I teach English at an academically successful school in Berkshire. I only publish resources that I have personally used in the classroom and always aim for maximum visual and interactive impact.
I teach English at an academically successful school in Berkshire. I only publish resources that I have personally used in the classroom and always aim for maximum visual and interactive impact.
Contained in this resource are a PDF document and PowerPoint version of display material and quote banks for each major character in Of Mice and Men.
The quote banks are divided into four sections according to some of Steinbeck’s main themes and feature a small AI-generated image of the relevant character in the top right. Students can then populate the quote banks with key quotations for each character as they relate to the key themes.
Please note: the quote banks are blank for students to fill in.
The last slides/pages of the resource contain much larger versions of the AI images (one example can be seen in the cover image), which can be printed in colour and used for display.
A bundle of lessons that follows Edexcel’s A level specification for the poetry of John Keats. There is one lesson for each poem.
Included in this bundle are the second 7 lessons in the sequence, in the order that they are listed in the exam board specification.
To Sleep
Ode to Psyche
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on Melancholy
Bright Star
To Autumn
A bundle of lessons that follows Edexcel’s A level specification for the poetry of John Keats. There is one lesson for each poem of Keats’s.
Included in this bundle are the first 7 lessons in the sequence, in the order that they are listed in the exam board specification.
‘O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell’
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
On The Sea
‘In drear-nighted December’
On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’
The Eve of St Agnes
A lesson on Kipling’s ‘If-’, which engages students with the poem’s main themes and ideas, and features of language and structure.
It contains some background on the poem, information on stoicism (which seems to underpin many of the poem’s ideals), guided annotation, information on form and structure, and an exam-style question with writing frame.
The lesson was designed for use with high ability students, studying the Edexcel IGCSE in Literature.
The cover image was created using AI and does not reflect the appearance of the the slides in the resource. The image has been uploaded in case you would like to use it.
A lesson sequence on the excerpt ‘Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan’ from the Edexcel IGCSE anthology.
There may be two lessons worth of material here, focused on having students identify and annotate the key features of language and structure. Then, then class are divided in two and provided with tables to complete, which focus them on analysing either the presentation of the people or the place, for question 4 of Paper 1.
The resource may be better used with higher ability students, as the majority of the work is student focused, relying on their thoughts and analyses and those of their partner/group.
Two AI-generated images have been used for decoration.
Up to two lessons’ worth of content on Wilfred Owen’s poem Exposure.
This was created and delivered to a middle-ability Year 8 class and provides a number of engaging activities including:
Storyboarding
Descriptive writing
Language analysis (focusing on the presentation of nature, not war)
Diary entry imaginative writing
AI generated imagery has been used in this lesson, making it very visually pleasing.
2-3 lessons worth of content on Significant Cigarettes, an excerpt from Rose Tremain’s 2007 novel The Road Home, which appears in the Edexcel IGCSE Anthology.
These lessons were used to help produce the poetry and prose coursework. Students wrote on the theme of ‘identity’ in three texts.
There is a wide range of activities, including guided annotation, discussion questions, analysis and practice paragraph writing. The PowerPoint is 15 slides in length, so there should be plenty for you to pick and choose from.
The excerpt is not supplied with the lesson.
A full lesson on the poem Remember by Christina Rossetti, which appears on the Edexcel IGCSE Literature specification. However, the content of the resource is applicable to any course of study at GCSE level which includes this poem.
The resource includes: a starter activity where key techniques in the poem are matched to definitions; an embedded YouTube video of a reading of the poem; a short summary of the poem; guided, step-by-step language analysis through key questions; summary of the main features of form and structure; an exemplar response to an exam-style question (students can then have a go at writing a response themselves).
A full lesson guiding students through the poem ‘Hide and Seek’ by Vernon Scannell, which appears on the Edexcel IGCSE Literature specification.
The resource contains: a simple starter activity; guided analysis, breaking down key lines with questions; a plenary activity asking students their thoughts on the moral of the poem.
The lesson could be developed with an extended writing activity and additional questions for each section of the poem. These are not included and this resource is not as detailed as some other resources in my shop, hence the lower price point.
A full lesson designed to guide students through the poem ‘Piano’ by D. H. Lawrence, which appears on the Edexcel IGCSE Literature specification.
The resource includes: a starter activity; contextual information; detailed questions on language analysis to cover the whole short poem; information on the main features of form and structure.
A full lesson designed to lead students through the poem Half-Past Two by U. A. Fanthorpe which appears on the Edexcel IGCSE Literature specification.
