This lesson introduces students to the skills descriptors for A05 and A06 (Content and Organisation together with Technical Accuracy) of the AQA GCSE English exam – in other words what they have to do in Paper 1 Question 5 to make the marker happy. This can bore students silly, so it is all about active engagement throughout. It is designed for learners at the beginning of their creative writing careers, with possibly just a few classes before this. They are not expected to mark a whole text (or award marks) – neither are they expected to write a whole one either. This lesson focuses on paragraphs so that they can focus on short extracts which also gives them the opportunity to add on it to later. Here is a precis of the class. The students are given the beginning of a short story and a picture to go with it. They are also given two attempts at the next paragraph, written by students. There are plenty of things to talk about in the examples given! Before they go on to mark these paragraphs, they are introduced to the skills descriptors in a mix-and-match scenario which will promote discussion in the classroom. They have to work out which explanation goes with each skill. This readies for them to return to the paragraphs written by the students and be able to make comments about how each student did well and how they could improve their work. I have always found that one of the things students love is being critical about the work of other learners. There is plenty of opportunity to do that here – although the focus should of course be on positive rather than negative criticism. The students must put this into action once this discussion is over – by rewriting the paragraphs (or parts of them) to show how they could have been improved. Moving on, the students must then write the next paragraph of the story. What they must do is explicitly stated so that they each have the opportunity to shift focus from the outside of a café (in this case) to the exterior. It will also enable them to have a bash at some expository writing about a busy street (which is something that could easily come up in this question in the exam). Finally, some students will be expected to read out their paragraphs with the rest of the class giving some positive feedback about what they have written. The class is designed for 60 minutes for top set learners but could easily be stretched out to 90 minutes. All the pages in the lesson are in a single Word document. The PDF version is also attached.

Many learners do a mock exam, receive their grade and react accordingly. The reaction, however, is often short-lived and they quickly move on to something else. This form has been designed to encourage a period of self-reflection on their GCSE English mocks. I developed it because I found that although many of my students could answer the question “Why do we do mock exams?”, a large number of them could not fully answer this one: “How will you use your mock exam to improve your future performance?”. In other words, I got the impression that many of them thought that mock exams were wholly or solely a tool for teachers. This form, I hope, encourages learners to reflect more on their mock exam performance and to use that reflection to move towards doing better next time. As such there are rather a lot of questions – and I am quite happy for you to adapt this form to suit your own learners. I hope it’s “good to go” for most English GCSE situations. Plus, if you are reading this as a student, hope that you could even use it independently of your teacher in order to create an overview of how you did and what can be improved. The questions are split in to three sections – before, during and after the exam. In this way I hope I have caught the three important processes for successful exam performance. However, as I have indicated above, please feel free to adapt. I would be grateful, if you do, to indicate any changes in the comments below – these will help me to reflect on the form itself and to improve upon it.

This will be of use if you have done a progress test focusing on Paper 1 Q1-Q4. I’ve created the attached spreadsheet (the template file) which enable you to enter marks and generate grades for the students. The grade boundaries are from November 2018 but you can adapt this spreadsheet easily to other papers. Student names and numbers need to be entered on to the front sheet - as well as the marks for each question. This will generate an overall grade for the students and count how many get each grade in your class. I’ve added a bit more functionality, though. Once the grades have gone in, they generate a progress report for each student which can be used as a feedback sheet. The mark that they get for each question generates a comment about it… You will need to add a comment on each of these but I have put 30 examples of comments on the second sheet in the spreadsheet which you could adapt, copy and paste… You will also need to do a comment on attendance, punctuality and behaviour using drop down lists (at the bottom of each student sheet). Please feel free to use, adapt and so on!

AO2: Explain, comment on and analyse how writers use structure to achieve effects and influence readers, using relevant subject terminology to support their views. Paper 1 Question 3 is the structure questions where learners are asked how a writer has structured a text to interest them as a reader. The class is designed to build concepts from the students’ level of understanding. As such, this lesson teaches structure by building up complexity gradually. The first part of the lesson will simply be reading a very short story, making short notes where structural features are spotted and discussing what was good (or not) about it. The story is deliberately very short and has been written specifically with this question in mind. It covers temporal features, shifts of focus, exposition, paragraph lengths, flashbacks and has a cyclical ending. The next step will be to continue with an activity that draws on the notes made – or perhaps even prior knowledge of structure. The list of structural devices is not exhaustive – they may well spot additional ones – but there are two (dialogue and twist ending) which do not appear in the story. The aim is to match up straightforward textual structural features with those that happened in the text. This can then, finally, be turned in to an exam-style response. First, though, there will be a short discussion about how to write an exam response. There are plenty of hints given here – but again there are elements of the example sentences used which are of no great use in this example (this is deliberate, to see whether the correct ones are chosen and can be adapted). Finally, the students will attempt an “exam style” response All files are reproduced as PDFs to ensure that compatability is not an issue.

