English consultant. Former Head of Faculty, and author of five texts for Pearson Education. Current examiner and team leader for two examination boards.
English consultant. Former Head of Faculty, and author of five texts for Pearson Education. Current examiner and team leader for two examination boards.
Students study a variety of speeches: (Braveheart's 'Freedom' speech; St Crispin's Day speech from Henry V; Churchill's 'Their Finest Hour' and 'Fight on the Beaches' speeches; Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, and Sojourner Truth's 'Ain't I A Woman?')
Video clips of the speeches are accompanied by full texts. Materials for differentiation ensure that students of different abilities will be able to access the work.
The classroom activity is accompanied by an integral VLE homework activity that reminds students of the main learning points of the scheme before setting a homework task.
Contents: (Full 5-7 lesson scheme of work, resources and lesson plans)
Classroom presentations
7 page workbook
Differentiation materials
VLE presentation
Homework resource booklet
Lesson plans
All images free to use commercially.
As the title suggests, this resource contains 50 activity sheets, each sheet containing four sections:
Punctuation and Sentences
Spelling Outburst
Grammar Slammer
Vocab Lab
The 50 activity sheets are progressive, developing students' understanding and skills, and covering such topics as:
Punctuation and Sentences - proper nouns, apostrophes, punctuation of speech, commas, sentence structure, main and subordinate clauses, embedded clauses, etc.
Spelling Outburst - consonant digraphs, vowel / consonant digraphs, split digraphs, consonant doubling, common errors such as their/ there/ they're, prefixes and suffixes, homophones etc.
Grammar Slammer - nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, modal verbs, past tense and present tense, past progressive, present progressive etc.
Vocab Lab - a new word for every lesson.
Great for settling students down at the beginning of the lesson with focused, meaningful SPaG work, building the contexts for SPaG over a period of time.
The resource also enables teachers to pick up any problems as the series progresses, and will ensure that there is a reference to clear accurate English at the beginning of every lesson.
Provides sufficient 'settler and starter' activities for around 15 weeks.
Answer sheets provided, so simply copy and you're ready to go!
All images are free to use commercially.
A comprehensive GCSE exam preparation package, focusing on the writing of reports and articles. The package contains exemplar responses, examination criteria, examiners' comments, etc. to help students to revise and develop their skills and knowledge.
Opportunities are given for analysis and discussion, for short burst writing tasks and for full practice tasks.
A VLE unit is included in the pack, to further embed your students' understanding.
Full lesson plans included.
All images are free for commercial use.
The first part of the unit analyses how Roald Dahl develops tension through effective sentence structure in 'The Man from the South', while the second half of the unit explores the effect of Tim Bowler's choice of words and phrases in 'Storm Catchers'.
Much oral work - discussion, dramatic readings, etc. ensure that students are active throughout the unit, which culminates in an assessed piece of work and dedicated peer assessment opportunity (linked to the VLE homework unit).
Contents: (4-6 lesson scheme of work, full resources and lesson plans)
Classroom presentations
8 page workbook
VLE Homework presentation
Homework resources
Writing frames
Peer assessment resource
Full lesson plans
Note: All images are free for use commercially.
The 'Big Non-Fiction Reading Bundle' contains four full schemes of work for 20-23 hours of classroom activities! The four units of work contain everything you need: professionally produced PowerPoint presentations, student worksheets, materials for effective differentiation, peer assessment materials, and of course, detailed teachers' notes. Not only this, but each unit also contains a supportive homework presentation for you to place on your school's VLE, or to use as further extension activities in class.
The 'Titanic' package develops students' ability to integrate information presented in different media formats, cite evidence to support analysis, and distinguish claims supported by reason from those that are not.
They investigate the sinking of the Titanic by studying route charts, casualty figures, the lifeboat launch log, diagrams of the ship and testimonies of passengers, crew and expert witnesses.
The 'Deduction and Inference' unit provides material to develop students' ability to draw inferences from a text, to determine figurative and connotative meaning and analyze the impact of specific word choice. In the centrepiece of the unit , students investigate the death of a man by drawing inferences from what they find 'about his person'.
In the third unit of the bundle, students explore the world of travel writing, reflecting on and evaluating brochures, rough guides, newspaper reports and television clips. There is much group work and discussion, and an extended activity in which students form groups to make a presentation to either promote their home town, or to give a 'rough guide' presentation - warts and all!
The final resource in the bundle offers students the opportunity to study famous speeches to consider figurative and connotative meaning, and analyze the impact of imagery, repetition etc in the texts.
Students study a variety of speeches: (Braveheart's 'Freedom' speech; St Crispin's Day speech from Henry V; Churchill's 'Their Finest Hour' and 'Fight on the Beaches' speeches; Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, and Sojourner Truth's 'Ain't I A Woman?')
