Ideal task for World Space Week! Cover it! Descriptive writing, photo prompt, differentiated w/s, all printed, suits non-specialist. Sometimes you need a class just to get on with it, or you're supplying cover at short notice for a non-specialist - this series covers those times when it needs to be plain and simple on paper, but nonetheless needs to be worthwhile and relevant. In this task students have a picture and have to write a story inspired by it. There are 3 different levels - the simplest provides a frame and even some words to trace for those who can't write legibly and need help coming up with ideas. The next level up has just the prompts and the most able are challenged to go further with some story openings to inspire their creativity. The topic of this exercise is SPACE.

Here is everything you need for a fun media project - get your students making a montage. This is aimed at yr9s who will be doing a Media GCSE, so gives them a flavour of projects to come and is ideal for the end of the year. Although most will want to film, it is possible to deliver a montage on Power Point, so all skill and interest levels are accommodated. There are 6 lessons with instruction slides, links to lots of clips showing montages as well as tutorials for use at home. The note to the teacher guides you through the scheme and the montage outline gives students their instructions and due dates [you fill those in]. As well as a project review sheet to flag up problems, there is a self- and peer- assessment sheet for when the montages are done.

Because students work on paper and answers can be printed off so that no computer is needed, this differentiated work is ideal to set as last minute cover . The first set of tasks is linking words with their opposites, choosing from words provided, so that no cumbersome dictionaries are needed, though they can be used if desired. For those who finish that, there is a crossword puzzle. This contains clues from across the ability range, encouraging different abilities to work together and extending mid-ability students.

Ideal for a last minute cover lesson, this task has a separate SEN version of the lesson, but also tasks get more demanding as they go, enabling non-specialist to use differentiation by work covered. Beginning with couplet descriptive sketches choosing words from a box, writing focuses of visual the auditory descriptions. Examples are given throughout, with quoted extracts to stimulate ideas. As a bonus, two extra photographs can be used to repeat the final written task at a later date as exam practice or to provide variety.

This differentiated quiz has 5 direct question as an easy round 1, 'connect 4' as round 2, round3 is 'odd-one-out', round 4 is 'true or false' while word-games will make round 5 slightly longer. the quiz itself will take 20-30 minutes allowing for team discussion, writing of answers and then marking, but it could easily take all lesson depending on the time you allow for the word-games: base that on the interest and ability of the class. Once the quiz has been marked there is the film story writing extension to ensure this fills a lesson, if not more. Further lessons can be spent reading each other's openings and outlines, pitching the best as S&L and then debating which should be made. Who knows, some may even be inspired to make their movies, in time for a Christmas viewing, it does happen when a group of students are keen on movie making in their own time.

Ideal as homework or cover, these self-mark worksheets each give some brief information relevant to the poem and set three tasks, for which there are answers on the second page. If done in class, students can work in groups and then peer assess other groups, giving you a bit of breathing space! Perfect for embedding poems after class exploration. A-level students needing to brush up their poetry revision pre-exams would benefit from the tasks too. Covers the 1st eight poems in the AQA anthology.

Everything you need for a dynamic revision lesson! The lesson plan sets out each step with space for you to fill in your timings. There are 36 quotes to give your students choice and variety - ideal for popping into a ‘hat’ - all with their words in alphabetical order: students have to try to recognise and reconstruct the quote. Poems are identified for those who need help. The next step is to annotate the quote with AOs 2, 3 & 5, then glue it onto A3 for another student to add AO4 texts. Next round, students add AO2, 3 & 5 to those links. Students can photograph the final product on their phones as handy ‘night before’ revision notes - and all this is explained in clear step by step instructions to the students via the Power Point, which has a clear starter, with answers, the main activity explained, a plenary and even a home work task! What’s not to like?!

The penultimate cluster of resources for this excellent novel. Activities range from PEA paragraphs, creative and autobiographical writing to report writing. Inference and analysis are the key skills practised and even spelling is covered. Teacher notes outline lesson ideas and in some cases task options to suit different class types. At least 4 lessons worth of material.

Assuming you are reading with this brilliant novel with your class in part of the lesson [the chapters are very short] there is something for five lessons, each focusing on both a chapter and a skill. Retrieval and synthesis are practised by writing a police report, while in other tasks sayings, titles, structure and implications are explored through starters, plenaries and PEAL paragraphs. Each task builds on skills visited in previous tasks so that they become familiar and increasingly independent strategies.