Subtitle: The minor scales - ancient secrets hidden in plain sight Short description: The keyboard instrument has evolved to fit the natural shape of our hands; its design follows an essential feature of their anatomy: symmetry. Long description: If you find it easier to learn visually, this brochure is perfect for you. The simplified depiction of the minor scales will help you understand your keyboard instrument in a coherent way. A complete collection of scale fingering charts will also enable you to start playing along to your favorite music. You will soon begin uncovering more complex music theory during infinitely more enjoyable practice sessions.

This is something which will keep a class busy - or even a circle of friends if you are a parent looking for a resource to use with your child and their friends. It enables learners to work on a single task together with each building on the work done by the previous. There aren’t many resources around which enable a class to work in this way. The ones I have done it with have enjoyed it immensely. It’s not a new concept but perhaps presented in a slightly more modern way – it’s certainly designed for the times in which we currently live. Each “Story Chain” task consists of a picture and the task – “Write a story as suggested by this picture”. You email the file to “Student A” who completes the first part of the story – they are called Storyteller 1. They return it to you to check and forward to Storyteller 2. The process is repeated until you get to Storyteller 6, who is the only one allowed to end the story! Students do not know who the other storytellers are in their group – to avoid classroom bias! However, there is an element of competition. There are probably more than six learners in your class, so you will split your students into groups. The first group to finish, following the rules, is the winner. You may have to ask one or more students to do help out if your class number is not divisible by six. You can then reveal the name of the storytellers to their groups. So as well as there being an element of competition, I also hope that there is fun involved too. The process can be done in a number of ways. You could send each group of storytellers a different picture stimulus – there are ten. Alternatively, you could email them the same one, to see how many different stories can evolve from a single piece of stimulus. In that way, you have nine more story chains to create. There is quite a lot of emailing involved on your part – and so I have created two tracking sheets as well so you can list who is in each group and how long each took to get to the point where storyteller 6 finishes and emails you the complete story. There is also an exemplar in this bundle of files which can be used to give yourself an idea of what a finished piece might look like or indeed to send out to your students as an example (although this would mean you were down to 9 pictures).

These response sheets have been designed to be sent out to learners via email (or placed on a VLE or Google Classroom – etc!). It is assumed that the they have already been exposed to all the Assessment Objectives associated with GCSE English Paper 1 Question 5 (AQA). It suits a ‘distance’ mode of learning where students can respond to input about each question and these can be evidenced. The four response sheets build up in to a full “Paper 1 Picture” which, while it does not have the rigour of a mock exam, could give you an overview of the skills your learners have acquired in terms of the quality of their responses. Once completed by learners they can be emailed back or submitted on your VLE (or any other method of your choosing!). There are four response sheets in total which can be sent out separately. They cover: • Paper 1 Question 1 and 2 • Paper 1 Question 3 • Paper 1 Question 4 • Paper 1 Question 5 Although the sheets are as generic as possible you may have to slightly adapt them for your purposes. The extract is from the beginning of “Sons and Lovers” by DH Lawrence published in 1913. It is the late 1880s and Mrs Morel, the heavily pregnant wife of a miner, awaits the return of her husband from the pub. Her two children are in bed and she reflects on her life. In many ways it is about isolation – fairly appropriate for these times, perhaps. There is an extensive mark scheme included in this pack for Questions 1-4. There is a complete mark scheme plus three files if you wish to send them out to students one by one, after they have finished each associated task. There is no mark scheme for Question 5 – please refer to any standard mark scheme AQA releases for this question. There is also a tracking sheet included in this pack. The mark scheme is based on November 18. Once you put the marks in for each students the spreadsheet will automatically generate a grade for you.

Fancy having a go at letting a spreadsheet do your thinking for you? This spreadsheet has been created with Paper 1 Section B in mind. As such it only generates a mark for creative writing. This spreadsheet allows you to enter the skills your students demonstrated (from a drop-down list). Marks for Content and Organisation and Technical Accuracy will be automatically generated using a cute algorithm. This is based on Nov 18’s mark scheme where a 4 was a straightforward 50% (sounds reasonable). If you disagree with the marks the spreadsheet generates, you can change them manually and it will still work. It has entries for up to 30 students (hopefully your class is no bigger than that!). This spreadsheet comes with instructions!