Video clips of the speeches are accompanied by full texts. Materials for differentiation ensure that students of different abilities will be able to access the work.
Separately, the units of work would cost £20, so at £12, the bundle is great value for money as well. I hope it proves to be a really useful addition to your classroom resources.
Total Pages / Slides 231
An interactive game that encourages students to learn key quotes from across the three acts of 'An Inspector Calls'
With whole classes, I usually play with three teams. Each team elects one person to 'slap' on the correct character after part of a quotation has been revealed.
If the student 'slaps' correctly, this gives the rest of the team a chance to discuss the and complete the quotation exactly to gain further points. The 'slapper' is rotated every five quotes, giving 18 students the opportunity to compete in this role as well as with the team as a whole.
Alternatively, the resource could be used as an individual test or quiz, or placed on the school's VLE platform so that students can revise / play from home.
All images are 'available for re-use'.
The first part of this unit uses a passage from 'Sherlock Holmes' to clarify the meaning of the terms 'inference' and 'deduction'. Student activities then focus on the language that students need to use to explain their deductions. The second part of the unit is devoted wholly to a group 'detective' activity, based on the Simon Armitage poem 'About His Person'. Finally, the unit concludes with an assessment opportunity, taking in a second Armitage poem, and a homework activity which uses learned skills to analyse a house advertisement.
Contents: (4-6 lesson scheme of work, full resources and lesson plans)
Classroom presentations
5 page workbook
VLE homework presentation
Homework resource
Inference Placemat
Prompts (differentiation)
Writing frame
Peer assessment resource
Full lesson plans
Note: All images are free for use commercially.
Students delve into the conventions of fairy stories, considering their structure and language. Having established the stylistic techniques, and engaged in short-burst writing activities in the 'traditional style', they then look at different adaptations of the tales before rewriting them from different viewpoints - like the witch's viewpoint in 'Hansel and Gretel', and the wolf's viewpoint in 'The Three Little Pigs'.
They then have fun reading 'politically correct' fairy tales, and after oral rehearsal, pair work, group work and drama activities, write their own 'politically correct' stories.
Two assessment tasks, a peer assessment activity and a homework VLE unit complete the package.
Contents: (6-8 lesson scheme of work, full resources and lesson plans)
Classroom presentations
VLE Homework presentation
9 page workbook
Peer assessment resource
Full lesson plans
Note: All images are free to use commercially.
The 'Getting it Right' series is appropriate for both KS2 and KS3.
Each unit comprises an interactive presentation that can be loaded onto your school network.
The 'Paragraphing Fiction' unit is supported by a workbook of activities and a quiz package that reminds students of the key points of the lessons, before providing a quiz that stimulates focused discussion, enabling students to articulate and embed their learning.
All images are free for use commercially.
Contents:
Teacher presentation
Workbook
Quiz presentation
‘Sentence Power’ is a series of fifteen starter activities designed to give students opportunities in experimenting with a variety of sentence forms in a variety of contexts.
For instance, students may be asked to begin sentences with adverbs, participles, imperative verbs or abstract nouns; they may be asked to use rhetorical questions, repetition or rule of three within their sentences; they may be required to write a sentence in 15-20 words, or only five words, or end the sentence with an exclamation.
Crucially though, students are asked to experiment with their sentence types in the context of different pieces of writing, such as an extract from a thriller, from a romantic novel, or a horror story; other contexts offered are advertisements, letters of complaint, diaries, reviews, instructions, etc.
Contents:
15 PowerPoint Starters
15 page workbook.
Note: All images are free for use commercially.
A fun unit of work that takes in 'Harry Potter' and 'The Three Little Pigs' as students work on a series of activities, developing their skills in writing in appropriate registers.
Sentence starters are provided for support when appropriate, and the unit culminates in an assessment task accompanied by a peer assessment activity.
The homework unit extends the classroom unit, students being presented with activities in which they have to decide the purposes of various texts: to inform, to review, to persuade, to entertain or to instruct.
Contents: (5-7 lesson scheme of work, full resources and lesson plans)
Classroom presentations
7 page workbook
VLE homework presentation
Letter extract grid
Formal / Informal writing grid
Peer assessment resource
Full lesson plans
Note: All images are free for use commercially.
This unit of work enables students to improve their skills in developing 'setting' in narrative writing.
A homework unit for your school's VLE accompanies the classroom presentation, focusing on the use of ' the senses' in creating an effective setting.
The unit concludes with an optional assessment activity and provides materials for peer assessment, fulfilling the OFSTED 'Outstanding' requirement that teachers demonstrate 'systematic approaches to marking, target setting and feedback'.
Contents: (3-5 lesson scheme of work, full resources and lesson plans)
Classroom presentations
VLE Homework presentation
6 page workbook
Peer assessment resource
Full lesson plans
Note: All images are free for use commercially.
