This resource can be used with L2 functional skills classes or with GCSE English classes with enough material to cover up to 2 hours. This resources covers language features and apostrophes in one lesson, underpinning proofreading and writing to describe. This is a quick paced session which involves both group and individual tasks, it has routes for stretch and challenge whilst also giving tasks enough scaffolding to support the weaker students in the class. This session is designed to be developed or split into two separate sessions depending on your classes needs. Please be advised that the TES preview does not always give a true reflection of the resource.

This is a fast paced, engaging complete lesson designed for Level 1 and Level 2 Functional Skills. The session is based around the theme of your dream house with the aim of the session being to write a formal persuasive letter using DAFOREST language features and considering the audience your writing to. Using team / paired and individual tasks, this session allows the student to engage their imagination and design their ideal, dream house then plan and complete a formal letter inviting Architectural Digest to film a short segment for their online magazine. The session comes with support devices such as word banks, planning scaffolds and sentence starters as well as elements of stretch and challenge. This is an adaptable resource which can be amended to suit the needs of your classes. Be advised that the TES preview is not always a true reflection of the resource. Hope it helps.

I like to encourage reading in my classes, and one of the ways I like to do that is with a visual display of books which became blockbuster movies to help grab students attention. This resource is my collection of visuals that I use in different ways to create these displays. It includes 14 different movies which includes a range of diversity and genres, contains images of the book and movie cover with still from the movie itself. You can print these, play with the sizes, layouts and be creative as you feel to suit your learning environment, I like to laminate to provide a glossy look and drape a red cloth over the boards in my classroom to create a old school cinema / theater curtain to create some drama. Images include: Eat Prey Love War Horse Divergent The Hobbit Memoirs of a Geisha Atonement The Colour Purple The Help Brighton Rock Feel free to play with and tinker with this resource, these are just image templates to help you get going and create amazing in class displays of your own. Be advised that the TES preview does not always truly reflect the resource. Hope it helps

Great support/guidance booklet for those students who struggle with the PEE / PEA /PQI and structure. Many students particularly struggle with the explain / inference section of this structure. This fun booklet comes with word banks and starter sentences for those who find this structure a challenge. It also comes with examples of high level answers and developed PEE /PEA/PQI answers to stretch and challenge more able students. Great handout to give to students or have casually on their desks to allow them to freely access whenever they need to, promoting independence in their own learning. Feel free to use in which ever works best for you and your learners.

This is a fun and fast paced introduction to Language Features (DAFOREST) for L2 Functional English or GCSE English ( any board). This session is based on activities for groups and pairs, eventually leading to a independent writing task, in which the student must use the language features used to describe one of either two characters. This session includes a fun anagrams “buzzer” game and supporting scaffolds in word banks and starter paragraphs. There are opportunities for stretch and challenge with the introduction into higher level language features which you can stretch as much as your class needs allow. This session is design for a 1.5 hr session but can be developed for longer lessons. Please be aware that TES preview is not always a true reflection of the presentation of the materials. Hope it helps

This is a fast paced session, filled with videos, team and individual exercises. It is designed to reinforce prior learning and is best used closer to the summer exam. It is designed to fill 2 - 3 hours of teaching time, which can be broken and modified into two sessions if desired. It covers paper 2 questions 3 and 4 ( writers viewpoints and comparison of two texts). Both texts are modern day texts in order to help illustrate and use the skills learned (language and structure) to answer these questions, although in the actual exam one of the texts will be older. The session is based around the life of Winston Churchill, his highs and lows. The session slowly builds, developing knowledge and information about Churchill, both the good and the bad, and recapping exam skills as it progresses. All tasks are scaffolded to help those with mixed ability classes and challenges students to think analytically and answer the two questions as they would in the exam itself. The resource can be modified to cater for your own cohort or for different exam boards and leaves room for group discussions as extensions or can be cut back if you have short timetabled sessions. I work within FE and this is a session which has worked well with my 16 - 19 students. Please keep in mind that the TES preview can distort the look of the resources and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps

This fast paced and fun lesson is designed to support a low level or mixed level Functional Skills English class with their writing skills. A great lesson to use at the start of the academic year, this lesson revolves around a article about a 5 year old body builder who made it into the Guinness book of Records and focuses on using direct speech, alliteration, puns and hyperbole to show bias and make writing more interesting. Many tasks are group are pair based to help support lower ability learners, but has some higher ability elements to stretch and challenge stronger learners. Vocabulary focus begins with the starter and is reinforced as you move forward, so students are thinking about language and words from the very start. This resource comes with a full PowerPoint, and 3 worksheets including the article, worksheet and a planning scaffold. TES preview often distorts the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection of the material. Feel free to play with and amend this resource to fit your teaching style and / or needs of your cohort. Hope it helps.

