I am passionate about making the teaching of some challenging texts accessible and fun for both staff and students, particularly in the wake of the new English specification. My desire is to share practical ideas and resources (from powerpoints and handouts to classroom displays) to make teaching an engaging but also straightforward and purposeful process!
I am passionate about making the teaching of some challenging texts accessible and fun for both staff and students, particularly in the wake of the new English specification. My desire is to share practical ideas and resources (from powerpoints and handouts to classroom displays) to make teaching an engaging but also straightforward and purposeful process!
This lesson is targeted at KS3 and uses both still and moving image stimuli to help them to describe what a monster looks like. The focus of this lesson is the use of ambitious sensory vocabulary, however students are also given opportunities to use sentence types, more sophisticated types of punctuation and language techniques for effect (this is encouraged through a 'challenge', 'stretch' and 'super stretch' differentiated system.
This lesson is catered to the 2015 AQA English Language Spec.
Please rate and review! :)
This PPT document contains two fully differentiated lessons (using a bronze, silver, gold and platinum system) which allow students to look at three different photographs (taken by myself) and write descriptively in response to it.
The first lesson encourages students to extend their vocabulary (incl. a group activity in which students identify synonyms for common adjectives).
The second lesson is focused on writing a range of sentence types correctly and extending them by including adjectives and adverbs to write descriptively.
Both lessons work towards students writing a descriptive paragraph to consolidate their ideas.
This writing support mat focuses on AO1 skills in Year 7; students are guided through writing 'PEER' paragraphs (point, evidence, explanation, response).
It includes an annotated model paragraph, do's and don'ts and sentence starters for each stage of 'PEER'.
NB: Content adapted from PiXL.
This document contains the following, which has been created in two Microsoft Word documents:
a) A reading skills feedback sheet using a coded feedback system (codes indicate a skill relevant to the AQA GCSE English language and literature specification).
b) A writing skills feedback sheet using a coded feedback system (codes indicate a skill relevant to the AQA GCSE English language and literature specification).
c) A student reflection sheet which encourages student to think carefully about their targets, what they will do to improve their re-draft and what has encouraged/prevented them from progressing upon viewing their re-drafted piece.
d) A + and - AO marking method which I also use with my students along-side the reading or writing marking codes (e.g: If a student has not identified a technique then I would write - AO2 Tq. in the margin).
This has been trialled on Year 11 students and has proven to be very successful and time-saving. It prevents me from writing the same comments over and over again! :)
This writing support mat focuses on AO1 and AO2 skills in Year 8; students are guided through writing 'PETER' paragraphs (point, evidence, technique, explanation, response).
It includes an annotated model paragraph, do's and don'ts and sentence starters for each stage of 'PETER'.
NB: Content is very much adapted from mats provided by PiXL, which were wonderful in design, but did not meet the needs of my students in terms of content.
This double-sided A3 knowledge organiser contains information about each chapter, a timeline of events, key characters (information taken and adapted from BBC Bitesize), themes, symbols, important contextual factors (including space for students to fill in factors that would influence a 20th/21st Century reader's interpretation of the text) and a small 'key quotations' section, in which students can complete their own brief analysis.
I have given this to my top set Year 11 class and they autonomously take it out and refer to it in every Jekyll and Hyde lesson.
I hope that it's as useful for your students.
This is a fully differentiated PPT presentation in which students practise their AO5 skills by beginning to draft an opinion piece about the possession of nuclear weapons in contemporary society. The lesson focuses on students' use of violent imagery, short sentences and complex-compound sentences for effect.
Please rate and write a review if possible - it would be brilliant to know what I can do to make resources more useful to you.
This lesson (tailored to the 2015 AQA spec) uses a 2017 article to help higher ability year 8 or 9 students identify and understand how the writer present his/her perspectives through the use of violent imagery. Contained here is:
- A fully differentiated PPT presentation
- The article (word doc), ready to print.
Please rate and write a review if possible - it would be brilliant to know what I can do to make resources more useful to you.
This lesson (tailored to the 2015 AQA spec) uses a 2017 article to help higher ability year 8 or 9 students identify and understand how the writer present his/her perspectives through the use of exaggeration, facts and statistics. Contained here is:
- A fully differentiated PPT presentation
- The article (word doc), ready to print.
- Two differentiated help sheets (containing definitions, a paragraph scaffold, a section for addressing common misconceptions and a 'how to fathom a reader's response' section) to support students in accessing their main task.
Please rate and write a review if possible - it would be brilliant to know what I can do to make resources more useful to you.
This bundle contains three fully differentiated lessons (tailored to the 2015 AQA spec) which focus on helping higher ability year 8 or 9 students identify and understand how writers present their perspectives. There is:
- A PPT presentation containing the three complete lessons
- Two complete articles
- Two differentiated help sheets (containing definitions, a paragraph scaffold, a section for addressing common misconceptions and a 'how to fathom a reader's response' section) to assist students during their main writing task in lesson two.
Lesson 1 - Reading: Students observe a 2017 article to analyse the use of violent imagery.
Lesson 2 - Reading: Students observe a US article (written on August 6th 1945) to analyse the use of facts and statistics.
Lesson 3 - Writing: Students begin to draft an opinion piece, focusing on the use of violent imagery, short sentences and complex-compound sentences for effect.
Please rate and write a review if possible - it would be brilliant to know what I can do to make resources more useful to you.
This bundle contains two lesson which are targeted at KS3. They use still and moving images as stimuli to help students to access and analyse Caliban's Dream from Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'.
The focus of lesson one allows students to focus on how language is used to present weakness. Students are also given opportunities to explore the use of emotive language and consider how the text has been structured (this is encouraged through a 'challenge', 'stretch' and 'super stretch' differentiated system.
The second allows students to practise using imagery in a descriptive piece from Caliban's narrative perspective.
These lessons are catered to the 2015 AQA English Language Spec.
Please rate and review! :)
These lessons are targeted towards KS3 students.
Lesson one: Students work on understanding the narrative by exploring the sounds created in the text and respond to a reading question.
Lesson two: Students develop this further, exploring the use of portmanteaus in the poem. They are also given opportunities to explore the use of violent imagery in the text.
Lesson Three: Students engage with a model descriptive paragraph as a starting point, leading up to a writing piece describing the Jabberwock's lair.
A 'challenge', 'stretch' and 'super stretch' differentiated system is used throughout the three lessons.
This lesson is catered to the 2015 AQA English Language Spec.
Please rate and review! :)
This bundle contains two lesson which are targeted at KS3. They use still and moving images (film, newspaper and documentary clips) as stimuli to help students to explore ways that creatures and people are depicted as monsters.
The focus of lesson one is the use of ambitious sensory vocabulary, however students are also given opportunities to use sentence types, more sophisticated types of punctuation and language techniques for effect (this is encouraged through a 'challenge', 'stretch' and 'super stretch' differentiated system.
The second focuses on the use of adjectives, verbs and adverbs in a range of fiction moving image texts.
These lessons are catered to the 2015 AQA English Language Spec.
Please rate and review! :)
This lesson is targeted at KS3 students. The PPT presentation takes students through four different sound techniques and students are given opportunities to write their own examples and learn the specific effects of these techniques. They are then encouraged to apply their knowledge to Imtaiz Dharker's 'Blessing'.
This lesson is catered to the 2015 AQA English Spec.
Please rate and review! :)
After observing a range of still and moving image stimuli, students are encouraged to abandon commonly used verbs and extend their vocabulary in their descriptions of how a creature moves. The focus of the lesson is ambitious vocabulary (AO6), however students are also encouraged to use sophisticated punctuation and language techniques in their writing).
A three-tiered differentiated system is used throughout.
This lesson is catered to the 2015 AQA English Language Spec.
Please rate and review! :)
By observing a range of still images, students are encouraged to develop an understanding of pathetic fallacy before using it in their own writing.
