The SOW takes students through the following learning objectives: Lesson 1 Obj: To be able to define ‘allegory’ and ‘satire’ Lesson 2 Obj: To be able to identify persuasive devices / To research the background and context of Animal Farm. Lesson 3 Obj: To be able to identify language used for characters in Animal Farm Lesson 4 Obj: To be able to identify differences between Snowball and Napoleon Lesson 5 Obj: To be able to use knowledge of the content of Chapter 4 to plan newspaper article. Lesson 6 Obj: To be able to identify improvements to be made through planning. Lesson 7 Obj: To be able to understand how power and language are interlinked. Lesson 8 Obj: To be able to understand how Animal Farm relates to Russian history. Lesson 9 Obj: To be able to analyse and interpret events in Chapters 8 and 9 Lesson 10 Obj: To be able to identify what makes an effective speaker and listener. Lesson 11 Obj: To be able to work effectively as a group and prepare a speech Lesson 12 Obj: To be able to present speech and peer-assess Lesson 13 Obj: To be able to analyse and discuss the film adaptation of Animal Farm Lesson 14 To be able to analyse and discuss the film adaptation of Animal Farm

Ask your students to graph the build-up of tension in each act. Differentiation would include asking students to add quotes to their graph or illustrate pictures to help their understanding.

In this lesson students revisit the features of gothic stories before identifying them in an extract from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Students are then told that they'll be re-telling a popular nursery rhyme in the gothic genre. They are shown examples of Jack and Jill in the 'romance' genre and then the 'gothic' genre to give them an idea of how a nursery rhyme can be adapted. Students then choose and nursery rhyme and have a go themselves. From personal experience, students absolutely love this activity and it really gets their creative juices flowing. It allows for very rich, high quality descriptive writing. This lesson is compatible with all abilities, but very successful with high ability KS3 students.

This is a 6-7 week scheme of work that can be adapted to suit your needs, but it basically leads students up to pitching their idea for a new type of fast food restaurant. Essentially, it leads up to a very engaging speaking and listening assessment. Students must learn to work in a team with different roles. They must learn to delegate tasks based on students' differing abilities. The SOW involves mind mapping, problem-solving and decision-making. Having done this SOW with students before, it really does get their creative juices flowing. They end up taking it very seriously and really do think about their restaurant's brand name, slogan, logo, target audience, USP, appropriate location etc. The competitive element of the SOW really engages boys as well. Not only do students hone their speaking and listening skills, but they gain a basic understanding of how to create a business that will be successful when considering several different factors. The SOW is all included within the PowerPoint with 'notes' added to most slides to be completely self-explanatory. The PowerPoint contains 31 slides, which are very easy to follow and tell students exactly what they need to do.

GREAT 10-MINUTE STARTER TO CEMENT THE FOLLOWING KEY TERMS AND THEIR DEFINITIONS: Accent Adjacency pairs Back-channel features Blend word Contraction Deixis / deictics Dialect Discourse markers Elision Ellipsis False start Fillers Hedge Idiolect Interactional talk Initialism Jargon Micropause Non-fluency features Overt prestige Paralinguistic features Phatic talk Prosodic features Received Pronunciation Repairs Slang Sociolect Standard English Tag question Transactional talk Transcript Turn taking Utterance Vague language INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACTIVITY: Cut out these dominoes and laminate them (optional). Give individuals or pairs one domino, including you, the teacher. You begin by reading out the definition on the yellow side of your card. The student who has the term on the blue side of their card that matches with your definition then puts up their hand and says their term out loud. They then read aloud the definition on the yellow side of their card. All class members will have to listen carefully to see if their term matches with the definition they’ve just heard, and so the game continues until it goes full circle, every student has spoken, and you eventually hear the definition that matches with the term on the blue side of your card. Essentially, you’re playing a large game of dominoes, where students have to match key terms with definitions they hear. Depending on your group’s knowledge/ability, you may work altogether to match up the terms with definitions, or, alternatively, you may decide to play this as an actual dominoes game on the floor. This is a great 10-minute starter that really helps students to remember key terms and their definitions.