This resource is excellent for revision, workshop or homework sessions. In current times, it can also be useful for remote / online sessions. This session breakdowns question 4 of paper 1 in a way that both supports the low ability and stretches the more able students. It is designed to calls on each student to actively use their developed knowledge and prior learning to successfully engage with the session. This session is designed with a variety of short build up tasks, larger revision and recall tasks which lead up to the final analytical, examination writing task. The powerpoint is open and adaptable to be used in whichever was works for you. You can add in timed or paired activities if you plan of delivering this session or you can leave it to be used by the student as homework. Please keep in mind that the TES preview does at time distort the look of the resource and tis is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This is a full GCSE English session which has enough materials to cover 3 hours. This session covers the critical thinking question of the English exam and is adaptable to any exam board. This session slowly builds and presents a scaffold towards to this difficult question through a series of team and paired activities and group discussions which underpin and practice P.E.E answers and writing to describe. There is room for students to learn at a even pace and tasks are structured to stretch and challenge higher achieving students. This session comes with 3 video clips and the extract. You can break this session into 2 sessions or adapt to whatever exam board you are teaching on. Please keep in mind that the TES preview often distorts the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This is a short and sweet introduction to the P.E.E answer format for GCSE English students. This is a great way to introduce the idea of stories being constructed and designed to make the audience behave / react a certain way. This session looks at a violent scene from The Hunger Games (rated 12A) breaks down a scene and talks about why a director may have constructed a scene in a way to make the audience react a certain way. The final task is for students to use these elements discussed to prompt P.E.E paragraphs. This resource is easy to adapt and can be used in conjunction with other sessions were P.E.E is used. Please keep in mind that the TES preview can distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This is a short and sweet resource which can be used as a recap/workshop session or as a introduction session to implicit and explicit meaning. This session is fast paced, team based and leads into a creative writing final main task, although it is easy to adapt for your own needs. This session is based around a short video where the viewer must piece together the overall story from the imagery depicted. Students look for implicit and explicit meaning from this video and then create a piece of descriptive writing based from what they have concluded. This session comes with a quick starter from the outset, quick group activities, team and class discussions and a final individual task with a support starter structure to support the lower ability students. Please keep in mind that TES previews can distort the look of the preview and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This session uses an extract from The Witcher and is designed to be a fast paced, Fun and engaging, group based session which allows the learners room for self discovery and peer support in order to practice using the skills they have been taught through out the year. This is largely a recap session on Language and Structural features (I have used DAFOREST, POSHIMP and ROW of CLONES but these can be adapted) they have been taught and to prepare them as the exam dates grow close. Designed for paper 1 question 3 of the edexcel exam board but can be adapted to be used with other exam boards. The focus of this session is on the learners to lead the lesson rather than the teacher to feed knowledge and is great as a recap/ exam prep or workshop lesson. Slides from the presentation can be printed and used as handouts or worksheets, are designed to be used with an IWB with room for annotations during group discussions and feedback tasks and come with comments to help delivery. Please keep in mind that the TES preview can distort the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This is a team / group based session designed to not only help students prepare for their L2 FS English writing exam but to also underpin some valuable life skills. There are 7 pages of activities which focus on tone and language when writing to complain, and underpins self awareness and self control. The resources are differentiated so both lower levels and higher achieving students can work together to achieve in this session. The session slowly builds to a final individual task which is to write a formal and tone appropriate letter of complaint, a task similar to one they may find in the exam and can be used as exam preparation or as an introduction to the topic. There are planning scaffolds and word banks to support students in their final writing task. This pack can be edited, broken up into sections and altered to suit you and your student needs. Please keep in mind that the TES preview does at times distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps

This collection of resources was put together to encourage art students, who also had to sit Functional English, to engage and participate with English, something they are very reluctant to do. I soon recognized that due to Banksy’s fame, his themes of power, corruption, environmentalism and animal rights etc, this session worked with a wide range of students from all curriculum areas and quickly developed into a popular lesson which could be altered to suit a variety of levels. The session looks at Banksy’s work, promotes discussion, opinions and team work. The session uses videos, word banks and looks closer at an article written about him with the final task being for the students to plan and write their own piece about him. The larger aim of the session is to broaden vocabulary and to plan writing but is open for you to develop and arrange in whichever suits you and your students best, as one size does not fit all. Please keep in mind that the TES preview sometimes distorts the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This session is fast paced and covers a lot of ground. I have used it in both level 2 functional English and as a starter lesson in GCSE English Language in the first month of the new academic year. As many students I have taught within FE are resistant to English, lessons which encourage the demonstration of opinions, encourage critical thinking and group / pair activities are extremely helpful in engaging students with English early on. This session looks at male dancers such as Sergei Polunin and the recent comments made by an American presenter about Prince George taking ballet at school. We use this example to cover wider topics such as prejudice, tolerance and encourage discussions which allow students to look at the issue from a different angle, but also to look at subject specific topics such as writers point of views, language features. The resource comes with the full lesson, with starters, discussion, main activity and peer assessment plenary, on powerpoint, with hyperlinks to various online videos / articles and 7 pages of worksheets and support material. There is enough material to cover a 3 hour session and so can be altered to suit whatever length sessions you may have. Please keep in mind that the TES preview does sometimes alter the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps

Sourcing material for your classes can take up a large proportion of what precious little time teachers have. For this reason I have complied a resource pack of various news articles to use with Functional English or GCSE English Language students. This pack has 10 articles covering 22 pages from a wide range of news outlets such as The BBC, The Metro, The Sun, The Telegraph and many more. The articles cover a wide range of topics from Climate Change, gender identity to homophobia and looks at people such as Greta Thunberg and JK Rowling. The articles vary in length and layout to help reach students of all levels, some are individual articles regarding an individual news story, whilst other news stories have more than 1 article to show how writers create view points or potential bias when covering the news. You are free to use the resources in whichever way fits you and your students. You can create your own worksheets or use the links to project the articles onto an IWB or to show the videos attached. You can use the articles to discuss language, layout, bias, writers view points or to use as a catalyst for class debate. Please be aware that the TES preview can at time distort the look of a resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This 7 page booklet id designed to help students with the reading component of their Functional Skills exam. The booklet can be used as in class resources, revision or as self study. Based on a article by Friends of the Earth, the booklet focuses on simple and easy ways we can help become more green in our every day routines and underpins purpose of text and audience questions from the exam. The questions in the booklet are a combination of low level, opinion based and exam based questions. They range from multiple choice to more structured answers asking for reasons or quotes to support . The booklet ends with an extension activity which focuses on language and writing elements of the exam and a self assessment plenary. Please keep in mind that the TES preview can at times distort the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps.

There is a lot of focus on assessing our students, and initial assessments at the start of the year are seen as crucial to setting the student on their journey for the academic year. In my teaching career, many institutions I have worked for have relied heavily on electronic assessments, which is fine. However myself, as a teacher, can assess so much more into a students needs, strengths and weaknesses from a sample of their own writing. This is something I have found useful and successful time and time again for a wide range of reasons, so I decided to share some of my most successful free writing initial assessment tasks with you. This pack comes with 5 different free writing tasks, writing prompts, videos for each task and a feedback sheet which can be placed inside a students file or book and used as an individual tracking sheet through out the year. Some of my most successful assessments have been the ones where students get to express their opinions, which gives them a good first impression of your course as being one where they can express themselves. I also try to underpin deeper themes into light hearted topics to help stretch and challenge those students who enjoy thinking more deeply. For example, the Flat Earth free writing task has prompts which asks the student about the dangers of fake news on social media. One of the many uses free writing has is that I can identify those who may have a dyslexia need and alert the necessary people from the first week and get them assessed and / or supported. I can find out more about the students in my class on a more personal level and connect with them more quickly, I can also quickly find out any areas of personal need and highlight these students to youth workers for example. I can also use these quick writing tasks in other sessions and develop them into underpinning British Values, equality and diversity or to underpin speaking and listening tasks for example. The topics of the free writing are: Beauty industry - used mainly with female classes equality flat earth - underpins fake news / social media big giant swords - underpins ambition and following your dreams. being brave I have attached a short guideline of what to look for when assessing, however most teachers do assess in their own way so feel free to use in a way which suits you and your students. I hope it helps

This quick paced, vibrant session is designed to introduce students to the comparison question on the exam paper. I have geared it towards the AQA exam paper, but can be easily adapted to suit any exam board. To help students become more familiar with this question, this lesson uses the Manchester 2017 MEN bombings as its subject and underpins the message of unity, one love and tolerance. As this is an introduction, it only uses current day articles and resources to ease the students in to this tricky question. This resource contains enough material for a 3 hour session. You have a full powerpoint lesson with starters, paired / team / individual tasks, self assessment plenary, videos, articles, activities and a mini class discussion. The lesson gives a small break down of the exam question and a simple example of an answer to helps students become familiar with the answer structure. The session contains tasks which are achievable at a wide range of levels. When delivering this session, I often will invite youth workers to help support as it’s over arching message is one of tolerance and British values and not terrorism, therefore youth workers / support workers will be a valuable assist in this session and help give a more holistic approach to your students education. This is something both my department heads and Ofsted have commented positively on in the past. Please keep in mind that the TES preview does at times distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. I hope this session helps.

Climate change is a hot topic of the moment and is engaging young people around the world to help start make a difference. To help support this and raise awareness in young people I have created this full lesson based around the subject of climate change and changes a everyday person can make. This pack is a complete lesson with enough material to fill a 3 hour session. It contains plenty of group and paired activities, 5 - 10 minute reading and discussion activities, video clips, an information pack which can be used for independent research for the final writing task based on paper 2 question 5 of the GCSE English language exam. It also underpins issues regarding climate change and also aims to raise awareness among young people by looking at the Nobel peace prize candidate Greta Thunberg, an amazing young lady who started the “School strike for climate change” protests at aged 15. There are various articles in which students look at language, sentence structure, language and tone and is best suited to classes who have already done work on language features. The resources are selected to include a range of levels and abilities and can be altered to suit your students needs and tasks not used in the session could be set as homework. This session can also double up to set presentations to help hit all the requirements of the GCSE spec. Please be aware that the TES preview can sometimes distort the look of the resources and is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps.