Two lessons on the first chapter of Of Mice and Men, focusing on Lennie and George’s characters, and what we learn about their dream, relating to context. (These would form my second and third lessons on the novel overall, following an initial introduction to the historical context.) The first of these two lessons includes some close analysis of the opening passage of the novel, asking pupils to pick out language that makes it seem idyllic. Following a section of reading, pupils are asked to analyse some quotations about Lennie and George, considering what we learn about their personalities and their relationship. This is structured for a lower ability class, but this could easily be made more challenging by removing some of the hints and pre-filled boxes on the worksheet. Consistent links are made to historical context throughout, and pupils are asked at the end to find all the evidence they can which suggests these two are typical migrant workers. The lesson ends setting a homework task, writing up their ideas about the characters. The second of these lessons focuses more on the end of the opening chapter of the novel, in which Lennie and George discuss their dreams. After a discussion about dreams, which should be steered towards getting pupils to understand the desire to own stuff and be one’s own boss, read the end of the chapter while noting the ideas about the dream as you go. Pupils can then be split into teams for a game: using the sheet with a list of points about the dream, cut up into separate slips of paper, each team needs to find a quotation that matches each point. It’s a great activity to get pupils thinking about how their evidence actually proves their point, thus improving their analytical writing. Each team sends one member to the teacher to explain their idea, and then is issued the next slip of paper to go and work on. These slips can then be used in the written activity at the end of the lesson. I’ve provided an example paragraph, and focused on discussing the context of the novel as relevant to the question. I’ve designed these lessons for a lower-ability GCSE class, but they could easily be tweaked by removing scaffolds to make them more challenging, and they would be useful at KS3 too for schools who no longer teach OMAM at GCSE level.

A ‘University Challenge’ style revision quiz with questions on A Christmas Carol and Macbeth. Questions include ideas about characters, events, and context.

This single lesson focuses on using pathetic fallacy in writing to create a particular mood. The starter activity looks at using semi colons accurately in sentences, before moving on to exploring the impact of pathetic fallacy. The lesson includes a model descriptive paragraph, followed by two opportunities for descriptive work looking at a beach scene, once on a sunny day, and once where the weather is poor. I’ve used this as part of a wider unit on descriptive writing, but also as part of my teaching on The Woman in Black at KS3, as this novel includes a good level of description to use as inspiration. I’m sure it could be woven into a unit of work on many different novels.

Three separate cloze activities to revise the context of Macbeth, focusing on: witches and supernatural; James I and the divine right of kings; the real Macbeth and Banquo in the 11th Century. I’ve included a word box to fill in the gaps. It would be really easy to remove this to increase the level of challenge. Each sheet also features some questions on the end about the topic, to help pupils connect these contextual ideas to what’s happening in the play: I’ve found that at GCSE this linking context to the text can be a challenge!