All my resources are aimed at teaching students to the top, that's the USP! You can find them on the UK's second largest English teaching channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, and also see how I deliver them there. If you want to be an even better teacher, try The Slightly Awesome Techer, https://amzn.to/2GtQu6l
All my resources are aimed at teaching students to the top, that's the USP! You can find them on the UK's second largest English teaching channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, and also see how I deliver them there. If you want to be an even better teacher, try The Slightly Awesome Techer, https://amzn.to/2GtQu6l
This resource is so comprehensive, that it also explains the whole of the play.
Because the Inspector deals with every character, the whole play is covered.
Because he is the proxy for Priestley’s viewpoint, every possible exam question can be answered simply by knowing this resource.
Can your students do without it?
Try a flavour of it in this extract:
This is a comprehensive resource to teach your students how to get 100% in all aspects of the question. It teaches 11 different skills for the question:
1.Highlight the key words in the question which tell you what to look for
2.Highlight the margin of the part of the text you are told to look at
3.Find quotations as you read
4.Name a descriptive or narrative technique for each quotation you use
(These will always be about imagery – simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration – and then perhaps onomatopoeia, sibilance, synesthesia, assonance, pathetic fallacy)
5.Refer to individual words in the quotation
6.Name their parts of speech – verb, adverb, noun, adjective
7.Find a long complex sentence, especially one with listed descriptions
8.Comment on the effect of contrast or juxtaposition, which will be in any description
9.Relate these quotations to the writer’s purpose, to discuss their effects
10.Use tentative language, like ‘perhaps’ to suggest your interpretation of the effect or purpose
11.Do not write in PEE paragraphs, but sentences which include embedded quotations
It contains several models of how to write about complex sentences, with several practice paragraphs from Kipling, Conrad and Dickens for your students to practise on.
It shows students how to model their own writing on that of other writers, using Brighton Rock. Students get to see why knowing parts of speech is so important to developing their own skills as writers. This then makes the job of writing about the effect of language features so much more easy and explicit for them.
If you want to try without buying, all the PowerPoint is covered in a video at Mr Salles Teaches English, which you can find here:
http://bit.ly/Question2Paper1
This PowerPoint is taken directly from The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA English Language GCSE, which you can sample here:
http://amzn.to/2phxxaS
There are 59 ppt slides giving historical context, quotation and interpretation to five key purposes Stevenson may have had in the novella:
1. to tap into the Victoria psyche and fascination with crime and violence
2. to expose the hypocrisy of the middle classes, who he sees as morally corrupt
3. to question the role of God and Christianity
4. to examine the possibility that we are all, at root, simply animals, without a soul.
5. to suggest the homosexuality should not be a crime.
Students who understand all of these will almost inevitably be able to access grades 7 and above.
You can also find accompanying videos for each of these viewpoints on my YouTube channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, to accompany the slides.
This is a really in depth analysis of Gerald, and you will see him differently after you have read it. Your students will have a completely new perspective.
Here is an extract to show you what I mean:
Gerald’s Affair with Daisy Renton
Although Sheila is the first to expose Gerald’s affair at the start, the language they both use strongly hints that she will forgive him after breaking off the engagement and that, after the end of the play, they will marry.
Gerald’s first impulse is to lie, because Priestley wants to present all capitalists as hypocrites. He denies knowing any “Eva Smith”. Sheila points out that she knows he is simply using his intelligence to maintain a veneer of honesty, as he knew her as “Daisy Renton”. This is called sophistry – using clever arguments which appear true but which the speaker knows to be false.
Although Sheila insists on the truth, her language is also a kind of sophistry. She uses euphemism. Instead of asking for how long he had sex with Daisy, she only insists he “knew her very well”. This is important, as while she is at her most angry now, her own language minimises what he has done. This will make it much easier for her to forgive him in the future. Clever as he is, Gerald picks up on this weakness in her resolve, calling her “darling” in order to manipulate her.
He immediately asks her to keep the affair secret from The Inspector. This might seem astonishingly arrogant. However, Priestley is again showing the corruption of the patriarchy. He expects a woman to protect him even at the expense of her own happiness, in return for the financial security and status that marriage to him will offer her.
Arthur Birling in more depth than you ever thought possible. I guarantee you’ll never see him the same way again.
Here is an extract to show you what I mean:
Social Class is More Damaging to Society Than Capitalism
However, as we have seen, this sacking actually led to a better job at Milwards. In this way, capitalism is not the direct cause of her tragedy. Social class, and the immorality of the upper classes, however, is responsible.
Birling feels able to justify this cruelty by referring to how much paying his employees would cost the business, “Well it’s my duty to keep labour costs down” rather than increase them by “twelve percent”. Of course, while this seems cruel, it is also true. By 1945, as you will see later in the guide, Britain had lost its monopoly on the cotton trade, precisely because foreign competitors could pay their workers much less. Priestley understands Birling’s view on wages, and knows many in his audience will share it, which is why he has worked so hard to discredit everything else about him. He hopes this will make the audience more likely to question their own belief about fair wages.
