Using an excerpt from Roald Dahl's autobiography, 'Boy' - The Great Mouse Plot - a booklet of highly differentiated activities which address skills tested by Qs 1 to 3 of the new AQA Language Paper 2A exam paper, but for students whose reading age is significantly lower than their chronological age. It's a good way to introduce the focus of each question, and to get students responding in appropriate ways at a level that is appropriate to their ability. I hope this is useful to you and your students. Matt :)

A set of 15 editable PPT slides, one for each of the poems in the Literature P&C anthology, inviting pupils to explore a quotation in terms of a close analysis of the poet’s choice of methods, the contexts of the poem and its links to other poems. I hope that you find them useful. Please leave a review. If you like these, there are sets for A Christmas Carol, Macbeth and An Inspector Calls - all FREE at my shop here on TES. Resource cover image courtesy of Mervyn Chan, at Unsplash.

Several starter activity puzzles for use with Philip Pullman's adaptation of 'Frankenstein.' Designed for use by pupils at Key Stage 3.

A variety of starter activity puzzles: crosswords, anagrams, word searches with hidden messages to accompany the teaching and learning of Orwell's novel, a set text for the new AQA GCSE English Literature Paper 2: Modern Texts examination. Hope they are of use to you.

25 x PPT slides, each containing 5 retrieval practice Qs to encourage regular recall of previously learned information. The latest research suggests retrieval practice improves transfer of knowledge to long-term memory. Hope they’re useful. Please leave a review.

The new GCSE English Language and Literature Assessment Objectives 'boiled down' to 5 CORE Reading Skills and then those core skills are traced through a hierarchy of competence, using phrases common to new AQA Language and Literature mark schemes (highlighted in bold on the progression maps), linked to the new numerical grades 9 to 1, using the FFT 'refined' model. They can be used across both Key Stages 3 and 4 to assess skills progression and to ensure consistency in application of assessment criteria across members of your department. If you find them of use, check out the Planning for Progression in Writing: New 9 to 1 Skills progression map also uploaded to TES. I hope they are of some use to you.

This resource has 8 x weekly SPaG review slides for use when teaching Macbeth. Each slide comprises 6 common areas of SPaG error for review and consolidation. Help yourself! PLEASE NOTE: Sell and be damned!

Designed for the NEW AQA (2015 onwards) English Language Paper 2B - WRITING TASK A variety of writing tasks, each linked by theme, to accompany various Paper 2A practice exam resources I have already produced, all available FREE of charge from my 'shop'. Help yourself and leave a review! The 2B tasks in the Word document are designed to accompany the following practice 2A papers I have uploaded: * NURSING - THEN & NOW * CAPITAL PUNISHMENT * RAIL DISASTERS * CRIME & PUNISHMENT * CHILD LABOUR and each writing task follows the format of the published AQA specimen exam paper for Paper 2B. I hope you find these of use to accompany resources you may have already downloaded. Matt :)

A collection of starter activities for use with Theresa Breslin's novel, 'Whispers in the Graveyard', from simple wordsearches and anagram puzzles of key word vocabulary to crossword puzzles testing reading comprehension and more challenging cryptogram puzzles. Solutions to the puzzles are provided at the end.

This resource comprises 16 posters, created using Adobe Spark, each containing key terminology for exploring narrative structure with precision and sophistication. Each poster contains a graphic, the term and a definition. There are 16 in total, and the folder also contains a Word document for students as a glossary, with terms, definitions and examples from various, popular GCSE Literature texts. I turned my classroom wall display into a Freytag's Pyramid and affixed the first 7 to it. The others are structural features for reference by students in class. Enjoy!

Designed for use with less able students, this post-reading quiz based on the Oxford Playscript version of Stoker's classic, adapted by David Calcutt - complete with appropriate images - is suitable also for younger students, at KS3. Questions are designed to test pupils' knowledge and understanding of characters, events and plot details. Pupils can work independently, in pairs or trios, depending on their ability. Enjoy! :)

A practice exam paper for the new AQA GCSE English Language Paper 2A: Writers' Viewpoints and Perspectives, linked by the theme of 'Fires in London', using Pepys' 17th C journal entry of the Great Fire of London and a Guardian newspaper article from the King's Cross tube station fire in 1998. The texts and the format of the exam Qs follows that published by AQA in the approved specimen materials. Please note: I have produced only Qs 1 to 3 (there are 4 Qs on the exam paper) as these resources were originally designed for use by pupils at Key Stage 3, introducing the format and the skills tested by the new GCSE. NOTE: I've uploaded LOADS of practice Paper 1s AND 2s to my 'shop', ALL FREE of charge. Please help yourself - just leave a review. Thank you! I hope it is of some use to you.

Designed to be used alongside study of the play, the 25 slides are used as a recall starter, providing opportunity for regular low-stakes quizzing and retrieval of knowledge of the play. The slides are editable and assess knowledge cumulatively, Act by Act so by the end of the play they should have a secure knowledge of key quotations, stagecraft, characters and contexts. I hope they are useful. Please leave a review. Thanks.

