I am an English specialist and I am passionate about supporting all students to access the English curriculum, to achieve at the highest possible levels in their exams and to love the subject. I currently teach AQA and have created lots of full schemes of work which develop exam skills and independence. All my resources have been tried and refined in the classroom; I hope that you will find them useful.
I am an English specialist and I am passionate about supporting all students to access the English curriculum, to achieve at the highest possible levels in their exams and to love the subject. I currently teach AQA and have created lots of full schemes of work which develop exam skills and independence. All my resources have been tried and refined in the classroom; I hope that you will find them useful.
• Fully-resourced 12 Week Animal Farm Scheme.
• 48 lessons including fully-planned and resourced assessments. Includes 8 peer/self-assessments, 4 teacher assessments and 4 structured D.I.R.T lessons.
• The content is deliberately designed to be challenging, in terms of concepts, vocabulary and context. An illustration of activities includes: Mini Lectures, frequent assessment and opportunities for extended writing, research lessons, contextual source material drawn from GCSE History, high level modelling materials and frequent use and repetition of sophisticated vocabulary.
• There is a focus on mastery of key technical writing skills. Writing skills lessons & activities are interleaved to prepare students for the SPaG element of the AQA GCSE qualifications. There are a number of fluency activities.
• A ‘language through literature’ approach is taken, with the inclusion of reading and writing tasks clearly linked to AQA English GCSE Language Papers 1 & 2.
• Homework is inbuilt and is called Independent Study; it is designed to be challenging. It is an essential element of the scheme and linked class activities are based upon independent study tasks. The aim is to improve students’ independent study skills, reform their view of ‘homework’ so that they understand its central role in their learning and significantly improve the rate and quality of completion. The level of challenge increases over the course of the scheme.
• D.I.R.T lessons are planned into the scheme for the lesson after the teacher assessment; however, this is a ‘floating’ lesson and there is flexibility in when it is delivered to accommodate marking. It should ideally be delivered within 4 lessons of the assessment. The D.I.R.T lessons will include both structured and independent tasks.
• All resources are included with the exception of the following, which I cannot include for copyright reasons: 1. The OCR GCSE Russian History Source Pack which is required for some Independent Study and 2. The article required in Week 5, Lesson 1, ‘The Ghosts of Yalta Still Haunt The World’ by Richard Ebbing. Both resources can be found on Google.
• Detailed teaching instructions & differentiation suggestions are contained within the notessection of each PowerPoint slide.
• For referencing and page number purposes, the Penguin Classics 2000 edition of the text has been used.
An in-depth, 30-page knowledge organiser for the New Windmill Book of Nineteenth Century Short Stories on the Edexcel IGCSE English Literature Course. For each story, there is:
1. An overview, covering key points on characterisation, plot and themes. Links are made between the stories where relevant.
2. Key quotations
3. A list of key themes.
My GCSE students found this a really useful resource once we had finished first-teaching of the collection, to help them gain a thorough knowledge of the collection as a whole and a more secure understanding of the connections between the stories. I used this for phased revision - students would revise the information for one story, complete an in-class test on it and then move on to the next. Equally, it could be used as a resource to support essay-writing.
This lesson introduces essentialism and teaches students how to write an effective thesis/introduction to a comparative essay on essentialism and The Bloody Chamber. Designed for the OCR A Level English Literature comparative literary studies module. The resources include a fun 'odd-one-out' starter on stereotyping and essentialism, to be followed by discussion, a resource which clearly explains essentialism, a model thesis comparing two gothic texts (The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart) for students to read and dissect, a comparative essay question on essentialism and The Bloody Chamber and a paired activity in which students write a thesis in response to this question. The full essay is then written for homework.
This lesson works well early-on in the A Level course as it gives students confidence in how to approach a comparative essay.
14 questions on the short story 'Napoleon and the Spectre' by Charlotte Bronte based on SOLO Taxonomy principles. The questions are designed to be done after a first reading of the story to check and develop students' understanding of the plot, context and characters in a phased way. They are divided into sections of 'Unistructural', 'Multistructural', 'Relational' and 'Extended Abstract' going from basic, building-block knowledge of the story to abstract connections to contemporary ideas and writing. Students choose a starting point appropriate to their current skill and knowledge level; equally, they could work in differentiated groups, with each group taking a set of questions to answer. Students might need to conduct some research in order to answer some of the questions.
