This is quite possibly, the coolest thing I've ever tried out. The premise is as follows: a debate between two students (or teams) where four referees observe. The referees score what they see and a winner is announced at the end. Now add in entrance music a la pro-wrestlers (think the Rocky Theme, We Will Rock You etc.) and run it on an open evening and I promise you this - you will have EVERY parent in at some point to see what is going on. I've run this at SIX parents evenings now and the same thing happens every time - all of the kids rock up to watch. I set it last time round where the Deputy Head took on the winner of the students (a year 9 girl). They packed the place out to see who won . The debate topic "Batman vs Superman" (serious stuff this). Needless to say, she wiped the floor with him (in a totally professional way). You'll need to be the promoter/commentator/ring side referee - this can be exhilarating and exhausting! Try it.

My second lesson. Here, I focus almost entirely on ACT 2 SCENE 1 and Iago's soliloquies therein. The notes element of the power point pulls a lot of thinking together from across a lot of sources - you'll need these notes to flesh out the tasks. I tie it up with an exam style question at the end focusing on what we can infer about attitudes to women. Quite pleased with how this looks and how it goes.

A thematic exploration of Violence within Othello - focusing specifically on Act 4. Also, the power point starts with a little revision of characters and quotations from across the play. I found this a fun lesson.

A reintroduction lesson that should be taught with the understanding that the students have read the text beforehand. Designed as an entry point into year 13; ideal for new teachers looking to get the measure of a new class (as in my case). I found this lesson particularly useful when combined with FAR marking the material surrounding the quotations. You should view this as a starting point - future lessons will get much more specific.

One power point per poem and some associated skills. I teach the poems in the order in which they appear in the anthology (except Tissue; I put that one at the end). I follow a pattern with the lessons and source the contextual information from the BBC Bitesize website (and a couple of other places when I get bored of them) - it makes sense as any student that misses out on something can go and find what they need relatively quickly. The material is readily available elsewhere, hence the relatively low price for so many lessons. NOTE: I have upgraded these lessons now. I’ve moved away from endorsing the PEEL style responses - the exam reports indicate clearly this is the thing to do. Additionally, I have included much more of a focus on the POWER themes. Lastly, I have used these poems as a springboard to discuss gender issues - part of this is my attempt to narrow the gender gap at the top end of GCSE English achievement by trying to get the lads to be more engaged with the material. These lessons are designed to work in tandem with my own version of the poetry anthology. At the moment, I have yet to upload the edited version but I shall do so soon. That being said, the power points wouldn’t take much editing to use them with the traditional AQA version. All of the original lessons are included just in case you are still using the PEEL method of building a response.

After teaching content related to AMND, we had changed direction and ended up doing some creative writing. These lessons build on some top end creative skills.

Old IGCSE English specification resources. Someone, somewhere, might find a way to use these...somehow.

This is my attempt to engage and develop my Year 12s academic voices in their Paris Anthology related essay responses. The main issue my class had seemed to focus upon when and where to start. What I do is show them how they can place a particular emphasis on one of several potential areas of focus initially. I show them how they could use Mode, Audience, Purpose, each of Grice’s Maxims and each of the different levels of language as a starting point for an analytical response. The attached word document appears to be an “essay”.It isn’t. It’s the collected starting points placed in one document so that the students can focus more on the “how you do it” instead of trying to copy down the best bits. It worked reasonably well and is suited for a class with similar needs. Hope you find this useful.

A variation on a selection of lessons that I sell elsewhere. Here, the center piece is a 26 page printable workbook that runs in tandem with the power-point lessons - ideal for a Summer Term 2 unit of work where you are reluctant to give the students a new work book, and working on paper is problematic. The text is Anil (from the old Sunlight on the Grass Anthology) and there is about 12 lessons worth of material here.

A lesson that models the process of building a high-end An Inspector Calls essay. Please note, the lesson assumes that the class has read the play and has attempted versions of the AQA English Literature questions already. Also, the lesson works best as an aspirational example: I concentrate on using sophisticated language to shape my points, and focus on integrating appropriate references. Please note I’ve deliberately left some academic “gaps” too - this model response is a high-quality response, but there are other avenues of academic insight that can be taken. Bottom line, to get the most out of this lesson, you’ll need to spend a little time going through it all first - hence the low price.

A series of lessons and resources designed for a top set year 8 class. The extracts are a mixture of fiction and non-fiction. The focus was to take a group of year 8 students who are used to using the PEE structure and get them to write a concept focused response. I’ve included the model responses we built as a class, as well as the model response the students were provided.

I used a similar approach with the Paris Anthology section and my class found it to be very useful. The issue they were having focused on incorporating enough AO1 terminology appropriately. This lesson is designed to talk them through an approach to an essay question, starting with the poetic voice, moving on to selecting relevant areas and then placing each level of language as a different starting point before exploring ideas across the language levels. It seemed to work… Hope others find this useful as a starting point.

My year 11s were STILL struggling with how to frame a method, so I came up with this stand alone lesson. The idea is that, having reviewed the slide where the methods are explicitly identified, the students will see that a method and a quotation are not the same thing. This was a successful lesson. UPDATE: I repeated this process with a bottom set year 10 class where I was even more specific. This was also a successful lesson, so I’ve included it.

Focused on the Shakespearean text vs the Conflict Poetry from the literary heritage. Very structured against the bands and pointed towards the controlled assessment.

Contained within this pack is all the resources i used in my GTP year with a bottom set Year 10 GCSE group. I had mixed success bu i felt my teaching got stronger as i went through this unit. A starting point for those wondering where to start perhaps, or another way of looking at a topic thoroughly done.

I've taught this to top set year 8 and year 9 - had more success with the year 9s to be honest, but I think this would work with year 8s further in to the year. This was a series of lessons taught over the enormous 8 week half term. Hope the resources are useful to you!