These resources cover chapters 18 to 21 and take a closer look at characterisation, allusion, structure and inference, making language analysis accessible to younger, less able students, boys with no former interest in literature as well as enthusiastic, more able readers. Answers enable peer and self-assessment. All the tasks are focused and succinct, assuming reading of the text will also be happening in the lesson. Some choice of activitiy is also offered for chapter 21.

Ideal for KS2 & 3, this quick starter has 3 slides taken from public signs and adverts where language ‘errors’ exist. From this, students can be encouraged to find errors in the signs, adverts and texts they encounter.

A bundle in itself, this resource has 13 units to it. Teachers’ notes on each chapters resources navigate you through the exciting end of this great novel. Homework, starters, main lessons and assessments with answers cover similes, persuasive S&L as well as writing, mystery solving and taking life-lessons from literature. Activities range from debating to poster making via questions, intuitive leaps [signalled] inference and formulating an opinion. In chapter 34, for example, the starter introduces a learning question, answers to which are found during the lesson through reading the chapter and the plenary and homework address formulating an answer as an essay.

If you’ve got to this point, you know what an excellent novel this is, ideal for short reading extracts and lots of teaching opportunities. This set of resources offers teacher notes to help with planning and pacing your lessons. Tasks cover characterisation, vocabulary, imagery and structure. While tasks are aimed at younger or weaker readers in the main, the skills taught are aimed at building a profound understanding of crafting and ‘active reading’. Links are made to students’ own writing, improving writing skills from literary devices to SPaG. Throughout the series skills are revisited to inculcate them via different tasks. Answers are provided and most tasks are self-or peer assess.

Help students to see how quotes can suit a variety of questions: this enables them to choose apt quotes to memorise, saving time in the exams, or just to find quickly. This works with the 'Section B style questions - a strategy' PP. The poets focused on here are Tennyson and Coleridge, but the idea can be adapted for any texts.

After the first ‘getting to know you’ lesson, you want to get the measure of your students as well as help them get into your routines. This booklet contains 3 lessons that include self and peer assessment, SPaG, Reading and Writing tasks with answers, instructions, explanations and examples on the PP. The sections you need to mark are short, but quickly give you a sense of the student’s abilities, personality and emotional state. So don’t get tripped up by missing registers, not enough books or any of the other things that prevent a crisp start: print a set of booklets for your next y7s before the summer break and ease them into secondary school with bitesized tasks that form the basis of all KS3 tasks, but are KS2 friendly. On the back page of the booklet are handy reminders of the acronyms that students may’ve come across at primary school to help them proofread and correct their work.

There are three sets of homophones here. In each case students first get the handout and learn the homophones as homework. Later they do the relevant exercise and use the answers to mark their own or a partner's work, which can be done as a starter. The exercise tests their knowledge of the homophones, but could also be set as another day's homework - useful if you're under pressure to set homework at a busy time and need something worth doing yet easy to mark [just check peer marking if required]. In addition, because students learn best by re-visiting work, there is also a test for each of the sets of homophones, also with answers. This work is best done drip-fed over a term or two. Use the miscellaneous homophone handout as an extension exercise when needed: students can make up their own 'test' sentences using them as a guide, to test one another.

This resource focuses on AQA’s English Paper 2. Help your students ‘cast a spell’ on exams by making sure they know the criteria each question is judged on, the time available to answer questions and have a strategy for approaching each task - all summarised on this mat/poster [A4 or A3 printout]. The PP serves either as a quick class quiz to make sure they’ve taken note of the information - could be a quick starter for every lesson focusing on one question at a time - or as the answers to the question handout, which in turn could be a quick test, plenary or homework. If you’re handing back mock exams, this is a timely reminder of what you were looking for: useful for corrections. Otherwise, revision for the next exam!

Help your students ‘cast a spell’ on exams by making sure they know the criteria each question is judged on, the time available to answer questions and have a strategy for approaching each task - all summarised on this mat/poster [A4 or A3 printout]. The PP serves either as a quick class quiz to make sure they’ve taken note of the information - could be a quick starter for every lesson focusing on one question at a time - or as the answers to the question handout, which in turn could be a quick test, plenary or homework. If you’re handing back mock exams, this is a timely reminder of what you were looking for: useful for corrections. Otherwise, revision for the next exam!