We all know that creating or finding new and interesting mock papers is time consuming and difficult. This is why I have created this complete mock exam for paper 1 of the AQA GCSE 8700 spec to help. I find that when presented with a mock paper many of my students, and probably yours too, switch off and become disengaged …which can lead to them not giving the mock their best effort. To help combat this the extract for this mock is taken from The Life of Pi, but the questions are still very much based on how they would be in the real exam, and is presented in a way so you can either print off the slide and run the full mock or cut the session into bite sized timed/ teacher led chunks. There are also some warm up activities to help get your class started and to get them interested in the text which you can use or disregard depending on the level of the class . These include a few small groups task starters and a selection of 2 videos, the trailer and a Thug Notes breakdown - you can choose which one best suits your needs / age of your students. Please keep in mind that Thug Notes does contain mild use of language and adult themes, it is also 10 mins long. The session is created for you to use in any way you wish to help your students achieve. Please be advised that Tes previews distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps

This is a generic GCSE English persuasive lesson which can be used with any exam board. It is designed with students mainly on the lower levels in GCSE in mind and is a lesson which is broken down bite sized fun activities to help the students achieve. This lesson focuses on introducing counter arguments into persuasive writing but underpins other skills such as research skills, proofreading, language features and reading to obtain information. All skills which are useful to have in the GCSE English exam. Feel free to adapt where necessary to suit your own learners needs. Please keep in mind that the TES preview does distort the look of the resource and this is not 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 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.

Bright, eye-catching handout / support booklet with confidence building / inspirational quotes and handy guides to language features to support those who struggle and to stretch and challenge the more able. I used this resource in my class as a casual resource left out on students desks, allowing them to choose to use it or not. This was a great success with both student and inspector as it both supports and allows for independence over learning. Can be used with any exam board.

An introduction lesson to Identifying bias and writers view points centring around the Marvel Universe. The lesson is designed to focus on Paper 2 Question 3 of the GCSE English language exam for AQA, but it can also be adapted for L2 Functional Skills. The lesson includes a film quiz starter, useful scaffolds and plenty of short, snappy group and paired activities. It is designed to reach students of all abilities and includes a short analytical thinking task to stretch and challenge more able students to develop thought out answers. This is a fun lesson which many of my classes have enjoyed. Hope it helps.

A complete bite sized assessment for the GCSE AQA English Language 8700 exam, Paper 1 Question 2. This assessment is great for regularly tracking the students progress on the course throughout the year. This allows the students to see their areas of strength and weakness question by question and is a great tool for revision , it also allows for an easier marking load for you. The question mirrors the actual exam question in feel and phrasing, gradually allowing the student to become acquainted with the exam itself. Hope it helps.

Students often struggle with the idea of inference, particularly within an exam situation. This often leads to students struggling to explain their points meaning they lose valuable marks. This is a fun, humour filled lesson which "gets back to basics" lesson with plenty of group activities with embedded confidence building. Activities allow for stretch and challenge for the more capable in your groups. Activities draw from humour and social issues (sexism in advertising) finally leading to activities which draw from literature (War Horse). Final activity will require students to have knowledge of the PQI / PEA / PEE structure, however this is easy to adapt and change to your students needs. This lesson was design initially for the AQA GCSE specification, however it will work for a range of levels (including Functional Skills) and for all exam boards.

A full lesson, designed for a 3 hours session but can be adapted to suit your own sessions. Lesson is filled with videos, group/paired/individual tasks and group discussions. Package comes with PPT with guidance notes, 2 videos and all accompanying worksheets. This lesson also comes with a useful structural devices mnemonic which can be used in this and subsequent lessons to help your students with this question in the exam. The final task is based around an extract from George Orwell's 1984 and includes modern day parallels with modern movies and current affairs which was a big hit with my students, who love talking about Donald Trump! I was observed delivering this lesson and was awarded a strong grade 2. Feel free to adapt for your own needs, hope it helps.

