These quick starters are all self-mark and focus on vocabulary and spelling.

Keep students mindful of the need to proof-read with regular starters and short SPaG exercises. These self-mark starters consist of an instructions slide and an answer slide PP and the text to be corrected on a handout, either for the whole class to aid speed or as differentiation to aid weaker/slower students.

It might not seem like much if you don’t follow the links, but this is the portal to the world of unseen poetry! This booklet will save you and your students hours of trawling the Internet. My thanks to Caro Evans, my colleague and friend who asked me to compile this list and selected the poems- we decided that the most logical way to prepare for the unseen element of the exam was to look at other poems by the studied poets, to give students an idea of the context of the time and an ability to write about form and structure. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, I’ve searched for information online and given you the links - so this works best as an e-book, where links can be easily copied and pasted. So this is something you can use for your own preparation and planning of unseen poetry - along with the sheet of possible comparison questions- or can mail to your students so that they can do their own exploring. There’s such a lot of treasure here to discover - Enjoy!

PP with note to teacher and 'brain gym' slide; starter looks at how the word Biography is built up; main section is defining the word and writing a brief biography and plenary is reporting back - a very simple introduction to the topic

The lesson starter can easily become a discussion lesson with an enthusiastic class, but a 'one-liner' mumble if the class isn't interested: either have a discussio topic on each desk as students enter or put them in a hat for pairs to pick out. This gets them thinking about the themes covered by the collection of short stories. The lesson consists of short extracts promoting close reading in order to infer and deduce information about the characters and the setting. This is an important skill and if students say they didn't find the stories frightening, ask them whether they are just reading words or actually infering and deducing - I liken the difference to a balloon with and without the breath that blows it up. This is all about making reading a 3-D experience!

This cluster of resources is rooted in two approaches to teaching: A] Flipped Learning – the students first go and find out about their topic. Your task is to bring all the threads together for them in a plenary lesson AND B] ‘Jigsaw’ – where students find out a piece of the whole then share information to get the complete picture. Allow several lessons and a homework session for this task as it involves research and feedback. The PP presents a useful way of introducing the poems, still keeping to the independent approach and providing a lead in to the tasks. On the Word docs are AO cards with links to guide students' search for information. To finish off, give students an idea of your exam board’s requirements for the poetry question, give them a mark scheme and ask them to write a model answer to a typical question using all the information they’ve gathered in their own research and from their classmates. Print out the planning sheet [assessment] on A3 so that students can plan to cover all the AOs in a trial question for each poem.

Designed to suit AQA, KS5 Lit B, this task makes an ideal homework task or lends itself to group work, where there can be more discussion. The idea is to use the given 'possible content' from the mark scheme to prompt students to find evidence that could be used in a coherent response to the question. While it would be limiting to over-do this approach, it is an excellent way of getting students to think about ways of approaching a question, especially creating an element of debate. In a lesson after, the PP is a useful way fo turning the ideas into an essay that could be peer assessed using the exam board's memo [download from their site - it is a generic one, so any Q1 will do] Stronger classes can watch & discuss, then write the essay, weaker students may need to take it paragraph by paragraph - for them a handout of the PP might be a good way to proceed if the class is very mixed in ability.

The first Power Point gives contextual information about the Great Exhibition and a visual impression of the Crystal Palace. The handout consists of two 19th century non-fiction articles: an extract from a letter writer by Charlotte Brontë to her father about her visit to the exhibition and then extracts from Queen Victoria’s diary about her visits. There are simple questions on each passage reflecting the type of question that may be asked at GCSE: retrieval and inference. Then there are questions comparing the texts. Once students have answered the questions, they can self- or peer assess work as the answers are on a Power Point slide that can guide feedback. These extracts can also be used in conjunction with ‘The Diamond Necklace’ by Guy de Maupassant. For a modern writer’s version of the Great Exhibition, you could read Queenie’s description of her visit in Andrea Levey’s Small Island.

Here the focus is on crafting paragraphs for effect, as part of improving the quality of creative writing at both KS3- particularly in preparation for the new spec. English exam - and KS4, enabling students ‘to demonstrate their narrative and descriptive skills in response to a written prompt, scenario or visual image’... For more able students the lesson ends with a challenge to change the mood between the opening paragraphs and the one students go on to write.

Using AQA's 'Love through the Ages' poetry anthology, these resources aim to distinguish as far as one can, between Metaphysical poetry and Cavalier poetry, but also to show how blurred the line between them sometimes is: this is the focus of the first Power Point . The quiz quotes lines of poetry and asks students to decide whether the extract represents Cavalier or Metaphysical poetry to enable them to discuss how to recognise each school. Focus turns to 'The Scrutiny' in the work sheet and then there's a revision sheet that focuses on the AOs to ensure that they are met.