The Examiners' Report for the June 2017 series commented on candidates' responses to Paper 1B writing tasks by stating that "Many students would have benefitted from a quality rather than quantity approach: having the confidence to take time to plan, and then craft a shaped and structured response in two or three sides, with time at the end to revise and improve." These 200 Word challenges are designed to encourage narrative or descriptive writing in response to an image, with either three techniques or three vocabulary choices to include in their 200 words long response, produced in 30 minutes, with 10 minutes spent proofreading, editing and correcting. I hope that they are of use to you.

A handy little bookmark, designed to be folded and sized so that 3, once folded, fit comfortably inside one A4 sized laminating pouch. The bookmark reminds students how to tackle each of the four Reading Qs on AQA English Language Papers 1 and 2. I hope that you find this useful. Please leave a review.

A 35 page workbook of differentiated activities, designed to support students in their study of John Steinbeck's classic novella, 'Of Mice and Men'. To accompany the workbook is a set of SMART Notebook slides, which replicate the pages of the pupil workbook, to support teachers in their whole-class, interactive teaching of the text and the material. PLEASE NOTE: If you do not have SMART Notebook, you can STILL download and view SMART Notebook files by downloading a FREE Smart Notebook viewer. It opens the file on your PC in a format akin to Microsoft Powerpoint (with very occasional wonky movement of graphics due to a formatting glitch!) Anyway, you can access the FREE SMART Notebook viewer by copying and pasting this link into your web browser: http://express.smarttech.com/ I hope you find these useful. If you do, then you may find of interest similar resources available FREE at my 'shop' here on TES for 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' and also 'The Highwayman', aswell as differentiated AQA English Language exam paper 1s and 2s. Matt :)

A practice exam paper for the new AQA Language Paper 1: Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing UPDATED: APRIL 2017 - to include a REVISED series of SMART notebook slides to teach Q by Q in class, which can be unlocked and adapted for other Paper 1A practice exam papers I have uploaded to the TES site, all available free of charge. Includes a Q3 key terminology matching starter, a Q3 STRUCTURE model response, a new Q4 slide. This extract is taken from John Steinbeck's novella, 'The Pearl', published in 1947. In the extract, set in Mexico during the 1940s, a child named Coyotito has been stung by a scorpion. The child’s father, a Mexican pearl diver named Kino, takes his child to the white European doctor who works in a nearby town. The text and the format of the exam Qs 1 to 4 follows that of AQA's approved specimen papers. NOTE: I've uploaded LOADS of practice Paper 1s AND 2s to my 'shop', ALL FREE of charge. Please help yourself - just leave a review. Thank you! I hope this is of some use to you.

The new GCSE English Language and Literature Assessment Objectives 'boiled down' to 5 CORE WRITING Skills and then those core skills are traced through a hierarchy of competence, using phrases common to new AQA Language and Literature mark schemes (highlighted in bold on the progression maps), linked to the new numerical grades 9 to 1, using the FFT 'refined' model. If you find them of use, check out the Planning for Progression in Reading: New 9 to 1 Skills progression map also uploaded to TES. I hope they are of some use to you.

In this dramatic opening, the narrator describes a man being thrown from a grounded hot air balloon which then begins to ascend. Alone and terrified, in the basket there is a small boy. I have adapted TES contributor Claire Mesher's resource for use with SMART Notebook, as a series of interactive slides to aid your teaching of this specimen exam paper Q by Q, for Qs 1 to 4. Also, I have added a model response to Q3: Structure demonstrating how pupils can apply subject specific terminology appropriately as this is mentioned in every band on the AQA mark scheme for this question. NOTE: I've uploaded LOADS of Paper 1s AND 2s to my 'shop', ALL FREE. Please help yourself - just leave a review. Thank you! Thanks :)

Designed for less able students at Key Stage 3 or 4, this is a practice exam paper for the NEW AQA English Language Paper 1A: Reading 20th C Fiction texts. I have adapted an extract taken from H G Wells' classic sci-fi novel, 'War of the Worlds' (1898), simplifying some of the vocabulary and sentencing to make the text a little more accessible for students whose reading age might be lower than their chronological age. I've also designed a series of SMART Notebook slides to accompany the Word resource for interactive whiteboard teaching of the questions, Q by Q. The format of the paper is as follows: Q1 - the same Q2 - cloze exercise focusing on how the writer uses language Q3a - sequence a series of statements to show understanding of narrative events / structure Q3b - cloze activity, modelling Q3 response, for pupils to complete. I know that the new GCSE paper is untiered and students will not be given this level of support in the exam. However, this resource is intended to provide an appropriate point of access and opportunities for students whose literacy is a barrier to learning to practise the reading response skills demanded by this exam - and to support the teachers who have to deliver it! I hope that it is of some use to you. I have produced other resources just like this one using extracts from Frankenstein, Skellig, A Christmas Carol, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Monkey's Paw, The Hobbit, The Sniper, To Kill a Mockingbird, Z for Zachariah, Dracula, The Machine Gunners, The Pearl and Buddy. I've also uploaded loads of typical specimen exam papers for the new AQA Language Paper 1 and 2s to my shop, all available free of charge. Please leave a review and help yourself! Matt :)