Macbeth intervention: 30 drills (AQA GCSE)

Thirty short intervention sessions for Macbeth, AQA GCSE English Literature Paper 1, Section A, each built for 25 to 30 minutes with Year 11 intervention groups, revision lessons or small-group catch-up. Every drill comes with editable slides with notes on every slide, a printable student sheet in Word and PDF, and answers, and a teacher guide explains the routine and the common errors to watch for.

Every drill runs the same routine, so students know what is coming and the session starts on time: a Do Now of five retrieval questions, a reminder of what the exam question asks for, the extract with quick checking questions, one important quotation exploded through AO1, AO2 and AO3, one technique modelled on the extract, then an exam-style question in AQA’s wording. Students plan an answer or write the introduction, never a full essay, compare their work with a model, try a second short task on a new moment, and improve their answer in green pen before the sheets are collected.

The thirty drills: 1. Two truths are told; 2. Unsex me here; 3. All hail Macbeth; 4. Vaulting ambition; 5. Is this a dagger; 6. When you durst do it; 7. Tomorrow, and tomorrow; 8. Neptune’s ocean; 9. All my pretty ones; 10. This dead butcher; 11. To be thus is nothing; 12. I am in blood; 13. Lay on, Macduff; 14. Macbeth does murder sleep; 15. The innocent flower; 16. Screw your courage; 17. Infirm of purpose; 18. Naught’s had, all’s spent; 19. Out, damned spot; 20. Merciful powers; 21. An absolute trust; 22. None of woman born; 23. The torture of the mind; 24. The yellow leaf; 25. 'Tis unnatural; 26. The king-becoming graces; 27. Never shake thy gory locks; 28. Are you a man?; 29. In the catalogue ye go for men; 30. Fair is foul.

Why short drills? Intervention often turns into a second go at the lesson, or an hour of essay writing that leaves no time for feedback. These sessions are deliberately narrow: one moment, one quotation or one question type, practised at pace. Literature drills stop at the plan or the introduction because that is where marks are usually won or lost, and because a plan can be checked and improved in the same session. Because the slides carry notes on every slide, the drills are easy to hand to a colleague, a cover teacher or a tutor.

What you get: one zip with the 30 slide decks (PowerPoint and PDF), the 30 student sheets (Word and PDF) and the teacher guide with answers, plus the teacher guide on its own so you can see it before you unzip.

Licence: this is the Tes licence for one teacher, for use with their own classes. Tes also offers a school licence at checkout if your whole department will use it. The Word files are editable, so you can adapt them for your groups.

Written by an experienced secondary English teacher for the AQA specification.