I've designed this lesson to introduce poetry to KS4 students at GCSE, but it would work as well for KS3 too. It is an overview of what poetry is, building on what they already know. There are several games and activities which are linked to Songs of Ourselves, but easily adapted to any poetry you want to tackle with them. There is a poetry carousel as the main activity, so simply print the poems they will be studying or some poems about poetry for them to analyse. Enjoy!

Everything you need in one place! A four-part lesson with a range of visual, auditory and kinesthetic activities to keep the students engaged and connect with the themes and language of this beautiful poem. The development lesson guides students through the analysis of the poem in detail before setting an essay question on the characters and relationships. There are differentiated activities to match points, evidence and language features in a table to scaffold student answers. I have provided the CIE mark scheme for students before they write the full essay and I have also written and provided an example essay. The students could be given this essay in cut out paragraphs which they have to reorder, they could use different colour highlighters to work out how to structure their paragraphs and embed quotations, and they should read the essay, mark it and provide feedback. This is a lovely poem , excellent for Masculinist studies, on the themes of death, regret, emotions, communication and nature. One of the set texts from Songs of Ourselves in the CIE iGCSE, a mark scheme and outcomes have been provided for this course. These slides can simply be swapped for your own mark scheme if it is different. Enjoy!

THE ONLY END OF TERM QUIZ YOU WILL NEED! There are celebrity names, cropped pictures, cartoon silhouettes, lateral thinking puzzles and an English Literature round and a music intros round just for fun! This goes well with the Speech and Characters video also available in my shop. This multiple round team quiz will keep every student interested. Some rounds could be printed out (I would recommend that for the first picture round so students can keep working on it) but the rest can just be put up on screen for three to five minutes each. Prizes for winners always go down well! After the quiz there are some extra activities to get students thinking about how authors (and real life humans!) create characters and why we do this, comparing quotations from Shakespeare, Russell Brand and Eminem on creating your personal character and place in the world. High ability groups would gain a lot from comparing and contrasting these ideas. Enjoy!

This scheme of work was created for my high ability KS3 group, but this would make a great introduction to the Romantics at any age. This scheme of work was taken on by my whole department and to a chain of academies which we led. There are several Romantic poets covered here: Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Blake, Coleridge, Keats, of course, but also fantastic female poets Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charlotte Turner Smith who wrote passionately against slavery through the narrative voice of an angel. There are 9 packed lessons, all with starters, developments, analysis, outcomes, plenaries, homework....the lot! No preparation needed, no effort; just happy kids who learn a huge amount! Please rate and review this resource pack. I think you'll love it!

Hi everyone! One of my favourite poems from the Songs of Ourselves anthology! I have included a collapsed version of the text for students to create their own poems out of as well as answer some guided questions on. The PowerPoint guides the students through their reading of the poem and analysis, gives some background information on the poet's life and contextualises the poem. There are objectives, a four part lesson and then an essay question with scaffolding to differentiate and an example of a war poetry essay which students can analyse too. In short, plenty of resources and activities to suit every secondary group. Good luck in the exams, everyone! x

A lesson on the poem Meeting At Night by Robert Browning. The lesson opens with a game, then there is guided analysis and a creative project for students to tackle. Objectives, an essay question, potential ideas and a mark scheme are provided for students to practice their essay writing skills. This is a relatively simple poem for students to understand and the language features are fairly obvious. This should free up some time for an exciting creative project which could be completed for homework and seen the next lesson. Why not record them and put them up on your school's website or on YouTube? Tag me in if you do!

Hi! This is a compilation of resources to help students read and closely analyse the meaning, language and tone of Larkin's poem 'The Trees'. My students are reading this as part of the Songs of Ourselves anthology at iGCSE, but it could be an unseen poem for your students or part of a study of Larkin or of modern pastoral poetry. Everything you need is included including critical opinions of the poet and this poem, games, questions, language feature recognition, group work and paired work, all leading to differentiated outcomes by the end of the lesson.

A mini-scheme of work, taking three or four lessons, focused on The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Students develop their skills for GCSE by finding quotations, developing their ability to comment on the environment, characters, relationships and then tackle questions in timed conditions. Each lesson has a starter and self- or peer-assessment plenary. My students loved the plenary for the environment question where they had to make a mask (outline provided) which would protect them from the dystopian world The Road is set in. Their creativity and ingenuity, putting their learning into practice was wonderful to behold. Please don't miss out on it. I found that this lesson was highly accessible for middle ability students and wonderful for high achievers or G&T learners, giving them the range of language and intrigue to explore possibilities and methods. My less able students (predicted 2 or below) achieved expected results and understood what was happening. With them we watched the trailer for the movie first before we read the first chapter together (popcorn!) and then slowly tackled the straightforward questions. I have included answers to the quotation finding exercises and an extra lesson on writing stories associated with dystopian or apocalypse fiction . This was the end of term assessment for reading and writing dystopian fiction. If you want to see more, check out my huge Dystopian Futures SOW at my shop.

A complete lesson with a range of activities to engage students with learning about Romantic poetry, introduce Victorian Literature or focus on Blake. There is a substantial amount of context and varied activities from videos, drawing, mind-mapping and, of course, analysis and annotation. This was designed as part of a year 8 scheme of work, but would be suitable for any study of this poem. Starters, objectives, plenaries and differentiated activities are all included.