An engaging and relevant lesson which introduces critical thinking but in a real world context. This lesson focuses around Donald Trump (which my students LOVE talking about) and his comments made around his inauguration attendance figures. This is a fantastic lesson which allows students to express their opinions but also teaches them to express their opinions in a thoughtful and considered way which will suit an exam question. In a world of multimedia and free information, I find it important to teach students how to think about the information they hear and to research their opinions, but also that it is acceptable to have mixed opinions on a topic. I have tried to bring all these elements together in this introductory lesson. The lesson includes group / paired discussion, group work , independent work and videos and a fun break down of the numerical grading system using a Bee metaphor (Are you a honey / busy or queen bee?) to help encourage students to become the type of student they want to be. There are fun starter activities, aims and objectives and a dairy entry plenary. I originally designed this lesson to fill 3 hours, but it can be edited to suit your session length. I hope you find it useful, thanks.

A fantastic bite sized assessment for paper 1 question 3 from the AQA GCSE English Language. This lesson allows for the student to take ownership over their own learning with lots of group work and discussions which are facilitated but not lead by the teacher. The lesson is designed to take all students at all levels through the assessment step by step, allowing students to support one another and to build the confidence to come to their own conclusions and answers. The lesson ends with a quick timed bite sized assessment, which is similar in look and feel to the exam question which allows the teacher to track each students progress on each individual exam question. Hope it helps

A fantastic full lesson based on The Forever 27 Club comes with 6 resources which included articles, worksheets, full power point with guidance notes, quiz, music clips and independent study. This lesson covers the essential skills needed for Paper 2 Question 3 and also allows time to cover some deeper social issues which some of your students may have experience with, such as body image, gender stereotypes and substance abuse. This lesson enables the students to look at a piece of non fiction and identify language techniques used to influence the readers. It is a fun and fully interactive quick paced lesson where the students investigate language but also learn about two of the most influential musicians of our time and how their personal issue are still issues we face today. The lesson aims to walk students through the process of piecing together a final answer, based on their investigations, which would be expected in the final exam. The lesson ends with a student self assessment plenary called "The Hand of Truth" and optional independent study. Although the source used in this lesson is not from the 19th century it does still instil the skills a student will need to answer this question. Further examples of older sources can also be found in my shop which will be significantly useful when teaching paper 2. This lesson is designed for a 3 hour session but is easily adaptable to suit your own timetable. Hope it helps.

This engaging resource fuses poetry and persuasive writing together in a stretch and challenge lesson based around the work of John Cooper Clarke. The idea for this lesson was born from Functional Skills and works well with a wide range of students from various disciplines (eg: Childcare, Music etc) and is easy to adapt to any level. This lesson allows students to have their own opinion and feel confident enough to build their opinion into a well formed piece of persuasive writing, which uses the skills the examiners are looking for. The lesson includes a full power-point with guidance notes, a video and article / worksheet. Tasks include a fun "free writing" starter, fun drawing task, break down of the exam question, team/paired and individual tasks, peer assessment and a self assessment plenary. The session will be lively, engaging and full of exploration and learning. Hope it helps

A fantastic and fun, time tested resource which never fails to work with my students. This lesson looks at iconoclastic ideas and conspiracy theories (The 1st Moon Landing was faked) in order to help develop the persuasive skills needed for Paper 2 Question 5 of the 8700 spec from AQA. This lesson allows the students to formulate their ideas and opinions whilst also taking them through important planning steps required for this question. The lesson includes lots of fun games, team and paired activities, a short video and plenty of platforms for students to offer their opinions, which many students love to do :) There are opportunities to both stretch and challenge whilst also offering supportive material where needed. This lesson is a 3 hour session with all worksheets included, however it could be taught in 2 separate sessions, depending on your session time. The lesson is structured into quick 5 / 10 min activities with a final 20 min persuasive writing task at the end, it involves both peer and summative assessments along with a fun starter based on a "sheep hat" designed to encourage creativity and a "daily diary" plenary. Hope it helps

A fantastic lesson full of group and paired activities to help students understand structural features. Based on the story of Jekyll and Hyde this lesson uses comic books / storyboards to help students visualise structural features as if the story were a movie. I have found that by teaching structure this visual way, the students find it easier to identify these features and therefore this question becomes less daunting. I have also incorporated a new mnemonic called ROW OF CLONES to help students remember some of the More commonly used structural features. The lesson uses peer assessment, whole group and paired activities, it is quick paced and fun to teach. Hope it helps

