Before having children I was Head of KS3 English at a secondary school in Lincolnshire. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a teacher and I loved planning lessons and creating exciting resources.
Before having children I was Head of KS3 English at a secondary school in Lincolnshire. I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a teacher and I loved planning lessons and creating exciting resources.
Students are asked to write a short paragraph about their weekend using three connectives from the list displayed in the PPT. Students are then asked to share their paragraph before reflecting on how connectives help to improve their writing.
Spelling activity based on unstressed vowels. Students learn what unstressed vowels are before trying to come up with tricks to remember spellings with unstressed vowels.
Place these facts around the room. Students have five minutes to search for the facts in the room and write them down. Allow time to feed back and discuss afterwards.
This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.
Before the lesson display the difference words/phrases used to describe Macbeth 'Rise and Fall of Macbeth'.
Students are to walk round the room and pick one phrase written on white paper and one phrase written on grey paper. They should jot these down in their exercise books.
Once they’ve done that. Ask students to think carefully about the ‘grey paper’ phrase. They should think about how they say it. Instruct students to walk around the room and say it to whoever they meet.
Feedback – Ask students how they said it? In what tone? Why?
Do the same again but for the ‘white paper’ phrases.
Feedback – Ask students how they said it? In what tone? Why?
Explain to students that these are all phrases used to describe Macbeth throughout the play. What does this suggest about the character of Macbeth?
This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.
Will Christopher get to London?
Christopher is about to face a situation that will be very difficult for him. How will he cope? Will he manage to get to London?
In this resource students are asked to consider how Christopher's Asperger's Syndrome will affect his experience at the train station. They're to consider challenges he'll face and strategies he'll use to cope. This will take students 10-15 minutes to complete. Using either thumbs-up, thumbs-down or thumbs in the middle, vote as a class for whether Christopher will cope at the train station or not.
This resource is taken from my KS3 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time SOW which you can buy from my shop.
Powerpoint offering definitions of tragedy, tragic flaw, tragic hero to aid discussion of the play and its title character.
This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.
This is an extended piece of homework that students can complete at home over a two-week period.
In lessons students have been reading Macbeth by William Shakespeare. They have looked at how different directors have interpreted the witches and how they look, move and behave.
They are going to create a portfolio of three pieces of work which shows how they would interpret the witches imagining that they are going to stage a production of Macbeth.
This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.
Students are to correct a sentence which has used several incorrect homophones. They are then asked to create their own sentences using incorrect homophones for their partner to correct.
Starter: Be active, not passive!
Display PowerPoint. Go through slides 1-3. Explain to students the difference between active and passive voice. Teach students the idea of bringing the subject to the front of the sentence in order to transmit meaning more clearly, directly and succinctly.
In this lesson students are going to put together a whole article individually or in pairs (depending on your group’s ability). Ideally, this should be done on laptops, but it’s possible to do on paper. You are going to feed students pieces of information via the PPT. Students will use the information to put their article together. Laptops are better for this activity as they are able to edit previously written paragraphs more efficiently.
For lower ability students, it’s probably best to print off the slides.
Explain task using slide 4. Show students slide 5-11, leaving about 5 minutes between each slide. For slide 10, you’ll need to print copies of the Article for pairs.
In the last five minutes, instruct students to check through their work using slide 12.
Students to swap their laptop with another pair and compare articles.
Show students Original Article. This is the actual article based on the same information published in 2008.
This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.
This PPT looks at three different responses to:
In Of Mice and Men explore the ways the writer presents relationships between characters.
LENNIE AND CURLEY’S WIFE
Focusing specifically on AO3:
Read and understand texts, selecting material appropriate to purpose
Develop and sustain interpretation of writers’ ideas and perspectives
Explain and evaluate how writers use linguistic, grammatical, structural and presentational features to achieve effects and engage and influence the reader.
There is a grade D/E response, a grade C response and a B/A response. Students are able to see how they can improve and develop their analysis to achieve higher grades.
There's also a comprehensive and detailed essay plan to aid students' planning of a response to the exam question above.
A starter which explains the three different sentence types with examples, making reference to main clauses, subordinate clauses and embedded clauses.
Ideal to use as an introduction to a piece of creative/descriptive writing where you'd expect students to use varied sentences.
When I first met my new classes I went through a 'classroom code' so they were familiar with my expectations. This is the PowerPoint I used. You may edit it as you wish to suit your own purposes.
In this PPT are seven fantastic brain teasers. These will definitely get your tutees' brains whirring away.
For example:
What is light as a feather, but even the strongest man cannot hold it more than a few minutes?
Answer: His breath.
Students are shown a collection of objects on the screen. They have two minutes to try and remember them all without writing them down.
After the two minutes they must write down as much as they can remember. They are then able to see their age equivalent test score. For example, if they remember 10 objects, then they have the memory of an 8-year-old.
Two lessons based on Simon Armitage's poem November. The learning objective for both lessons is to understand the subject matter of November, and identify/interpret the feelings and attitudes.
These two lessons contain varied and exciting activities including sequencing activities, labelling the poem with pictures and relating the subject matter of the poem to themselves. There's a strong focus on the language of the poem and the different metaphors used.
In Act 2, Scene 1 Macbeth is deciding whether to kill Duncan or not. Read Macbeth’s soliloquy to students from ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’
Ask students to listen carefully as you read aloud to them – try to be quite dramatic and theatrical!
Instruct students to jot down any words or phrases that they think are especially important.
With a copy of Macbeth’s Soliloquy, give pairs three highlighters to share. They must identify how Macbeth is feeling at the prospect of murdering King Duncan, exploring three possible choices:
1) Macbeth is intent on the murder.
2) Macbeth is undecided.
3) Macbeth is horrified by the prospect of murder.
They’re to use 3 different colours to represent each of the three choices. They should try to highlight each line in a colour.
Issue the Macbeth Chart to students. They’re to create a line graph which illustrates Macbeth’s decision making.
This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.
Put students in pairs and give each pair a piece of A3 paper. Ensure that each person in the pair has a different coloured pen.
Explain that students are going to have a silent debate. One person will write down reasons why Macbeth should kill King Duncan; the other person will write down reasons why Macbeth shouldn’t kill King Duncan. Allow students 10 mins to do this exercise. Students write down reasons one at a time; students should try to respond to what’s been written previously. Use the resource above as an example.
This resource is taken from my KS3 Macbeth SOW which you can buy from my shop.
A simple straight-forward starter for capital letters. Students learn where to use capital letters before correcting sentences where capital letters have not been used.