A series of lessons and resources designed to introduce year 9 students to the wonders of the AQA English Language Exam. In these lessons, I deconstruct the Assessment Objectives in relation to each question on English Language Paper 1 Section A. I use the old Sunlight on the Grass story “Anil” as the source text (strictly speaking, this falls outside of what the exam could focus on, but I figure in using these stories as I have all this knowledge about them that isn’t being used!). 06/06/19: I’ve updated this to include a workbook that mirrors the activities in the powerpoint. Just fed up of dishing out lined paper and/or exercise books that’ll only get used for a few weeks.

A series of lessons that I taught to top set KS4 students. Please note, the gaps between the first and fourth lessons are intentional as I had the students act out the play and answer the comprehension questions in the AQA Study Guide book.

These resources assume prior knowledge on the part of the students - they will have covered the greater majority of the texts before hand. The lessons go back and fill in the gaps. I try a few different things here in terms of approach. The "Mike and Sophia" extract guide is a guided annotation lesson; I'd be interested to see how classes respond to this.

An introductory unit suitable for Year 7 students - I taught it to top and bottom set (with differentiation) classes. It is designed to get kids using the basic PEE style structure to create a reading assessment-worthy response. I don't include all of the extracts I used - I photocopied straight from the texts in all honesty - but this is more than enough to get going. Hope you find this useful.

I've found another use for all that knowledge we have about the old AQA English Lit anthology (The Sunlight on The Grass anthology). I have started to turn them into English Language Paper 1 Section A Mock Exams! This is one of them. There is no mark scheme, but if you use the Paper 1 mark scheme from the AQA website you should be fine. This one uses the start of Something Old, Something New.

A complete scheme of work covering each of the chapters and all of the associated assessment objectives. Each of the chapter lessons identifies SOME of the archaic vocabulary and provides the definitions - though this tails off towards the end as there is an assumption that the students become more confident in defining these archaic terms. Contextual allusions and Thematic Devices are identified too. There are comprehension questions for each of the chapters and developmental tasks that cover language and structure. In addition to this, I've started to include English Language style questions (I intend to teach Paper 1 the other side of this unit). I've included the worksheets as part of the pack. Each of the chapter specific power points takes about two hours to work through so there is scope for a lot more, but it depends on how quickly you read through the text. Lastly, I include some WORDLES which I use as starting points and are interesting little differentiation tools - one for each chapter covered (except chapter 10 for some reason - it's buried on a hard drive somewhere). I will add to this as I complete each batch of lessons.

I've had a lot of fun teaching these lessons. Essentially, the idea is you spend a lesson exploring a poem and then a creative angle has been drawn from the text to inform the creative writing lesson that follows. Each of the creative writing lessons assumes a two hour window. A simple scheme, but I've found it to be rather effective.

5 Lessons and supporting resources that assist with the revision of this particular unit of the AQA English Literature Examination. I cover the following poems (my students identified these ones as the toughies): The Prelude Exposure Remains The Emigree Kamikaze Each poem has a revision style lesson (it assumes prior knowledge of the poem on the part of the student, but they also make good starting points if you are cracking through the poems at a fair old pace). Each poem also has a revision card attached - we use these as tools in their own right, and I will be creating one for each of the poems soon enough. The unit finishes on a GCSE style question where they have to compare Ozymandias to one of the poems they have studied. Hopefully you’ll find this useful.

Material I generated for the old AQA style creative writing controlled assessments - it still resonates with the new AQA Paper 1 Section B style questions (inspired by images). You'll need a copy of the film and you'll need to alter the Learning Outcomes (they are all set against the old AQA English Language Coursework criteria).

I had a lot of fun with this unit of work. The premise is simple: to explore the Shakespearean Sonnet form and to create your own Shakespearean Sonnet. There is a also a focus on spelling too. Included in this pack is a lesson I have also sold elsewhere - just saying!

I used these lessons with year 9 classes. They still adhere to the old AQA specification (they talk of bands). But, each lesson is a complete poem and will save you some work.

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

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.