Designed for teaching of the New Windmill 19th Century Short Stories on the Edexcel IGCSE.
14 questions on the short story 'Country Living' by Guy De Maupassant based on SOLO Taxonomy principles. The questions are designed to be done after a first reading of the story to check and develop students' understanding of the plot, context and characters in a phased way. They are divided into sections of 'Unistructural', 'Multistructural', 'Relational' and 'Extended Abstract' going from basic, building-block knowledge of the story to abstract connections to contemporary ideas and writing. Students choose a starting point appropriate to their current skill and knowledge level; equally, they could work in differentiated groups, with each group taking a set of questions to answer. Students might need to conduct some research in order to answer some of the questions.
Designed for teaching of the New Windmill 19th Century Short Stories on the Edexcel IGCSE.
Three sets of questions on the short stories 'News of the Engagement', 'The Unexpected' and 'Hop Frog' from the New Windmill collection. The questions are designed to be done after a first reading of the story to check and develop students' understanding of the plot, context and characters. There is a combination of comprehension and analysis questions. This would make an effective classwork, homework or flipped learning task if you asked students to read the story independently before completing the questions.
Designed for teaching of the New Windmill 19th Century Short Stories on the Edexcel IGCSE.
Nine comprehension and analysis questions on the short story 'The Nightingale and the Rose' by Oscar Wilde requiring in-depth, critical responses. The questions are designed to be done after a first reading of the story to check and develop students' understanding of the plot, characters and themes. This is a useful classwork or homework resource.
Designed for teaching of the New Windmill 19th Century Short Stories on the Edexcel IGCSE.
A character analysis lesson on Macbeth & Lady Macbeth. It is designed to help students build towards writing extended analytical responses. The resources are fully differentiated with modelling & scaffolding included. The different steps can be used as differentiated starting points, or all students can start at the beginning. The progress slide allows you to demonstrate progress within the lesson easily and students enjoy working through the levels. The full colour resources are very engaging. This could be used with a KS3 or lower set KS4 group.
Thirteen challenging questions for A Level students on 'The Bloody Chamber', the title story of Carter's collection by the same name. Designed to be answered after reading and discussing the story. Students are asked to consider perspective, source, mythology, links to Carter's 'The Sadeian Woman' and the musical references in the tale. Links are included to Bach, Debussy, Wagner and Verdi YouTube videos as students are asked to consider their different musical styles and how these relate to the tale.
A bundle of three handy resources on the Marriage Tales and the presentation of January & May's relationship. 'Mapping the Marriage Tales' allows students to summarise each of the marriage tales and plot them on a 'graph' based on the view of marriage presented and who is in charge (videos of the four tales are on YouTube!). The 'Sympathy Graph' is useful for assessing how sympathetic May & January are at different points in the tale. 'The Wedding Night Experience' requires students to explore May and January's different experiences of the consummation of the marriage.
Thirteen questions on Angela Carter's 'Puss-in-Boots' tale from The Bloody Chamber collection. The questions are designed to be completed after reading the story and encourage further research and critical thinking. Created for the OCR A Level Literature comparative textual study which heavily weights context and requires knowledge of critics, so these questions test and develop both of these skills.
A research-based lesson to introduce the Commedia Dell'Arte stock characters which Carter draws on in 'Puss-in-Boots'. This could be completed before or after reading the story (although bear in mind that one of the questions asks students to make links with the story). Students will need access to the internet (this can be done on phones if necessary). The resources included are - slides with instructions, a research pack with questions on each stock character for students to complete, and a poster of each stock character for your classroom walls.
An introductory lesson to The Canterbury Tales focused on an extract from the General Prologue - good for use with an A Level class that is going to go on to study one of the tales. Includes a listening starter activity to introduce the language aurally, then a deduction activity where students try to work out the meaning of individual words from the extract, followed by an interlinear translation activity of this section of the prologue and follow-up analytical questions.
A 74-question test on the plot of Othello, designed to help A Level students to secure the knowledge required as a foundation for good performance in the exam. The answers are provided separately so that students can check their own responses and repeat the test at home as many times as needed.