The focus of this unit is to develop students' ability to make inferences and determine an author's point of view in non fiction writing.
Students explore the world of travel writing, reflecting on and evaluating brochures, rough guides, newspaper reports and television clips. There is much group work and discussion, and an extended activity in which students form groups to make a presentation to either promote their home town, or to give a 'rough guide' presentation - warts and all!
The VLE homework unit offers three tasks that extend the map beyond travel writing, students reflecting on film, book, album and game reviews. In addition, they select a review to evaluate, and finally write their own reviews, using the techniques that they have studied in the unit.
Tailored peer assessment materials help students to evaluate their work and the work of others; the unit comes complete with full teachers' notes, and as always, are 'dyslexia friendly'.
Contents:
PowerPoint classroom presentation
Homework presentation (for your school's VLE)
Workbook
Homework resource material
Assessment resource material
Peer assessment material
Placemats
Full teachers' notes
Total Pages62
In this unit, students analyse a series of car advertisements (remember the Skoda cake advert?), and learn how to explain their ideas with clarity and precision. The advertisements are very different in terms of their target audience, their appeal, etc. Students engage in a range of linked activities, which encourage discussion, group work and individual work.
The unit culminates in an optional assessment and peer assessment activity. Oh, and it's good fun as well!
Contents: (4-6 lesson scheme of work, full resources and lesson plans)
Classroom presentations
VLE homework presentation
7 page workbook
Links to TV car advertisements
Peer assessment resource
Full lesson plans
Note: All images are free for use commercially
A comprehensive GCSE exam preparation package, focusing on formal and informal letter writing. The package contains exemplar letters, examination criteria, examiners' comments, placemats, etc., to help students to revise and develop their skills and knowledge.
Opportunities are given for analysis and discussion, for short burst writing tasks and for full practice tasks.
A VLE unit is included in the pack, to further embed your students' understanding.
Full lesson plans included.
All images are free for commercial use.
The 'Getting it Right' series is appropriate for both KS2 and KS3.
Each unit comprises an interactive presentation that can be loaded onto your school network.
The 'Proper Nouns' unit is supported by a workbook of activities, an assessment activity to check students' understanding, and a quiz package, that reminds students of the key points of the lessons, before providing a quiz that stimulates focused discussion, enabling students to articulate and embed their learning.
All images are free for use commercially.
Contents:
Teacher presentation
Workbook, including assessment activity
Quiz presentation
‘Never a Crossed Word’ is a fun package for all ages. It is said that if students can’t say it, they can’t write it, and this resource focuses on developing students’ speaking and listening skills, giving them opportunities to describe and explain in a highly structured, fast paced game format.
The pictures are not mere decoration. They give students clues and ‘entrances’ to the word that they are trying to describe, and as such, are integral to the game. The resource can be used as a lesson starter, as an end of term activity, or as a literacy activity for tutor groups etc., allowing those students who may be reluctant to express themselves the opportunity to do so in a fun way.
This resource provides sixty games (sixty slides – two levels of difficulty), all focused on verbs, and contains a built in timer to enhance the excitement of the game!
Contents: PowerPoint games
Rules of the game
All images are free to use commercially.
The 'Getting it Right' series is appropriate for both KS2 and KS3.
Each unit comprises an interactive presentation that can be loaded onto your school network.
The 'Punctuating Speech' unit is supported by a workbook of activities, an assessment activity to check students' understanding, and a quiz package, that reminds students of the key points of the lessons, before providing a quiz that stimulates focused discussion, enabling students to articulateand embed their learning.
All images are free for use commercially.
Contents:
Teacher presentation
Workbook, including assessment activity
Quiz presentation
The 'Getting it Right' series is appropriate for both KS2 and KS3.
Each unit comprises an interactive presentation that can be loaded onto your school network.
The 'Using Commas' unit is supported by a workbook of activities, an assessment activity, and a quiz package that reminds students of the key points of the lessons, before providing a quiz that stimulates focused discussion, enabling students to articulate and embed their learning.
All images are free for use commercially.
Contents:
Teacher presentation
Workbook
Quiz presentation
In this unit, students work on planning and delivering a report on 'The School Play', while the school magazine's editor drops in various suggestions, leading students to reconsider their plans as the unit progresses. The unit offers two assessment tasks and a peer assessment activity, while a writing frame offers organisational support when required.
In the homework unit for your school's VLE, students are confronted by the mysteries of the famous 'Roswell' alien landing incident.
Contents: (4-6 lesson scheme of work, full resources and lesson plans)
Classroom presentations
4 page workbook
VLE Homework presentation
Writing frame
Peer assessment resource
Full lesson plans
Note: All images are free for use commercially.