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!
I’m very proud to share with you my 12 week unit of work on Macbeth. This unit is aimed at a high ability class and includes 12 weeks worth of lessons, power-points, worksheets, resources, homework etc. The first few weeks focuses primarily on contextual details, followed by elements of tragedy, higher order terminology, and skills pertaining to form, genre, language and structure.
Furthermore, this unit is designed as a flipped-model project. Students should read the play at home and focus on discussion and writing skills in class. I’ve included the 12 week program I wrote for my students, that details the breakdown of lessons, key terms for each week and required readings prior to each lesson. Feel free to adapt this to suit your own schedules. My students really engaged with the program and the flipped-model fosters independence, study skills, and student autonomy.
Enjoy!
Please note that character profile sheets are based on the Schmoop resources.
Find included a scheme of work with all activities, power-points and resources for teaching a broad introduction to Shakespeare, geared at KS3.
Part one includes a "Why Study Shakespeare?" lesson, plus four other lessons on context, the Globe and genres. Part two includes three lessons on the Comedies (Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night and Taming of the Shrew). Part three comprises the histories (Richard III, Henry V and Julius Ceasar) and also the tragedies (Romeo & Juliet and Antony & Cleopatra) .
Key skills: plot and character overviews, introductions into Shakespeare's language (looking at extracts) plus creative activities.
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!
A scheme of work with 15 lessons, all power-points, resources and activities included. I created this for my year high ability year 7 class- is suitable for KS3 or low ability KS4.
Myths and legends covered include: Prometheus, Pandora’s Box, Hercules, Perseus, Beowulf, Medusa and the Canterbury Tales. Skills are focused around identifying language techniques and writing both critically and creatively, while understanding the role of myth storytelling in human literary history. I’ve also included a termly homework project.
A scheme of work (all lesson power-points and worksheets included) investigating poetry from other cultures. Some of the poets covered include Imtiaz Dharker, Benjamin Zephaniah and more. Comparison lessons are also included (aimed at introducing KS3 to the skills required for GCSE Lit and Lang), plus a few other creative lessons.
A series of 8 lessons looking at the Unseen Poetry section of the GCSE Paper 2. Both the 24 mark question and the 8 mark comparison question are covered.
This PP can be taught over a few lessons either during or after a study of "The Hobbit". The purpose of these activities is to build creative writing skills in the fantasy genre. The PP discusses how the genre (with the Hobbit as an example) crafts character, world building, and language and style.
Price is set due to my own research spanning various fantasy texts (specifically the character study of pro/antagonists). I delivered this as a talk to year 9 while visiting another school, and later taught it alongside a Hobbit novel study with a year 8 class.