This is a mock / practice exam paper for the GCSE English Language from AQA (8700 spec). This is not an entire paper, it is a bitesized version which included some of the trickier questions that students tend to struggle with. I have used this with my students to help build confidence with some of the harder questions, track their progress on specific questions and to help get students used to exam conditions. As it is a shorter version of the exam it helps to cut down on a teachers marking load whilst also being a supportive tool for the students. This paper includes practice questions, with sample materials, for Paper 1 Question 3, Paper 2 Question 3, Paper 2 Question 4 and Paper 2 Question 5. I have also given it a more friendly look with some handy tips and advice along the way to help support the more needy or less confident in the group. Sample materials include extracts from The Help and Chocolat, A news article from 1873 and 2 speeches made by British PM's Churchill and Cameron. Hope it helps

This is a fun lesson designed to help engage the lower level students or students who are disengaged with GCSE English. The focus of this lesson is to use persuasive writing features within a review in order to help prepare students for paper 2 question 5 of the AQA English Language spec 8700 exam. This lesson uses 3 clips from the reality TV show "Worlds Worst Tenants" to develop ideas and opinions about the show to eventually be written up using DAFOREST. If you are having trouble with the video file (it is quite large but should work fine on a pen drive using VLC or windows player), I'm happy to send in an email it to you. The video contains bleeped language and use of mild curse words, however as I taught largely over 16 yr olds, this was not a problem, however you may ant to give it some consideration. Other resources include word banks, sentence starter support material and watch/obtain worksheets. There is room to expand on this lesson with basic punctuation and / or vocabulary building activities if needed. My students from GCSE and Construction Functional Skills loved this lesson. Hope it helps

A fun and engaging lesson which can be used in the run up to Halloween, although it can work at any time of the year. I have used this lesson for presentations with both GCSE and Functional Skills lessons and students love it as it involves dressing up someone in their team as a mummy and creating a backstory for it. This is a relaxed take on presentations and I use it to introduce and help more under confident students become used to standing up and presenting in front of others, it embeds elements such as working within a team and introducing structure and planning to presentations. This lesson starts with a few fun critical thinking questions and develops to look at Egyptian Mummies and the curses which surround them, there are two videos and supporting ideas boards to help the lesson move forwards and maintain structure but also to help the students form and plan out ideas. This session will require materials for the students to use, this doesn't have to be much as I have often only used bundles of cheap toilet roll, sellotape and cheap make-up from the pound shop ( in many cases students will often find their own materials to add to their mummy). Over the years of using this lesson I have kept left over materials and added to them each year that now I have a small dress up box in my classroom which has all sorts in it, I also take photos of this sessions which are ideal for classroom displays. This lesson also encourages imagination which some students do struggle with and so I find that Question 5 from Paper 1 on the AQA 8700 GCSE spec is difficult for them. Sessions like this can be used to help develop that skill and recently I have added a piece of independent study in which the students must write up the backstory they created for their mummy up as a piece of creative writing in practice for P1:Q5. Hope it helps

This complete lesson comes with extracts from Bill Bryson and Engles, worksheets and supporting materials. The focus of this lesson is looking at the writers points of view on the city of Manchester in order to create answers for paper 2 question 4 ( comparative question) Bill Bryson talks about the city in 1995 and Engles talks about the city in 1844. This lesson has enough content to fill a 3 hour session and is designed to gradually build the students confidence into tackling this question and developing an exam styled answer using a PQI-C answer structure. It does this with lots of quick paced activities, team and paired activities, short class discussion and through developing ideas and analysis of the two texts. Hope it helps

This is a full , informal and fun lesson put together based around the novel, Lord of the Flies. The lesson warms up the students with background information to Lord of the flies which includes group activities and a video (Thug Notes has low level use of cuss words, although many are beeped. I used this resource with 16-19 yr olds and so was allowed, however many other summary videos are available) This lesson can be used as an informal mock exam to help prepare and track students progress or it can be adapted to be used in a formal setting for exam preparation under exam conditions. Lord of the Flies was chosen as it may be a text your students are familiar with and so helps to make this exam less daunting. Materials include 2 worksheets (including extract) with a varied question structure for all levels, a video and question 1 - 5 based on paper 1 of the AQA 8700 spec.