Please note: the original short story in this resource contains references to drugs and knives. The short story also contains “arse” and “f—”. Please do not purchase this if you have students or parents super-easily offended by this kind of thing. I would rate the story at certificate 12A but you may wish to err on the side of caution and assume 15. AO2: Explain, comment on and analyse how writers use structure to achieve effects and influence readers, using relevant subject terminology to support their views. Paper 1 Question 3 is the structure questions where learners are asked how a writer has structured a text to interest them as a reader. The class is designed to build concepts from the students’ level of understanding. As such, this lesson teaches structure by building up complexity gradually. The first part of the lesson will simply be reading a very short story for pleasure and discussing what was good (or not) about it. The story is set in an FE college so includes people of students’ own age bracket. The next step is to continue with an activity that does not reflect exam content but draws on the students’ own media savviness. The assumption is that they watch TV and films – and so can make comments about how these are “shot”. So their second task will be to show how the story could be visually represented on screen. This will involve discussion and other collaborative activities. The third task will be to match up straightforward textual structural features with those that happened in the text and describe them briefly. This is then turned in to an exam-style response. There is also an additional language task which follows the layout of a P1Q2 exam question. This resource contains 4 files as Word documents. These are reproduced as PDFs to ensure that compatability is not an issue.

GCSE English Paper 1 Question 5 is the creative writing questions where learners may be asked to write a description suggested by a picture. It is also intended to give the teaching of these skills some variety. This lesson teaches creative writing from a structural perspective. Students also need to understand the structure question in Section A and so this is a way to incorporate a variety of structural devices into a lesson without any danger of it becoming a “list lesson” with a “spot the device” focus. This lesson allows students to learn about structural devices through the creative process of writing a story/description. It follows the “theory” that if you plan for language, you get no structure; if you plan for structure then language somehow takes care of itself. The highly scaffolded nature of the piece of writing students will create during this lesson embeds the elements they must include in their terminal exam question, whether it is descriptive or narrative. As well as encouraging the use of various types of structural devices, the lesson outlines the importance of using paragraphs – and indeed sentences - for impact. The lesson also includes reminders to students to try and use a variety of language features and sophisticated vocabulary in their writing.

This pack of HALLOWEEN picture questions is designed for AQA GCSE English Language 9-1. They simulate Paper 1 Question 5 where students are given a picture and are presented with two options (it’s hard, almost to call them questions!). The tasks can be for a descriptive or a narrative response (although both tasks can be descriptive or narrative and this pack reflects that). I hope that you will be able to use this pack to help you increase the story-telling powers of your learners as well as their descriptive prowess! The pack gives teachers the opportunity to have a selection of ready-made questions for Paper 1 Question 5. These can be used to ensure that there are always writing tasks at hand. They might be used to stimulate class or small group discussion or can be used as interchangeable exercises to be done during a session. I hope that there is a sufficient variety of Halloween style images in this pack to pique the interest of even the most reluctant of writers. By giving your learners a choice of task (while the assessment objectives - A05 and A06 remain the same) these sample questions might help to ensure both differentiation and an element of choice. Each is formatted to include the question on a single A4 sheet. The originals are also included on their own if you would like to use them without the question stimulus. Plus if it’s easier for you - PDFs are also included of both files. They would probably also be very useful if you are covering a class - the skills that students develop with these questions are vital for success in GCSE English as this question alone represents 25% of the entire exam. All of the wonderful pictures have been ethically sourced and are available under a Creative Commons license which means you do not have to worry about copyright with them at all. Each originator is credited by use of a link to the original.