Whether revising unseen poetry or honing reading skills, focusing on a few lines of poetry as a starter enables students to practise picking out key words and commenting on them, as well as noting structural and literary devices. You could also use these as prompts for descriptive writing with a brigh KS3 group, or the new creative writing A-Level.

Used as a quick verbal starter or a more detailed group discussion and write-up, these quotes further invite students to consider all the potential discussion questions they may be useful for.

There is so much fantastic stuff out there on Romeo & Juliet there seems no point in more of the same. So this is not about the main thrust of your teaching. What this resource offers is alternatives for differentiation, especially in homework and starters. Budget constraints often mean students can't take the text home and time constraints mean there is little time in the lesson to allow students to engage with the text independently - these tasks try to rectify this by a 'little and often' approach, making starters and homework more 'open' than has been the recent trend. To help you sort out the order of relevance I've numbered the work that clusters together. Hope you and your class can bring a little enjoyment back into studying Shakespeare.

Descriptive writing is soon to be a major part of the English exam [from 2015 for 2017 exam], so it is a good idea to start 'drip feeding' techniques for top grades to more able KS3s as well as KS4s still doing course-work or just aiming to write more effectively. Each of these lessons uses short reading extracts too, to help students recognise techniques they could use, thus providing some preparation for the fiction reading portion of Paper 1 [new AQA English spec]. The PP outlines the lesson plan and the handout gives students a copy of the text extracts looked at. Notes on the relevant slides prompt less experienced teachers to notice relevant techniques. Peer marking ends the session. Photographs are once again used by kind permission of Graham Hobbs.

It is best to print this on A3. The point is for students to be able to choose which stories to write about quickly as soon as they see the question, so they map out which stories cover which aspects of gothic writing and list a key quote from each story that supports several points. The PP begins by explaining how the grid works. Then students fill in the grid - set the time in the space provided. The next two activities are covered over - the text is revealed on the click- if you want to edit this, just pull the blackened text box to one side and replace after. Using the grid as a help, students then decide which texts would be suitable for each past/ possible question. This should lead to discussion of several possibilities and reasons given...revision by stealth!

Drip-feed language analysis while familiarising students with unseen poetry… once a month, once a week or even one a lesson, this is not something to rush through. While it is a good idea to ask students to copy the text with an open line between line of the poem for annotations, the texts are also supplied as a worksheet to allow you the flexibility of setting the task for homework or differentiating by giving weaker students a printed version. As a quick revision exercise groups could work on separate extracts. Though ‘answers’ are given on the PP it is important to stress that these are only possible things to notice and any reasonable interpretation is worth considering. Another thing worth pointing out is that merely naming a technique like alliteration is not enough, the effect the poet creates should also be discussed and evaluated.

Being able to summarise is a vital skill. It is a particularly good way of checking understanding of what has been read and the ability to foreground the most important information when writing. It impacts other subject areas as summarising aids revision. The PP begins with a few guidelines and a starter exercise, models how to summarise and then gives an independent summary task using an extract from 'Out of Africa'. This task is also on the worksheet, which should be handed out at that point. There are two to a page to save printing costs. Students can check their own from the penultimate slide. The last slide plenary challenges students to think of other ways in which we summarise information, as in mind-maps & lists...

Rather than a series of lessons, this is a 'drop-feed' of tasks to improve older students' writing. The first step is to make them aware of how important accurate expression is. Great ideas are corroded by error-filled writing. The proof reading Power Point looks at two samples of students' writing that need to be improved - on the Word document these are written out to facilitate this process. In each case the next slide presents the corrected sample,so that students can peer mark or check their own. Each sample could be done in a different lesson: I'd recommend that for classes that are easily board by focused work. Likewise the two starters can be spread out. They focus on spelling, particularly the difference between sound and spelling, helping students notice pitfalls like ite/ight/ee/ea as well as the 'c' that sounds like 's'. Awareness leads to focus and on to improvement. That's the aim!

The questions on the worksheet are valid prompts for any comparison of poems, but are particularly for the new EDUQAS style of Section C unseen poetry comparison. The first worksheet contains the poems and the questions, which are based of the specimen papers provided by the exam board. This makes an easy to set homework of cover lesson. The second worksheet has key points as possible answers. So the task can be self or peer assessed easily. For other exam boards or general poetry preparation, the 'answers' could be the springboard for an essay comparing the two poems, to help less able students cluster their response.