Priestley also uses Birling quite subtly to criticise the upper classes. Birling has become successful through business, he wasn’t born into privilege. This is the opposite of his son, Eric, who he now criticises, “That’s something this public-school-and-varsity life you’ve had doesn’t seem to teach you.” Even Birling is critical of the effect of being brought up as part of the ruling classes. This symbolises his message to his wealthy audience, a warning to stop trying to climb the social hierarchy, and instead make society fairer. Why pursue higher social status when it will only damage your character? We will see that most when we find out how Gerald and Eric are most responsible for Eva’s tragedy.
What this resource includes:
Mnemonic to remember rhetorical, persuasive techniques: MAD FATHERS CROCH
How to plan an answer
9 skills necessary in a top answer
The mark scheme explained
Model answer
Model answer, annotated and explained
Why exam topics will never be interesting
Sample topics and question
Here is the beginning of the sample text:
Model Answer
So you want to get rid of school uniform. Perhaps Daddy and Mummy are rich, rich, rich and you want to show us all your designer gear, parading an endless range of just-off-the-shelf splendour and fashion to make your friends praise you and your rivals sick with envy.
Direct address, emotive language, anecdote, rule of three, contrasting pairs, metaphor. Creating an enemy.
Or perhaps you love lounging about at home in your sportswear, festooned with the right labels, hats and trainers still with their price tags proudly displayed, a sea of pristine white, kept shop-display neat.
Repetition, alliteration, anecdote, emotive language, metaphor. Creating an enemy.
Or perhaps you have other tribes: you are a Goth, an Emo, you’re indie, a hipster, you’re a dude, a dudette, a geek, a gangsta, or some other made up group you’re so desperate to belong to in your teenage years before adult life ‘ruins’ it all.
Hyperbole, repetition, direct address, rule of three, emotive language, metaphor, alliteration. The opening three paragraphs create an enemy through humour.
This resource includes a typically uninspiring picture.
How to plan.
How to write a description which lasts only a few seconds, so does not turn in to a narrative.
How to select an interesting viewpoint.
A model answer, around 500 words long.
The marking criteria.
An explanation as to why it is grade 9.
This amazing bundle is better than anything else on the market. CGP, York Notes, Collins, Mr Bruff all aim to the middle.
These analyses show your students who to get grades 8 and 9 with each character.
They’ll discover new interpretations they’ve never met before. They’ll see how to explore alternative viewpoints about each key moment in the play.
They will decide whether the Inspector is supernatural, why the younger generation ultimately fail, how Priestley was even more worried about war than about capitalism and consider whether Priestley himself is an early feminist.
Every page models essay writing in such a way that your students will move beyond PEE, and write in a more fluent style.
And you get 67% off!
This powerpoint covers comprehensive themes:
Ambition, Masculinity and Cruelty, The Divine Right of Kings, Tyranny, The Psychology of Guilt, Fate, Prophecy and Free Will, Violence, and The Ambiguity of Reality.
There are a range of quotations for each theme, from different characters’ perspectives.
Each slide has engaging images which should help to make your teaching memorable.
An in depth approach to each slide is also available in my free videos on YouTube. You can find over 600 useful videos at
Or follow the link to the precise video on Macbeth’s themes.
Mrs Birling as you’ve never thought of her before. This is an analysis which goes much deeper than you would expect.
Here is a sample to show you what I mean:
But What if Mrs Birling is Right?
However, a counter argument to that is how Priestley reveals Eric’s exploitation of Eva last, as though to emphasise that his actions were worse. There is also a further counter argument. Eva could actually have accepted the stolen money. She could actually have accepted Eric’s offer of marriage. And she certainly did tell the charity and Mrs Birling a number of lies:
• That she was called Mrs Birling.
• That she was married.
• That her husband had “deserted her”.
So, in terms of the facts, she is quite right to say “The girl had begun by telling us a pack of lies.”
When Eva tells her that she wouldn’t take stolen money, Sybil’s reaction “all a lot of nonsense – I didn’t believe a word of it” is not just snobbery. It is also a logical doubt to have given the lies which preceded it.
Another psychological problem for Mrs Birling to accept is that Eva would rather commit suicide than take the stolen money, or marry Eric, even though she describes him as “he didn’t belong to her class, and was some drunken young idler”.
This powerpoint teaches 5 key skills which are necessary to get full marks when writing about the structure of the text. The resource includes a full 8 mark answer, with annotations and explanations of how the answer meets all the criteria for Grade 9.
This appears in both PPT and Word form, so is fully editable, and can easily be printed so that students can easily make relevant notes based on your teaching.
Here is the beginning of the 21st C text, ideal to teach informative writing for Question 5, or how to analyse informative features, for Question 4.
Dubrovnik: city of nightmares, or city of dreams?
There are few less likely victims of war. Dubrovnik’s thick stone walls stand defiantly on cliff tops, cradled by mountains, an imposing and forbidding barrier to siege. Soldiers would fire down from a hundred feet up, from fortifications far taller than the puny castles you might be used to at home. Magnificent walls, the backdrop to a charming harbour.
