsettled by a bit of movement], an extract from 'The Recruit' and some writing suggested by photographs. At the heart of it all is 'show don't tell' to move writing up a gear.

This third set of resources covers chapters 9-13 and a note to the teacher outlines how each of the resources can be used. Chapter 9 is a creative writing task that revisits structure: all the words from a description at the start of the chapter have been placed in alphabetical order and students create there own images from these words. Discussion can then move to justifying the choices and from thence to Segdwick’s description as students read the chapter. Information from Chapters 10 & 11 is retrieved and summarised for a police report on Einar’s intended robbery, while chapter 12 leads to a debate on guns, introduced by a PP. Chapter 13’s worksheet returns the focus to imagery, close reading and analysis by looking at a brief description and picking out key words.

More Revolver resources as requested! I love this book and have read it many times - it balances memorable description, clever structuring and important life-lessons in a toe-sweating thriller. Short chapters - and the topic - make it ideal reading for boy heavy classes from y7-y9. The idea of the series is to make available a range of tasks to suit where you get to - doing every single task may get in the way of reading. We begin with a short self mark test on chapter 6 - ideal as a starter after previous reading. Alternatively, a wanted poster makes a good homework task. Chapter 7 introduces students to allusion with a note handout either to help the teacher or as notes for the exercise book. Chapter 8’s short self mark starter makes students aware of the novel’s structure through linking it’s opening sentence to both the previous chapter and the previous chapter of that story strand.

It might not seem like much if you don’t follow the links, but this is the portal to the world of unseen poetry! This booklet will save you and your students hours of trawling the Internet. My thanks to Caro Evans, my colleague and friend who asked me to compile this list and selected the poems- we decided that the most logical way to prepare for the unseen element of the exam was to look at other poems by the studied poets, to give students an idea of the context of the time and an ability to write about form and structure. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I’ve searched for information online and given you the links - so this works best as an e-book, where links can be easily copied and pasted. So this is something you can use for your own preparation and planning of unseen poetry - along with the sheet of possible comparison questions- or can mail to your students so that they can do their own exploring. There’s such a lot of treasure here to discover - Enjoy!

Used as a quick verbal starter or a more detailed group discussion and write-up, these quotes further invite students to consider all the potential discussion questions they may be useful for.

These 9 slides present students with a variety of questions from past papers while giving them a strategy for answering them and an opportunity to try their own. It also links with the 'apt quote exercise.

A straightforward summary of Brian Clark's Whose Life is it Anyway to make clear who the characters are, what the play is about and what the major themes are. Particularly useful for SEN students who need to know what they have to 'get&' before reading the play.

One of the unusual things about this novel is that author David Almond not only speaks to the reader in various places, but also invites them to mention how the strands of the story end. Here students are invited to imagine - and then write in 3 -5 paragraphs - what happens to Clarence P. Clapp. Before they do, they create success criteria for themselves [pitch to class ability - 'Begin every sentence with a capital letter' to 'Use a wide range of punctuation for effect': you know what your class needs to work on] and collect useful words and imagery from the text - the foundations of 'close reading'! As an additional challenge or homework, students can find more information on websites given and a PP slide allows the teacher to project the information. This also makes it easier to go to the sites as a class if preferred.

The focus of this exercise is the contrast in feeling between Ernie and Stan. Some of the words appear in the chapter, some are inferred. This task could be done as a plenary after reading the chapter or as a simple homework. Page 2 gives the answers and sets an extra challenge as extension work. This novel by David Almond is published by Walker Books and is suitable for KS2 & KS3 reluctant readers. The starter, which could be be done as a way of introducing the homework or as a starter when the homework/ plenary is being marked. Suitable for using individual white-boards as well as for exercise books.

This cluster of resources is rooted in two approaches to teaching: A] Flipped Learning – the students first go and find out about their topic. Your task is to bring all the threads together for them in a plenary lesson AND B] ‘Jigsaw’ – where students find out a piece of the whole then share information to get the complete picture. Allow several lessons and a homework session for this task as it involves research and feedback. The PP presents a useful way of introducing the poems, still keeping to the independent approach and providing a lead in to the tasks. On the Word docs are AO cards with links to guide students' search for information. To finish off, give students an idea of your exam board’s requirements for the poetry question, give them a mark scheme and ask them to write a model answer to a typical question using all the information they’ve gathered in their own research and from their classmates. Print out the planning sheet [assessment] on A3 so that students can plan to cover all the AOs in a trial question for each poem.

This fun, illustrated novel by David Almond is ideal for KS2 & weaker KS3 readers, especially those who don't like reading much. This first task is a word recognition exercise that helps improve spelling by getting students to notice words within words. This also makes a good homework task. To facilitate peer or self-assessment, the answers on p2 can be projected. You can extend the task by setting a spelling test on the words. The PP takes the challenge further: students are shown how to memorise the spelling of words and then asked to find 3-5 of their own errors to learn to spell correctly using the technique. Tip: let them use colours to show the words within words.

The best way to revise unseen poetry is by doing trial exam papers, so here is one in which students compare a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney with a sonnet by Christina Rossetti. A pp enables you to display instructions while handing out the papers and while doing the peer assessment. Indicative content is given to this end as is a student friendly summary of the bands. Two lessons worth of work here, or a homework and a lesson, plus lots of discussion and revision opportunities.

A wordsearch with a difference - find the synonyms in the text, write them down and find both clue and answer in the wordsearch. 'The Undoor' is a short story in Chris Priestley's 'Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror. This task promotes literacy and could be a homework activity. The answers are on p2 and can be projected or handed out. A useful starter activity could be a quick re-cap of synonyms and antonyms, using some of the words from the wordsearch [don't tell them thhe words are coming up, but do link them to the story; that way the alert students feel rewarded when they notice some work has already been done for them] Apart from the activity given on slide 2, students could make a note of the definitions on slide 1 for future reference.