The visually-pleasing resource includes: a choice of starter activity; an ‘exploding’ quotations activity with detailed exemplar; guided language analysis with questions on key lines; a PETAL paragraph writing frame to support students in writing a response to an exam-style question.
The cover image was created by AI and is included in the resource.
A full lesson designed to guide students through the poem ‘Prayer Before Birth’ by Louis MacNeice, which is found in the Edexcel IGCSE Literature specification. The lesson is aimed at students in years 10 and 11.
The resource is visually attractive and includes: a choice of starter activity; summary and background on the poem; an embedded YouTube video of a reading of the poem; 7 slides with key lines from the poem and guided questions to help students analyse the poem (these could be used for group work or guided analysis); a short summary of the features of form and structure; an additional task directing students to examine the theme of nature vs industrialisation.
A full lesson designed to lead students through the extract from Adichie’s TED talk ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ found in the Edexcel IGCSE Literature and Language anthology. The lesson is recommended for students in years 10 and 11.
The resource includes a choice of two starter activities, a linked video of the original TED talk (check the notes section for recommended times to watch with your class), a group discussion activity with prompt cards, a table with key quotations and devices for students to complete with analysis, and a PETAL writing frame to support students in writing an exam-style response.
A lesson designed for the extract from 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston from the Edexcel IGCSE anthology for English Language specification A.
The lesson includes two starter activities, a pair of engaging embedded YouTube videos relating to the text, a simple task for annotating the text, an example question 4 from a past-paper with an exemplar response, and a writing frame utilising the PETAL acronym to support students in writing an exam-style response for question 4.
This lesson was used with a year 9 class approaching their GCSE years and could easily be used or adapted for use with years 10 and 11 for initial teaching of the text.
A simple lesson to help students get to grips with the meaning and effects of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.
First, a modern translation of the poem is provided so that students can access its meaning, along with definitions for key words. Then, there is an example of how one of the key lines in the poem could be ‘exploded’ , followed by a task instructing students to ‘explode’ a line from the poem themselves. Several exemplars with images are also provided to help students on their way. Finally, there is a PETAL writing frame to support students in responding to the question: How does Shakespeare present love in Sonnet 116?
This lesson teaches students how to analyse the language of a poem through a range of activities relating to Counting Tigers by Gillian Clarke. It includes a choice of starter activity, a quotation ‘exploding’ activity, two exemplar responses to an exam-style question on the poem and a writing frame utilising the PETAL acronym to help students write their own response. The lesson is highly visual and there may be enough content to cover more than just one one-hour lesson. I taught this lesson to a low-ability year 9 class, but it could easily be pitched to GCSE students as an unseen poem.
A simple lesson focusing on the use of rhyme in Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I would recommend it being taught to younger students getting to grips with how we annotate rhyme schemes and compose rhymed poems; I taught this lesson to a mixed ability year 7 class.
The presentation includes a starter asking students to use metaphors. Then, there is a slide exemplifying the difference between true and near rhyme. I’ve included an embedded video of a good reading of the poem. Following this is an annotation exercise and, finally, students are asked to write their own rubai using the same rhyme scheme as Frost.
Intended as the fifth in a creative writing scheme of work on dystopian writing. However, this lesson will work independently.
The resource is centred around an extract from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick as an example of how students could write a persuasive advert for their own automaton - either humanoid or animal.
I have included an additional starter activity as the material may take more than one lesson to cover.
The resource was designed for high ability year 7 students, but could work for students in years 5, 6 or 8, dependent upon ability.
This is a 35-slide series of lessons for the Edexcel English Literature A level course on the poetry anthology ‘The Great Modern Poets’.
The resource introduces modernism briefly and then contains individual lessons for the six poems of Robert Frost’s in the anthology:
The Runaway
Mending Wall
Stopping by woods
Mowing
The Road Not Taken
Out, out-
Engaging YouTube videos are linked, there are a variety of discussion questions about language, form and structure and key context is provided.
I have also drawn on online web articles (contained within) as a stepping-off point for discussion - mainly from the Poetry Foundation website, which I found very useful in teaching this scheme. Links to the original articles are included.
Note that for ‘Out, out -’, there is only a one-slide brief for a student presentation, rather than the more in-depth, discussion-based material provided for other poems.
A full lesson centred around an extract from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games with activities designed to get students to analyse how the author creates a sense of setting using a backstory and proper nouns. Students then have the opportunity to create their own backstory for a dystopia they have imagined.
The resource was created as the fourth installment in a scheme of work, but could be used for a one-off lesson too. It is aimed at high-ability students in Year 7 but would work well for students in years 5, 6 or 8 dependent upon ability.