Here's a fun plurals starter with a competitive element - bound to engage the boys! In 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' style, this activity asks students to pluralise different words. As the monetary amount increases, the words get more and more difficult. For example, the £100 word is 'face', the £16,000 is 'goose', the £125,000 word is 'quiz' and the £1,000,000 is 'ox'. There are two versions of the game to play on two separate occasions; the second round takes students from 'house' (£100) to 'stimulus' (£1,000,000). This is a fun, competitive starter that engages students in plurals - incredible!

Students are issued with a scenario and asked to represent/show the story from the perspective of any of the people numbered 1-9. They must consider their perspective carefully. Ask themselves what can they see and hear? Write a short account; write in as much detail as your perspective allows. This activity is a hands-on way of finding out how narrative perspective can alter the narration of a story. This will lend itself well to leading into a discussion about a narrator's point of view and reliability of narrators.

Show the PPT and discuss students' responses to the three questions. Discuss Roald Dahl's quotation, and the short story features on slide 3. Show slide 4 and issue Baby Shoes handout. Explain to students that this is a short story, just one sentence. Students are to read the ‘short story’ and think about the story behind it, e.g. Has a married couple lost a baby? Encourage students to think a little more left-field, like is 'Baby Shoes, Never Worn' the name of a painting? Students should jot down their ideas around the ‘short story’. They may discuss their ideas with a partner. Introduce Ernest Hemingway. Students are to copy down notes into their exercise book. Ask students to think of a collective name they would give to stories that are six words long, e.g. ‘sentence stories’. Encourage students to be inventive. They may discuss in pairs. Show slide 4; these are different names given to the shortest of short stories - are the ones students suggested up there? Split students into seven groups. Give each group one piece of Flash Fiction stuck to a piece of A4 paper. As a group, they must decide the ‘story’ behind each piece of flash fiction. Model activity. Rotate the flash fiction allowing different groups to make notes on the same sheet of paper. Encourage students to think outside the box and not to go straight for the obvious. After 10-15 minutes, make sure each group has one piece of flash fiction. Each group should read their flash fiction aloud and explain their story behind it. Students who are not presenting should listen, as they will be randomly selected to pick and explain their favourite piece of flash fiction. (Optional) Issue question cards. Ask students to see whether the 'short story features' discussed earlier apply to the six-word stories. As a final activity, students should have a go at writing their own 6-word short story. Share with the class. Issue Question Cards

This PPT offers students two activities to practise close reading and inference. The first activity gives students a scenario in which they have to consider whether the protagonist is guilty of theft. The answer isn't very obvious so students have to closely read the passage to make a considered decision. The second activity gives an RSPCA's description of a puppy for adoption. Students have to explain what they can infer from the passage based on evidence and reasoning.

Print off the slides in the presentation, mix them up, and issue them to pairs or groups. Students to match the opening line to the correct story.

This is an excellent, fun and challenging quiz to do with secondary school students in an English lesson. This quiz tests students’ knowledge of children’s and teen literature. There are 52 opening lines - one for every week of the year - for students to try and identify. Students must decide which story the opening line comes from. Depending on your students’ ability, you can use the optional clues provided on each slide, available simply by clicking ‘clue’ on each slide. You can also challenge students to not only guess the story’s title but also the story’s author. There is plenty of scope for differentiation. Some notes for how to complete this activity are included in the ‘notes’ section the PowerPoint slides. Sample opening lines: “All children, except one, grow up.” - Peter Pan "Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy." - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe “I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon.” - Skellig "My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue.” - Twilight “Sophie couldn’t sleep. A brilliant moonbeam was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right on her pillow.” - BFG The opening lines range from The Hungry Caterpillar to The Fault in our Stars. This quiz is a fun thing to do at Christmas or at the end of term, or just as part of a reading lesson to encourage students to read by engaging them in the opening lines. This quiz also offers opportunity for students to discuss which opening lines are their favourites, perhaps encouraging them to seek out the stories to read for themselves.

