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
“He must be deformed somewhere”.
This is part of a series of 5 short extracts on Hyde. They will enable your students to answer any essay on Hyde. Each extract is explicitly linked to the following 5 themes. Understanding any two of these fully ought to be enough to gain a grade 7. Referencing more than 2 is likely to propel students into grade 8.
Key words and phrases are analysed in each slide and linked to each of the 5 themes.
I’m pricing this as cheaply as TES will allow! If you really want a bargain, buy all 5 extracts in the bundle!
If you want any help on how to teach them, follow the links to thee videos.
Christian Morality Tale
Fear of Scientific Progress
Repressed Homosexuality
Love of the Gothic and Detective Genres
Hypocrisy of Middle Class Men
“I read Satan’s signature upon a face”.
This is part of a series of 5 short extracts on Hyde. They will enable your students to answer any essay on Hyde. Each extract is explicitly linked to the following 5 themes. Understanding any two of these fully ought to be enough to gain a grade 7. Referencing more than 2 is likely to propel students into grade 8.
Key words and phrases are analysed in each slide and linked to each of the 5 themes.
I’m pricing this as cheaply as TES will allow! If you really want a bargain, buy all 5 extracts in the bundle!
If you want any help on how to teach them, follow the links to thee videos.
Christian Morality Tale
Fear of Scientific Progress
Repressed Homosexuality
Love of the Gothic and Detective Genres
Hypocrisy of Middle Class Men
“With ape-like fury”.
This is part of a series of 5 short extracts on Hyde. They will enable your students to answer any essay on Hyde. Each extract is explicitly linked to the following 5 themes. Understanding any two of these fully ought to be enough to gain a grade 7. Referencing more than 2 is likely to propel students into grade 8.
Key words and phrases are analysed in each slide and linked to each of the 5 themes.
I’m pricing this as cheaply as TES will allow! If you really want a bargain, buy all 5 extracts in the bundle!
If you want any help on how to teach them, follow the links to thee videos.
Christian Morality Tale
Fear of Scientific Progress
Repressed Homosexuality
Love of the Gothic and Detective Genres
Hypocrisy of Middle Class Men
“Desire to kill”.
This is part of a series of 5 short extracts on Hyde. They will enable your students to answer any essay on Hyde. Each extract is explicitly linked to the following 5 themes. Understanding any two of these fully ought to be enough to gain a grade 7. Referencing more than 2 is likely to propel students into grade 8.
Key words and phrases are analysed in each slide and linked to each of the 5 themes.
I’m pricing this as cheaply as TES will allow! If you really want a bargain, buy all 5 extracts in the bundle!
If you want any help on how to teach them, follow the links to thee videos.
Christian Morality Tale
Fear of Scientific Progress
Repressed Homosexuality
Love of the Gothic and Detective Genres
Hypocrisy of Middle Class Men
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.
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, grade 6
Model answer, grade 9
Model answer, annotated and explained
Why exam topics will never be interesting
Sample topics and question
Here is the beginning of the model text:
Annotated 100% Model: Writing to Inform
Every actor wants to be Tom Cruise, and every actress longs to be Jenifer Lawrence. So why settle for Danny Dyer and Letitia Dean?
1. Contrasting pair
2. Rhetorical question
3. Alliteration
You wouldn’t, and you shouldn’t. It’s exactly the same thing with revision guides. Yes, they come with pretty pictures, and jokes, and everything is chunk sized so that it fits a single page.
Emotive language
Repetition
Triplets
Creating an enemy
But do they push you, pull you, and propel you to get a grade 8 or 9?
Alliteration
Contrast
Triplet
You’ve spotted that’s a rhetorical question, but do you know the other 14 rhetorical devices?
Direct address
Contrasting pair
Rhetorical question
Mr Salles won’t just list them: by the time you finish his guide, you will know them by heart. Fact.
Contrasting pair
Direct address
Opinion
Mr Salles believes that all students can ace the English language exam; that every student can learn from beyond grade 9 answers that are properly explained; that every student can remember if they are shown how.