This pack of picture questions is designed for AQA GCSE English Language 9-1. As the June 2019 exam included a painting for the first time, this set is aimed to increase the cultural capital of your English classes (CC being is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours, and skills that a person can tap into to demonstrate one’s cultural competence and social status). The pack includes ten paintings – five by male and five by female artists. The pages are designed to be printed on two sides. On the first side, they simulate Paper 1 Question 5 where students are given a picture and are presented with two options (it’s hard, almost to call them questions!). The tasks can be for a descriptive or a narrative response (although both tasks can be descriptive or narrative and this pack reflects that). The second side gives a small biography of the painter with information about the painting. Also included are prompts about what to write about as well as the skills the examiners are looking for in Content and Organisation as well as Technical Accuracy. I hope that you will be able to use this pack to help you increase the story-telling powers of your learners as well as their descriptive prowess! The pack gives teachers the opportunity to have a selection of ready-made questions for Paper 1 Question 5. These can be used to ensure that there are always writing tasks at hand. They might be used to stimulate class or small group discussion or can be used as interchangeable exercises to be done during a session. I hope that there is a sufficient variety of superb art in this pack to pique the interest of even the most reluctant of writers. By giving your learners a choice of task (while the assessment objectives - A05 and A06 remain the same) these sample questions might help to ensure both differentiation and an element of choice. Each is formatted to include the question on a single A4 sheet. The originals are also included on their own if you would like to use them without the question stimulus. Plus, if it’s easier for you - PDFs are also included of both files. They would probably also be very useful if you are covering a class - the skills that students develop with these questions are vital for success in GCSE English as this question alone represents 25% of the entire exam. All of the wonderful paintings have been ethically sourced and are available under a Creative Commons license which means you do not have to worry about copyright with them at all. Each originator is credited by use of a link to the original.

I have attempted to give this Paper 2 Question 5 activity a contemporary edge! This activity is (probably aimed) at more able, socially aware students. However, I do hope that it is sufficiently interesting in term of subject to engage (and provoke a response from) most students. Students will be asked to do some research about Extinction Rebellion (in case they haven’t heard of it) and then participate in a small group discussion on the movement. They are then given a Paper 2 Question 5 example question – which will be attempted after a whole class (teacher led) discussion around how to go about writing the response. The document consists of the tasks with a section for the response (if exercise books are not readily available). There is also a list of websites at the end to stimulate discussion for and against movements like Extinction Rebellion. I have not put these articles in to word documents as I wish to respect the copyright of the respective authors. However, I found the two I have boxed particularly interesting as they are so diametrically opposed to each other! I hope that this lesson will make a revision session for Paper 2 Question 5 a little more interesting… Thanks! Assessment Objectives covered This explicitly covers AO5 Content and Organisation Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and register for different forms, purposes and audiences. Organise information and ideas, using structural and grammatical features to support coherence and cohesion of texts AO6 Technical Accuracy Students must use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.

Context: This lesson is designed to stretch and challenge a group of students who are aiming for a grade 6 or above. It introduces the idea of writing a polemic; as opposed to supporting one’s own views with relevant argument, the idea is to win the ‘argument’ through contentious rhetoric. The aim is to be introduced to writing strong verbal attacks on someone or something as a method to support a specific opposing position. Students will be encouraged to use the word in writing, in conjunction with Pandora’s Box. The concept of The Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity will be introduced and students will be exposed to a number of artworks associated with these ‘evils’ by a number of famous artists. They will be able to debate these sins and then write a polemic aimed at convincing their audience that their allotted sin is deadlier than the others. The session finishes off with an abridged version of Swift’s The Lady’s Dressing Room. Although timings are given in the time plan this lesson can go many places – it may have to be continued in the next session. Assessment Objective A05 and A06 for writing, with particular emphasis on writing highly engaging texts with a range of complex ideas. Also featured Assessment Objective: AO2: Explain, comment on and analyse how writers use language and structure to achieve effects and influence readers, using relevant subject terminology to support their views. AO4: Evaluate texts critically and support this with appropriate textual references (poem).

Context: Paper 1 Question 5 is the creative writing questions where learners may be asked to write a description or narrative suggested by a picture. This lesson makes a great ‘stretch and challenge’ activity. This lesson will work for classes of up to 30 students (more if you make two copies of the pictures). However, once you have printed off the two sets of pictures, this can be used again and again. As there are 30 pictures in each set, there are 900 possible responses to this creative writing task! Students know by now that this question ordinarily has a ‘picture option’. They have used pictures as stimulus for creative writing before but this is in danger of becoming a little humdrum. This lesson aims to put a little excitement back in to this by giving students a choice of 30 pictures – this is known as “Picture A”. These are all pictures of people. They then get to choose between numbers 1-30 for “Picture B” which is an object (and animal, occasionally). The students must then create a response to both pictures – following these instructions. You will be given (or you will choose) TWO pictures, labelled A and B – each has a number up to 30. All the ‘A’ pictures are of people. All the ‘B’ pictures are of objects (and the occasional animal!) Your job is to come up with an inventive and interesting narrative that connects the images: • from the beginning Or • in exactly six moves Good luck! I have also included a spreadsheet in to which you can type your students’ names. This will make it much easier for you to track who has chosen which picture - and so on! Aims To stretch and challenge the learners’ ability to create a descriptive text which covers a number of the skills descriptors needed for a high-level response. Revisit a number of structural and language features of texts, when and how they are used. To promote discussion about structural and language features and the effects that they can achieve in a text. To increase the confidence of the learners when specifically using this subject terminology. **Assessment Objective: ** AO5: Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and register for different forms, purposes and audiences. Organise information and ideas, using structural and grammatical features to support coherence and cohesion of texts AO6: Candidates must use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation. All pictures used are ethically sourced using a Creative Commons license. No copyright worries for you!

