I'm a passionate secondary English and History teacher and am the main planner of resources for my department; as such, I thought I would start sharing them here with the wider community of teachers and professionals. I am Australian trained, but currently teaching GCSE and A- Level (AQA specifications). All lessons are very visually engaging, with images, clips and a variety of activities. You won't find any boring/blank resources here!
I'm a passionate secondary English and History teacher and am the main planner of resources for my department; as such, I thought I would start sharing them here with the wider community of teachers and professionals. I am Australian trained, but currently teaching GCSE and A- Level (AQA specifications). All lessons are very visually engaging, with images, clips and a variety of activities. You won't find any boring/blank resources here!
A one off lesson looking at George Orwell's essay "The Sporting Spirit" as non-fiction stimulus for building the skills required for AQA's English Language Paper 2.
Introducing my 12 week Crime & Punishment unit!
Introduce your students to the two GCSE language papers through this fun unit, focusing on the crime and detective genre. This program of study explores the history of the detective genre, conventions, characterisation, archetypes, language, genre, textual form, and structure. Students will build their critical and creative writing skills through a close study of several key 19th century and modern crime texts, such as “The Speckled Band” and “Perfume: Story of a Murderer.” They will experiment with crafting crime stories of their own.
The unit is split between fiction and non-fiction, so as to cover the skills required for the GCSE Language Papers 1 and 2, questions 1, 2, 3 and 5.
Included:
All power-points and lesson resources
Worksheets and homework
A social justice project focusing on the inquiry question: when is the law unjust? You can choose to therefore draw connections between the Crime & Punishment unit and real-world application. We personally took part in the Amnesty International “Write for Rights” Campaign, where we investigated unjust political processes around the world and unfair detainment of political prisoners.
Practise GCSE Language Paper 1 exam
Group projects (2-4 lessons alone)
Model texts (non-fiction and fiction)
I’m very proud of this unit- I hope you enjoy!
All powerpoints, resources and activities for a KS3 introduction to literary devices. Part one includes: tricolons, onomatopoeia, metaphors and similes, senses and imagery, hyperbole and meiosis, pathetic fallacy, archaism and aphorism.
Enjoy :)
Second part to part one, with 11 lessons (all powerpoints, resources and worksheets included) on: verisimilitude, mythological reference, kinaesthesia, oxymoron and paradox, epistrophe and anaphora, iambic pentameter (a hard one to teach!), mood and atmosphere, an AFL literary devices quiz, allegory and allusion.
Enjoy!
In my opinion, language paper 2 is the most BORING of all the GCSE. In introducing this unit to my mixed ability year 9 class, I decided to take a more relevant and engaging approach.
These 4-5 lessons examine the ideas and issues brought to the fore by the wonderful David Attenborough, in his recent 2019 speech at the premiere of the Our Planet series. Find included:
An introduction to the issues of climate change
Debate and discussion topics, grounding this topic in contemporary social and global issues
Highly structured activities that fascilitate students’ skills for Q1, 2 and 3 of this paper
Self marking activities
Videos and multimedia resources
Transcripts of Attenborough’s speech, and Margaret Thatcher’s 1990 climate speech (for comparison for Q2), with guided annotations.
Proud of this- English teachers don’t just teach how to read and write. We teach kids how to THINK and be critical. Enjoy!