Emotive language
Triplet
Repetition
What This Resource Includes
11 Steps: Just Tell Me What to Do
Sample Question
What the mark scheme says
Why students should always write about complex sentences
How to write great complex sentences in students’ own writing
How to write about contrast and juxtaposition
Model text, based on Brighton Rock
3 Further texts for practice: Little Dorrit, Oliver Twist, Household Worlds extracts
Model Answer, to get 100%
Model Answer which can be written in the 12 minute time limit, to get 100%
15 skills to learn from the model answer
How to move on from PEE paragraphs so students can write more in fewer words, and sound like an expert
10 great jokes
This presentation will help you teach the poet’s tone and point of view. It outlines the historical context and the political nature of the poem. It helps you teach the allusions to Macbeth, Ozymandias, Hamlet, and Dulce et Decorum Est, as well as looking at the imagery. Finally, it helps you analyse the poem’s structure and link this to Armitage’s purpose.
The accompanying video gives you an indepth instruction on how to link your teaching to the slides.
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.
This resource includes:
Sample question
Sample text
8 Steps: Just tell me what to do
Annotated text, to show students how to think about language
Model answer using all the analysis, 450 words
Model answer reworked to be student length, 250 words
Explanation of the mark scheme, applied to the model
This is the beginning of the sample analysis:
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
*Five minutes’ walking brings you to the fair itself; a scene calculated to awaken very different feelings. The *
• Direct address places us directly at the scene
• Dickens foreshadows the text by signposting us towards different feelings to bring it to life
• He writes in the present tense to make the experience more immediate and real
entrance is occupied on either side by the vendors of gingerbread and toys: the stalls are gaily lighted up,
• Adjective ‘gaily’ to describe the lighting actually describes the mood and atmosphere
the most attractive goods profusely disposed, and un-bonneted young ladies induce you to purchase half a
• Long clauses keep us at the scene, as though giving us time to look at the listed sights
• Perhaps male readers of the time are enticed by the provocative detail that the ladies are both “young” and “unbonneted”, the adjectives suggesting they are therefore attractive.
• The assonance of “o” emphasises how “profuse” the pleasures are, and in forming the letter “o” the mouth is forced into an expression of wonder (19th century readers would be used to reading to their families out loud).
• The juxtaposition of the “young ladies” with “the most attractive goods” encourages the male reader to see the women as commodities to be enjoyed. It is a sexist allusion to women as objects.
*pound of the real spice nuts, of which the majority of the regular fair-goers carry a pound or two as a present *
What This Resource Includes
15 Steps: Just tell me what to do
The mark scheme
Sample question
Examiner’s Advice
10 ways to think about structure
How to write about the structure of an ending
Extract of the ending of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
How to work out Dickens’ purposes as a writer
Sample Question
Sample Answer
Text based on Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene
Understanding the context of historical texts
Sample text: The Doll’s House, by Damon Runyon
How to analyse the structure of each of the 10 paragraphs of The Doll’s House
Model Answer getting 100%
Model Answer rewritten to 300 words, and still getting 100%
12 things to learn from the model answer
How to edit your answer to improve your writing, using far fewer words
7 techniques to reduce your word count
10 great jokes
This resource includes a sample text, with a key for difficult vocabulary. It has a sample question and answers. It dovetails with the specimin paper you may have used as a mock, with different questions.
The best way to use this is as part of the bundle on Paper 2, Questions 1-4!
Here is the beginning.
Question 1
Remember, you will get a 20th or 21st century text to go with your 19th century text in the exam. However, for copyright reasons, I will avoid a modern text. This does have the added benefit for you of getting familiar with the kind of convoluted sentences older texts use, so that you will be better prepared for the exam.
Here is an example of a text from Dickens that is used in the specimen papers:
Greenwich Fair: Where Dickens let his hair down
Charles Dickens is writing in 1839 about a fair in London which was a popular annual event he enjoyed.
The road to Greenwich during the whole of Easter Monday is in a state of perpetual bustle and noise. Cabs, hackney-coaches1, ‘shay’ carts2, coal-waggons, stages, omnibuses3, donkey- chaises2 - all crammed with people, roll along at their utmost speed. The dust flies in clouds, ginger-beer corks go off in volleys, the balcony of every public-house is crowded with people smoking and drinking, half the private houses are turned into tea-shops, fiddles are in great request, every little fruit-shop displays its stall of gilt gingerbread and penny toys; horses won’t go on, and wheels will come off. Ladies scream with fright at every fresh concussion and servants, who have got a holiday for the day, make the most of their time. Everybody is anxious to get on and to be at the fair, or in the park, as soon as possible.