Designed for my bottom set year 9 group who are learning about Victorian England and Romantic Poetry, these lessons became their final reading assessment. The activities are straightforward and engaging, the language is simple, yet asks them to reflect on their own expression and the final assessment has scaffolding including sentence openings and gap fills.

These lessons will have students prepared and confident for any assessment you give them! Great preparation for unseen poetry at GCSE.

A fully resourced lesson with guided analysis of the poem, different activities to get students reading the poem independently and writing about the poet's background and the context of the poem. There is a stanza analysis carousel and a self-assessment plenary.

A complete and thorough lesson or two on Praise Song with several activities to get students actively reading the poem and analysing word choices and imagery. The outcomes focus on aspects of the poet's culture and background as well as language, structure and form.

This lesson introduces students to the monster Cthulhu through pictures and a listening quiz using the parody song "Hey There Cthulhu". The lesson focus is on using impressive vocabulary, so there is a thesaurus race at the start and a cloze (gap filling exercise) to use new vocabulary in as well as a descriptive writing task. Nothing too spooky here, but enough to get students interested.

Hi. There are a range of resources I used with my students to learn about the background for M Taylor's novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, but it will be of use to those studying Of Mice and Men and other texts set in this time period or about the historical context of the Civil Rights movement and why it was so necessary. There are web quests and listening quizzes for different topics which are hard to speak about, let alone teach, because of their awful brutality: the KKK, lynching, JC laws and sharecropping.

Welcome. This PPT has a range of guided listening activities to help students engage with the script and ideas before writing their own satirical podcast scripts on their home towns. WTNV is a highly celebrated podcast for its representative cast and amusing events. This particular PPT is based around episode 28: The Summer Reading Programme where children are captured by the evil librarians and eventually escape after beheading them. This exciting event is broken up with a range of government approved messages and advertisement parodies. My students really enjoyed creating their own podcasts and we put them up on the school website for everyone to listen to. They really threw themselves into it far more successfully than any previous work on script writing. This could also make a nice G&T after-school project.

It’s the hardest time of the year for your iGCSE students. For less than 25p per student, they can have this complete pack of 2018 CIE Songs of Ourselves poetry analysis and revision. Every single poem is analysed with notes on language, structure, form and a separate page of context about the author, the time they lived and anything else significant to the poem. Perfect for students who have missed a lesson or lessons: just print the notes for that page. Or you could give a copy to each student to read and work on over the holidays. I have also provided a range of previous exam questions, a checklist for achieving high grades, essay planning advice and top tips for getting your students the best grades they can. Save yourself time and energy. Good luck!

Three lessons which focus on planning, developing ideas into paragraphs, structuring paragraphs, using language features and structuring the whole letter. I have also included a frame for weaker students as well as an exemplar article on Seychelles culture. Students can write about their own culture, of course. Everything from outcomes, starters, progress tracking, self or peer-assessment instructions and plenaries are provided for each lesson. Initially I created this for WJEC but have recently adapted it for CIE's Checkpoint English. Please feel free to put in your board's mark scheme where this one was. I have also included a lesson plan for the second lesson, just in case you are being observed, this will make adapting it much easier, as well as giving you clear guidance.

Designed to teach Wilfred Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth and Seigfried Sassoon's Attack, this bundle is full of structured 4 or 5 part lessons with differentiated outcomes and activities, varied to keep every student engaged and challenged, making excellent progress. Whether analysing these poems for CIE iGCSE Songs of Ourselves, Unseen Poetry or WW1 Poetry, they are accessible for KS3 and KS4 and lead to structured and scaffolded essay responses suitable for exam preparation or coursework. It includes a whole lesson contextualising WW1 and analysing the language of recruitment posters persuading soldiers to enlist. This is a great way to have students thinking critically and engaged from the first moment! The following lesson goes on to challenge students to compete to read and answer questions on the two poets through their biographies. This is a really fun strategy to get them reading and can get really competitive! Students have never failed to empathise with these two soldier-poets who wrote about their experiences on the front line and the reflection afterwards has created some very rewarding responses. The next lesson is a full lesson of analysis in the form of a snooker game. Students will be active, working independently and pushing themselves, but won't even notice how much hard work they're doing! All you have to do is sit back and check their answers as they bring them up! This lesson has always gone down so well with the students and I achieved an Outstanding in a lesson observation with it too: I'm really excited to pass it on to you! Finally, I have included an example of a student's war poetry essay for iGCSE (on two different poems) so students can see a modelled example of how to structure their responses and get to act as the teacher and mark an anonymous piece of coursework. Everything you need to study these poets and poems is here in one place. Enjoy!

A great 20 minute activity for students to practice their listening skills. Makes a great introduction to learning about Brazil or to practice their English comprehension skills. You will need to download the 6 Minute English podcast on Brazil to go with these questions. Answers are provided and the students are asked to give top tips to improve their scores at the end. Ideas for top tips include using the correct units of measurement and changing the grammar of an answer to fit the question (i.e.: Portugal, not Portuguese for A3.) Enjoy!