I wanted to focus on P1Q1 in a lesson but didn’t want to exhaust my limited amount of past papers - so I came up with this - get the students to write the paragraph themselves. This lesson can be quite a lot of fun! As well as covering Assessment Objective 1 (AO1) – “identify and interpret explicit and implicit information and ideas” – it also covers some ground in terms of AO5 and AO6. These are where writing skills come to the fore – candidatess must communicate clearly, adapt to a certain tone and style and organise their ideas (not to mention sentence structures, spelling and punctuation…). The files are included in PowerPoint format and PDFs to suit your needs. I have also included a PP and PDF of the pictures on their own if you wish to display them. All pictures were ethically sourced under a Creative Commons license - so please keep the URL on the slides as the originators should be credited.

This pack of CHRISTMAS picture questions is designed for AQA GCSE English Language 9-1. They simulate Paper 1 Question 5 where students are given a picture and are presented with two options (it’s hard, almost to call them questions!). The tasks can be for a descriptive or a narrative response (although both tasks can be descriptive or narrative and this pack reflects that). I hope that you will be able to use this pack to help you increase the story-telling powers of your learners as well as their descriptive prowess! The pack gives teachers the opportunity to have a selection of ready-made questions for Paper 1 Question 5. These can be used to ensure that there are always writing tasks at hand. They might be used to stimulate class or small group discussion or can be used as interchangeable exercises to be done during a session. I hope that there is a sufficient variety of Christmassy mages in this pack to pique the interest of even the most reluctant of writers. By giving your learners a choice of task (while the assessment objectives - A05 and A06 remain the same) these sample questions might help to ensure both differentiation and an element of choice. There are also a few naughty suggestions… Each is formatted to include the question on a single A4 sheet. The originals are also included on their own if you would like to use them without the question stimulus. Plus if it’s easier for you - PDFs are also included of both files. They would probably also be very useful if you are covering a class - the skills that students develop with these questions are vital for success in GCSE English as this question alone represents 25% of the entire exam. All of the wonderful pictures have been ethically sourced and are available under a Creative Commons license which means you do not have to worry about copyright with them at all. Each originator is credited by use of a link to the original.

Flashbacks can be overlooked when teaching creative writing. Often the emphasis is on openings and closings, building a chronological narrative. Yet for GCSE English flashbacks are an important structural device which students should be able to use in their creative and descriptive writing. These can be used as starters, fillers or a whole lesson. This set of 6 flashback exercises gives students the first part of a story leading up to the point where a flashback could take place. It is then a case of ‘over to them’ where they use their imagination to create a flashback suitable for the particular scenario they have been presented with. You could almost call this a ‘semi-scaffolded’ lesson but a flashback is essentially a story within a story. These exercises could be used as short activities or as part of a whole lesson where each student attempts a few of the flashbacks (the lesson plan reflects the latter). Although the stimulus provided by the short starts may be enough for most students it could be an idea to open a short discussion about what could happen in the flashback. Here’s an example of one of the exercises - the students read them and then create their flashback: Hot, sticky, crowded; the subway in summertime is never pleasant. It’s made bearable by the fact everyone minds their own business. I long ago fell in to line, stopped making small-talk, smiling little greetings at strangers, helping people with large cases. Best to mind my own business. Read my news, message a few friends, scan through my email. The trill little slither of music tells me another one has come in. I read the name of the sender and my eyebrows swing upwards in some surprise, a smile starts to from on my face. Can it be, after such a long time? I read the email breathlessly, the carriage is now a vacuum – no air is needed with the sudden burst of adrenaline I am experiencing. I reach the end of an email. It’s short – a hello, a question, an invitation. My mind tumbles back through the years. I have included 2 formats for the exercises. The first is where the students write their response next to the picture. The second is where they have a larger example of the picture and they create their response in their exercise books. There is a ‘cheat sheet’ included to let students know what a flashback is! These exercises cover the following Assessment Objectives: AO5: Communicate clearly, effectively and imaginatively, selecting and adapting tone, style and register for different forms, purposes and audiences. Organise information and ideas, using structural and grammatical features to support coherence and cohesion of texts AO6: Candidates must use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.