Using this sheet, students map the rise and fall of Macbeth. They look at phrases used to describe Macbeth in the play. They must find evidence for each phrase. Once finished, this worksheet will illustrate - using quotations - the tragic downfall of Macbeth throughout the play.

This resource offers a comprehensive list of techniques used by the media to influence consumers. This list can be used in a variety of ways. Students could use it to identify techniques used in adverts or they could use it to create their own advert. There are 15 different techniques listed: Association Bandwagon Beautiful People Bribery Celebrities Experts Explicit Claims Fear Humour Intensity Maybe Plain Folks Repetition Testimonials Warm & Fuzzy

Students need to be in two teams. A volunteer from each team must come to the front. Volunteers must answer a series of questions to try cross the square vertically or horizontally. They’re allowed to ask for help from their team twice. They’re only allowed to choose one person to answer the question. This resource includes a PowerPoint and a series of 18 questions with answers. Example of three questions below: F – How do you spell Frankenstein? C – Who is Frankenstein’s friend? Walton I – In which city does Frankenstein live? Ingolstadt

Place the photographs around the room before the start of the lesson. Tell students that placed around the room are some of the most iconic photographs ever captured. Ask students to walk around the room, view the pictures, read the information and decide which one the most powerful impact. Why? Ask: How important are photographs in newspapers? Do you think it would be possible to run a front page which did not have a photograph with it? Why/why not? Ask: Are there times when using photographs is not justified? Ask students to look at the list and decide what they think. - Pictures taken of celebrities without their permission - Brutal pictures of people hurt or killed in war or violence (The Falling Man 9/11 and Death in Africa caused controversy) - Page 3 semi-naked shots Students to write a short response in their books, giving reasons for their answers. This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Using the PowerPoint, explain to students the three main types of newspaper writing – news stories, features and opinion pieces. Students should make notes in their books as you explain to them. Quick test (slide 6): Ask students to decide whether the headlines are for news, features or opinion pieces. They should explain what clues helped them, e.g. the use of the personal pronoun ‘I’ Issue the three Articles to pairs. Students are to decide which one is the news story, the feature article and the opinion piece. Students are to read the articles closely. Under the headings of ‘news stories’ ‘features’ and ‘opinion pieces’ in their book, students are to identify word level features in the different types of writing. Display slide 7 on the PowerPoint to assist students. But encourage students to be open-minded about what the find. Differentiation: some features will need explaining. For lower ability groups, delete tricky features as appropriate. After activity, ask students to explain what language features they're likely to find in a features article/news story/opinion piece? This resource is taken from my KS3 English Newspaper/Journalism SOW which you can buy from my shop.

Of Mice and Men Much of the plot in the novel is cyclical, as are the lives of the characters. The story opens and closes in the same place, the men’s lives are a routine of work - earn money - spend money in the flop-house - work, and many of the chapters begin and end in similar ways. There are lots of examples of foreshadowing in Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck uses this technique to suggest that the characters couldn’t have avoided their fates – their destinies are inevitable. The task this resource offers is for students to look below the surface of the text and interpret how Steinbeck is offering clues about what will happen later on in the novel. I am looking for some original responses.

This resource contains two documents: the student version is a blank table for students to complete; the teacher version is already filled in using Bridget Jones's Diary and When Harry Met Sally as examples. Students are to attempt to identify the features of a romantic comedy in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and complete the table using modern romantic comedies to assist their understanding.

This resource offers a reading question, an essay plan and key word definitions. This essay was used as the reading assessment for a high ability Year 9 group studying Shakespeare's Macbeth. Essay Question: Starting with this speech, explain how far you think Shakespeare presents Macbeth as a tragic hero. Assessment Objectives A01 – Maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response, and use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations. A02 – Analyse language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate A03 – Show understanding of the contexts in which texts were written A04 – Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation.

This is a comprehensive literacy starter activity covering several homophones. This resource contains an informative PPT followed by three engaging and challenging activities. This activity should last about 20-25 minutes.