The chief place of resort in the daytime, after the public-houses, is the park, in which the principal amusement is to drag young ladies up the steep hill which leads to the Observatory4, and then drag them down again at the very top of their speed, greatly to the derangement of their curls and bonnet-caps, and much to the edification of lookers-on from below. ‘Kiss in the Ring5,’ and ‘Threading my Grandmother’s Needle5,’ too, are sports which receive their full share of patronage.
This resource includes:
Timing of Questions Paper 1
Exam Tactics
Timing of Questions paper 2
Explanation of Grade 8: Critical reading and comprehension
Reading skills checklist for papers 1 and 2
Grade 8 Writing Skills Papers 1 and 2
How the Grades 8 and 9 are Calculated
8 Reasons not to read the exam paper first, before you start answering questions
The importance of handwriting
The importance of spelling
The marking tolerance per question, which shows why spelling and handwriting are so important
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.
This comprehensive analysis of all 5 questions breaks down AQA Paper 2 into a series of very clear do's and don'ts that students and teachers can easily follow.
Examples accompany the advice. The PowerPoint slides are all linked to videos on my YouTube channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, so it is much easier to see how to apply the advice.
What the resource Includes:
5 Steps; Just tell me what to do.
Model answer 444 words
Model answer 550 words
Model answer annotated for descriptive techniques
What do I have to do to get 100%?
How to be original: Breaking the Vase
How to adapt the description to a series of photographs in the exam:
Here’s how mine might start if the photograph were of a train.
Or imagine it was the park.
Or, the ultimate vase breaking, you can simply have it as the photo in the room. Imagine a photo of a road.
What does the examiner really want?
21 ways to look at Descriptive Techniques and Interesting Writing (More Than Just SOAPAIMS)
Here’s the beginning. Hope you like it.
Tycoon
I loved being a Geezer, a wheeler, a dealer. Loved it. Every Christmas we’d celebrate; a great family get together. And I was always The Man, Top Dog, El Numero Uno.
I started out in stations, really small. You’d barely notice me: one more ant in the ant hive. Nostalgia was my USP then. I set up as a shoe shine boy and many passengers enjoyed the anachronistic joke. I made a few bob. But coins, and I wanted some of the folding. Who doesn’t love money? The crisp feel of it, fresh out of the bank.
And then it hit me. The Victorians. Top hats, bowler hats, starched collars, canes. I started to dress the part, and the customers began to flood in.
What next? Moved to a bigger station: King’s Cross, then franchised a mate in Euston.
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 text:
Countdown to Grammar Schools
I’ll have an opinion please Rachel. And a hyperbole. And another hyperbole. Yes, now an opinion…(repetition)
Michael, you have a six letter word: Brexit. Congratulations. Yes, it is now in the dictionary. And Theresa, you have a seven letter word: grammar, where would we be without it? Congratulations, you are today’s winner. (anecdote and humour)
And so we sprint towards an uncertain future, stiffened by the shouts of opinion and hyperbole: parents of progress or decline? The countdown clock will tell. (several metaphors, using emotive language, alliteration, contrasting pairs)
But what if we count up, instead of down? What if we looked at some numerical facts about grammar schools? What if, unlike the fact-free Brexit debate, everything we needed to know were contained in one place, indeed, one spreadsheet? Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Gov.uk performance tables. Make yourselves at home in a world of facts.* (rhetorical questions, rule of three, creating an enemy, alliteration, emotive language, direct address, metaphor)*
Opinion 1: grammar schools increase social mobility.
Fact: The number of disadvantaged students in year 11 in selective schools in 2015 was 1389, 4% of their year 11. Social mobility, or mobility scooter? How do these students do? With these cherry picked few, 89% make expected progress in English, and similarly in maths. Not shabby. So, for disadvantaged students, grammar schools could work, if only they could push through the weighted doors. We need to dramatically increase their number. *(fact and opinion, statistics, metaphor, contrasting pairs, emotive language, metaphor, direct address) *
By this stage, then, I have already used all the rhetorical techniques in MAD FATHERS CROCH. That’s in the first 215 words. You have 45 minutes, in which you ought to be able to write double this length. If you practise using these techniques, one at a time, they will become second nature to you.
Here is an interesting fact for you. Yes, I am an English teacher, but I have only been commissioned to write articles since I published my book on the 15th of August 2016. In other words, the only training I have had in using these techniques is teaching them in class. This means that over the course of year 10 and 11 you can practise them at least as many times as I have.
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!”
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.