This would be suitable for a KS3 class or a lower ability KS4 class.
Please rate and review! :)
This SOL includes 26 lessons, exploring Reading Paper 2: Section B Writing Skills through the Shakespeare text 'Much Ado About Noting' . Each lesson is detailed and fully differentiated using a 3 tier (challenge, stretch and super stretch) system for starter activities and main tasks. All accompanying resources, including relevant extracts from the play and thematic articles, are included in this SOL; they are all ready for printing.
This SOL contains a range of writing tasks which are linked thematically to Much Ado About Nothing and stand-alone lessons which can be used to teach writing skills to meet AO5 and AO6 criteria.
This was made with the purpose of supporting our department (of mainly new staff and trainee teachers) by having lessons that we only needed to tweak for the needs of our students, instead of spending hours struggling to invent the same wheel individually.
This SOL can be used for higher ability students in years 9-11.
The accompanying SOL, focusing on Section A, can be found here:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/new-2015-spec-aqa-sol-much-ado-about-nothing-with-reading-paper-2-section-a-skills-11468354
*NB: Slides 98-113 have been taken/adapted from a PPT from the following free resources:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/writing-to-explain-revision-map-and-powerpoint-6040531
This resource has been improved for teaching in the year 2018-19
This SOL was highly successful last year (2017-18); the feedback from my team was that it was easy to follow by all, useful for teaching trainees how to plan/structure their lessons and enjoyable for students.
This resource contains 26 fully planned and differentiated lessons (in one continuous PPT format), designed to teach poetry analysis skills to top set year 8 and middle-top ability year 9 students. It incorporates the teaching both Literature reading skills (AO1, AO2 & AO3) and descriptive and narrative writing skills (AO5 and AO6); the writing tasks are thematically linked to poems studied in this unit. I have also snuck in some Language AO4 questions to further stretch students.
In this SOL, monsters are explored as being mythical creatures, wild animals and human beings. Students are also encouraged to think critically about the subjects of these poems (are they truly monstrous or a product of their environment? Should we feel resentment and fear or sympathy in part?). A range of stimuli, including still and moving image (fiction and non-fiction), newspaper extracts, wordalls and audio clips have been used throughout this SOL to help students to engage creatively, personally and at times critically with the scheme’s topic.
The SOL covers the teaching of the following poems:
The Jabberwocky
Medusa
Education for Leisure
Caliban’s Dream (The Tempest)
Paradise Lost
The Kraken
The Villain
Six homework tasks (which have been adapted from various online sources) can be found by following the link below:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/monsters-poetry-sol-homework-11697376
Enjoy and please do rate it/contact me with any feedback that I can use to benefit the rest of us relentlessly hard-working professionals. :)
This selection of resources aims to improve students' AO6 skills by allowing them to access information independently from document wallets which are stapled to the wall. This little pack will save hours of typing, copying, pasting and formatting; it includes ready-to-print (mostly A4) cards containing information about the following:
a) Full stops, commas, exclamation marks, punctuation marks, parenthesis, colons, semi-colons, hyphens, dashes and ellipses.
b) Simple, compound, complex and compound-complex sentences.
c) Credit-card sized synonym cards for popular words (show, good, bad, big, small, strong, weak, hard and soft).
d) Definitions of various types of:
- Nouns (concrete, collective, abstract etc)
- verbs (modal, imperative, auxiliary etc)
- sentence types (declarative, imperative, interrogative etc)
- pronouns (objective, reflexive, personal etc)
I personally have differentiated these by printing them on light orange, light grey and light yellow card (you could, of course, use a different colour-coding system).
Enjoy!
These six homework tasks (saved as both word and PDF documents) are to be used in conjunction with the Monsters Poetry SOL which can be found here:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/-2015-spec-skills-monsters-poetry-sol-year-8-or-9-11697343
It is an accumulation of a range of online sources. I do not own the rights to the material; I have simply organised them to fit the needs of the scheme.
I hope that it saves you time.