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.
Blow this worksheet up to A3 size. Students draw lines between the characters and note down how they're connected. They can also jot down notes and quotes for individual characters. This will become a revision aid for students.
Drama Assessment
Use this grid to assess students in drama. Simply write the student’s name in the left-hand column and put a tick or ‘T’ in some of the boxes on the right to indicate whether the drama skill is something they do really well, or something they need to work on. You can write additional comments if you wish.
The idea is that after the drama assessment you can give students praise, their level and their target in an efficient way. All students then need to do is write down their level and target on the blue sheet at the front of their small yellow exercise books.
This grid focuses on nine key skills in drama, including facial expressions, spatial awareness, voice projection etc.
Go through the PowerPoint slide showing statements about Shakespeare. Students move to the left or right of the room depending on whether they think the statement is true or false. Once students have made their decision, click the mouse and show the answer. Use the Teacher's Notes to give students a little bit more information about the fact. This is an interactive starter activity that students really engage with.
Issue 'Shakespeare Prologue' to pairs. Students work through the prologue as if they are detectives deciphering a piece of evidence. They must 'zoom in' on individual words, decipher their meaning and try piece together what the entire prologue actually means and what is going to happen in the play.
Allow students 20 minutes to do this before discussing the prologue and finally handing them 'Prologue Explained' which is the prologue translated into modern English.
Albeit simple, students love the detective element to this activity. It really helps to engage them.
Students use this sheet to chart their sympathy for Candy throughout the novel. This sheet could be blown up to A3 to allow students lots of room to annotate the chart with key quotations from the text.
Students to correct these commonly mixed-up idioms. This activity could lead into a lesson about the origin of idioms and why idioms are part of the English language.
Put students into 6 groups and issue each group one section of the Wife of Bath and one translation sheet. Students are spend 3 minutes with each section and write the modern translation on their translation sheet. IMPORTANT: Students must make sure they write their translation in the correctly numbered space on the sheet to ensure it's in order at the end of the task. They're to use the helpful hints to guide them.
After students have had all 6 sections, they're to read out what they've translated. Discuss as a class.
Ask students to close their eyes and put their heads on the table.
Play Thomas Newman track and read the second-person edit of Chapter Two's description of the garage. Read the description slowly to allow students to imagine how Michael would feel entering the garage. After you've read the description, allow students 1-2 minutes to reflect with their eyes closed. Explain that once they open their eyes, they're to write down how they felt in the given situation. Ask students to share with a partner. De-brief post-activity; ask students: ‘How did it feel to do that?’
This activity should help students to engage with Michael's character and how he feels when entering the garage where Skellig resides.
Students will need access to a computer to complete this activity. Put students into small groups and issue A4 paper one of the questions from the Questions Pack.. Students are to create an attractive poster which provides the answers to the question(s) they've been given.
After 30 minutes, students are to 'present' their poster to the rest of the group. Students are to make notes in their books so that they have a record of the contextual information about Skellig.
Display students' posters in your classroom as a point of reference throughout the study of Skellig.
A 30-minute activity for students to understand what makes a great story opening. Students analyse some of the world's most renown story openings, they identify what's effective about them and then they use their new-found knowledge to craft their own enticing story opening.
There are 13 story openings including The Lovely Bones, Orwell's 1984, Jane Eyre and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - a real mix for students to get their teeth into. I dare say this activity may encourage some students to read the books after being drawn in by some of the openings.
These domino sets are a great way of getting the whole class involved in learning and remembering key terms. In this bundle there are four sets of dominoes (with instructions) for:
Linguistic Terms
Magazine Terminology
Spoken Language Features
Poetic Devices
This bundle of starters includes activities on:
Homophones
Unstressed Vowels
Connectives
Capital Letters
'Have' instead of 'Of'
Plurals
Simple/Compound/Complex Sentences
Close-reading & Inference
Idioms
Buying these starters separately would cost £2 each, but you get 11 starters for £7.50, saving 66%.
This resource contains a PPT and a selection of poems for students to practise approaching unseen poetry. The PPT guides students through the following:
1. Title
2. Shape/form
3. Personal response
4. Voice
5. Vocabulary
6. Imagery
7. Structure
8. Interpretation
Encouraging students to look at these aspects of a poem will enable them to engage and understand the unseen poem.
Students are to work in pairs. Issue one line from the poem to each pair. Students are to analyse the language closely to try to learn about the speaker’s feelings. Motivate students by asking them to imagine their police detectives, with only one sentence of the criminal’s confession to analyse. They are to read the line deeply to consider the multiple layers of meaning. Model activity. Whole-class feedback. Students should write down what their peers say.
This short activity tests students' ability to follow instructions. It is a fun starter and shows students the importance of reading ALL the instructions before starting a task.
This is a fun way of offering further exploration of Bayonet Charge by appealing to students' different strengths and skills, e.g. artistic, creative, visual, mathematical or social. This is an engaging, outstanding lesson, and was designed with Garner's Multiple Intelligences in mind.
You will need to prepare for this lesson beforehand by creating the 'resource stations':
Resource Station 1: Visual – Saving Private Ryan Clip, available on YouTube, lined paper (x5), instructions
Resource Station 2: Creative – activity (x5), lined paper (x5), instructions
Resource Station 3: Social – activity, instructions
Resource Station 4: Artistic – plain A4 paper, activity, instructions
Resource Station 5: Mathematical – activity (x5), instructions
Lesson Plan:
Ensure that students are sat in groups of five. Tell them that the group they’re sat with is their ‘home group’. Show students the ‘resource stations’ slide. Explain to students that they’ll see five different resource stations around the room. Explain the activity at each resource station. Explain that each group will send one group member to each resource station to complete the activity. After 20 minutes, all group members will return to their home group and feedback what they’ve learnt. Give groups one minute to decide which group member will go to each resource station. If they cannot decide, then they’ll be randomly numbered one-five and will go to the corresponding station. Check students’ understanding by using ‘thumbs-up’. Ask a student to re-explain if there’s misunderstanding.
Allow students to move to their designated resource station to start their activity. Instructions and resources will be ready at each station.
Teacher facilitates, circulates, ask students questions to deepen their learning.
After 20 minutes, students are to return to their ‘home groups’ to feedback. Tell them that they have 10 minutes and they should hear from everybody.
Ask students in their books to write down three things they feel they’ve learnt from other people about Bayonet Charge.
Issue sets of these cards to groups or pairs. Students are to sequence them in the correct order. Great as a quick starter activity to get students thinking about the order of events in the play. Extend the task by asking students to find quotations to accompany all or some of the events.