Frankenstein Full Teaching Unit | GCSE | KS4 KS3 | Mary Shelley | Gothic literature

A comprehensive Senior English teaching unit for Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, featuring a 10-week sequence of engaging, activity-based lessons focused on analytical writing and critical thinking. This resource supports students in exploring ambition, responsibility, creation, ethics, isolation, and the pursuit of knowledge through this foundational Gothic text.

What’s included
• Analysis of context, themes, characters, and cultural assumptions
• Exploration of Romanticism, scientific discovery, ethics, and the human condition
• Language features, text structures, symbolism, and figurative language analysis
• Study of narrative structure, framing, and multiple perspectives
• Close reading and comprehension tasks
• Essay questions, analytical writing support, and exemplar paragraphs
• Peer and self-assessment activities
• A 10-week teaching sequence with 3 learning activities per week
• Engaging, classroom-ready activities throughout
• Critical lenses activities (e.g. feminist, psychoanalytic, Marxist, ethical perspectives)
• Ethical case files exploring moral dilemmas and philosophical questions within the text

Teaching approach
This resource is activity-based rather than a scripted lesson-by-lesson program. It is designed for teachers to select and adapt tasks to suit their own lessons and classroom needs. The unit emphasises discussion, interpretation, collaborative learning, and rich analytical activities rather than worksheet-driven instruction.

File info
• Provided as a non-editable PDF
• Not designed as an editable PowerPoint
How to use
• Upload to your LMS (Google Classroom, Canvas, etc.) for digital use
• Print selected pages for classroom use
• Display pages to guide discussion and activities
• Upload to presentation or design platforms if you wish to adapt for your own use (formatting may vary depending on the program used)