Yet, as you walk the battlements, gasping at the beauty of the town enclosed within the womb shaped walls, you are struck by a subtle shift in colour. New, tiled roofs abound, like an orange carpet. In 1991 the Serbians attacked from the skies, dropping missiles to spread terror in this most beautiful of preserved cities. The miracle of design, three and four-foot-thick walls built to defeat earthquakes, astonishingly swallowed up the fires and explosions from the skies. The flames burnt out, starved of fuel, even where whole streets are only about eight feet apart.
So yes. Dubrovnik is something of a miracle, a survivor with its whole history intact.
Teach all the skills of Question 3 Paper 2 from a short extract.
This teaches students how to comment on language features, and relate them to the question, rather than just to name the parts of verb, noun etc.
It uses a student’s answer, so that your class can relate to what a student can realistically write - this is a student who began year 11 as a grade 4, and is now at the top of the band.
It also highlights in green how an answer should link ideas together, and in yellow what subject terminology actually looks like.
Once you have taught the lesson, get students to recreate their own version of the full mark response.
This PPT is linked to 10 videos on my YouTube channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, so you can see how it works. The idea is that students learn exactly how to analyse an extract, and how to link it to the rest of the novella. Moreover, the quotations analysed and the links made will fit any extract question from any other of the 9 chapters.
What if you could teach your students 3 key skills which would make their essays worth grades 7-9?
What if you could show your students 7 mistakes students make, which reduce their marks?
And then, what would happen if your students learned to correct those mistakes? Then they would get grades 7, 8 and 9.
A poll of over 600 students on my YouTube channel shows that 79% of students think my resources earned them at least one extra grade, and 38% think that they went up by at least two grades.
You can find the video which teaches this presentation on Mr Salles Teaches English so that your students can also dramatically improve their grade.
How do you get a student who is packing their description and narrative with too many adjectives and adverbs to pick them carefully.
How do you help them choose when to speed action up, and when to slow it down?
Sometimes this feels as though we have to get them to unlearn what we have taught them! It’s hard.
But this lesson will help you do that quickly, and in a way your students will understand.
A video goes with it, so you can see how I teach it.
You also get a copy of the all the writing in Word, so it is easy to edit and print off. It gives the original version, and then the improved version.
Also included is the rest of the story, which you an get your students to edit and rewrite in response to your teaching.
This is a brilliant way to improve students’ vocabulary, learn to write great description, and to plot a narrative.
Then there is the fantastic bonus that it makes the quotations from the poem truly memorable.
Here is the beginning. I hope you like it.
Description/ Narrative Based on Storm on The Island
Wizened by hope, the old man sits in the waiting room. His mind dives from the cliffs of cancer - yes, the tests will show if it has spread, Mr Stook - it twirls through fear, spins at the thought of nothing, of nothing waiting beyond the dark, of emptiness, and summersaults towards hope, spread before him like a sunlit lake. Perhaps they have caught him in time.
He chuckles optimistically to himself, fingers curled in a ball upon his walking stick, his back stooped by the blows of time, the blasts of age, rounded, like a ball. He thinks, “I ought to be easy to catch!”
This very focused PPT takes an extract from Bleak House to show you 7 secrets of Dickens' description, including how to use contrast, why metaphor and personification trump metaphor, the power of listing and the subtlety of alliterative sound and rhythm.
When we look at marking criteria we tend to befuddle the students with lists of descriptive techniques. Notice that listing, rhythm and contrast probably don't make it onto most teachers' lists, but these are the most powerful ways of improving their description.
The kind of all writing techniques, or indeed the queen, is the use of the right verb. Dickens masters that too. The resource will also be linked to a video you can use to teach this, or plan your teaching from. Also included is the extract from Bleak House in Word.
Not only do you get a great story to teach from, but it is 630 words long, so your students can write the same amount in the exam.
Better than that, you can teach how to use the picture as a springboard to writing the story, without them stressing.
Crucially, you can teach your students to write a story, under exam pressure, WITHOUT HAVING TO PLAN!
The most helpful part is the free video which comes with it, to show you lots of ways of teaching the story to your class. There are 7 useful tips in the video:
What’s holding you back in your writing?
A fascinating fact about learning to swim and learning to drive, which will help you become a writer!
A picture.
A story and description.
How an expert thinks as they write, which will help you think like an expert.
How to have fun in the exam. No, I really mean it!
And obviously, how to write a brilliant description or story which will get you full marks (unless you can’t punctuate, but that is another video).
As you will see from the extract below, it is particulary useful for teaching boys!
“Obviously, the cooler part of my brain, the mixed martial art aficionado part, registered that I was about to get my ticket punched, so obviously I kept on ducking. Unfortunately, as you’ve seen by now, this wasn’t the most active part of my brain and so, like South West Trains, it had arrived a little late, and bam, there it was: fist, face – fiddlesticks.”
Although it is in Word, I’ve spaced the paragraphs and font so that it will fill your screen a paragraph at a time, like a PPT.