This is a E3 resource for functional English. This activity has 3 parts to it which include creating a list, researching activity and a writing activity. This activity has been created in order to be flexible with your teaching style and can be used as an extension, homework or form the main part of your session. It can also be amended underpin a specific topic. Please keep in mind that TES previews can distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps

This is a complete mock exam for paper 1 of the AQA GCSE 8700 spec. The extract is taken from Mockingjay from the Hunger Games series. The lesson comes with a few small groups task starters and a selection of 2 videos - you can chooseich one best suits your needs. The session is created for you to use in any way you wish. Be advised that Tes previews distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps

This is a 39 page booklet designed to help students independently revise for their exams. I also found these booklets very helpful in getting low attending students back up to speed, Ofsted loved them and my students said they found them more helpful than mock exams for revising certain questions they were less confident with. This booklet covers the underpinning skills and exam practice for paper 1 question 3. It underpins ROW of CLONES - a mnemonic for structural features and exam answer structures. It also uses mini extracts from various books by Graham Green, Stephen King and and extract from Harry Potter. It breaks down and explains each question, gives examples and mini tasks before allowing students to try an example exam question. It is encouraging, colourful and I hope you find it as useful as I have. Be advised that TES previews often distort the look of the resources and this is not a true reflection of how it looks. Hope it helps.

This is a mini workshop session which focuses on how to use sentence structures for effect for the creative writing section of paper 1 of the WJEC GCSE English exam. This lesson is designed for revision sessions as the exam draws close but can be developed further or used with another exam board. This session uses Donald Trump for inspiration in how to use interesting sentences to describe. It also recaps high and low level language features. It is a fast paced session with paired activities and a main writing task taken from a practice paper. It ends with a self assessment plenary. Be advised that the TES preview does distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps

This session is a quick paced, fun, interactive session with group and paired activities, handouts include match up tasks, planning tasks, read and obtain tasks and helpful handouts. This is an introductory lesson to writing using PURPOSE, AUDIENCE, FORM, TONE (PAFT) . It is focused for the Edexcel GCSE English Language paper as many of the questions of this paper are multi layered / skilled and ask for layers of understanding from the student in ways that other exam boards don’t. It comes with a “writing gibberish” starter and takes the student through various stages which can help them improve their own writing, get into the habit of planning but also touches upon being able to analyse writing, therefore bridging over both the reading and writing section of the exam. This session is aimed quite low as it is an introduction but does offer elements of stretch and challenge for more able students. It comes with helpful handouts for low ability learners and tackles some more high level concepts such as tone. There is enough material in this resource to be adapted into two sessions if needs be but is also adaptable to include more if necessary. Please be aware that the TES preview does sometimes distort the way the resource looks and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps

This is a very fun and active lesson designed for lower level or a mixed level functional skills English class. This lesson has very few written tasks, as many lower level classes do demonstrate poor behaviour and are very reluctant to do written work. Instead we have a lesson which jam packed with group and paired activities from board games to creating an origami frog via a instructional video. This lesson also allows room to embed maths via the origami frog task. It is a quick paced lesson which also allows for stretch and challenge and offers a bridge into GCSE English by touching upon imperative verbs and explaining why such language features are used. It comes with a starter and a daily diary plenary task. Please be aware that TES previews do at times distorts the look of the resource and tis is not a true reflection. Hope it helps

This is a fun and upbeat session which is centered around food and the song “Buttery Biscuit Base” in order to support students with the writing section of paper 1 of the Edexcel GCSE English exam. The aim is to improve the writing skills of your lower ability students by using adjectives and other key language features from DAFOREST etc and to encourage the students to plan their writing. This is a ideal session to use in the first term as a means to underpin the idea of ambitious vocabulary and to make English lessons fun and different, therefore hopefully improving retention of your harder to reach students. This session comes with group and paired activities, a starter and self reflection plenary. The activities are short to give the lesson a quick paced feel and it comes with all worksheets, link to the song and word banks to help support students. This is a lesson which you can adapt to suit the needs of your students as there is lots of room to delve off into higher level language features if you feel your students could develop into that area. Please note that the TES preview can distort the look of the resources and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps

This is a 30 page presentation full of starter / small activities designed to broaden imagination and develop creative writing skills. I personally like to start the academic year with these as a way to promote a fun and lively image to GCSE English and engage learners with the course early on. I find that these types of fun, group activities help break down any negative barriers students may have to English and helps to build confidence in disengaged learners. These activities are mostly group / paired activities which can be boiled down to individual tasks. These tasks can be achieved by learners of all levels and are very useful in helping students tackle the creative writing sections of the GCSE exam. Hope it helps

Having taught English over the last 10 years I have witnessed an increase in pressure put on students to achieve grade C’s and above - now grade 4’s and above. I have also witnessed how this pressure makes lower performing students give up in English, leading to poor attendance and behavior . Other students, who try their best, being made to feel stupid or “thick” (as they put it) because they never seem able to do what is increasingly expected of them. Therefore this is a lesson designed to be inspirational and encouraging, which makes it ideal for the start of the academic year and trying to start your students off on a positive mind set in English. It crosses over into something of a tutorial and is a good way to start off the creative writing unit as the final task is geared towards that particular question in the exam. If you are doing regular target setting and target reviews with your students, it is also a great session to begin that process with and allows you to have a starting point from which you can track. This session encourages students to measure their ideals against their actuals. Which is to look at what it is you want to achieve in the future (grades 4 - 9) but measuring the progress against what you did last week / last term etc and visibly seeing the improvements and progress being made. The idea is to encourage a positive feeling towards English and to develop a healthy approach to achievement and what achievement means. It can be used with any exam board as the creative writing task is across all boards. This lesson comes with a full powerpoint - slides of which can be printed and used as worksheets - and a video which ideally needs to be watched from roughly 3 mins in and ended at about 5 mins in ( exact times can be found in the notes section of the PP) If you don’t want to use the video, the point it makes is reinforced by a group task and so you can use either /or - or both. It is full of group and individual activities which can be done without a world of resources at your finger tips - ideal if you multi site in your job. Please note that TES previews can distort the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps

This lesson is centered around the tragic story of Sophie Lancaster, who was murdered in 2007 for being a Goth. I have used this story over the last 10 years with all my classes as it helps to address prejudice and build tolerance. This session uses the Story of Sophie to introduce question 7B to students. It does this by breaking question 7B into two and only looking at the writers views and perceptions part of the question rather than the comparison part, as I have found in my experience that diving straight into comparing two texts tends to stress and confuse students. This session has enough material to cover 3 hours but has optional tasks and can be altered to suit you or your classes needs, session time and sensitivity levels. It comes with 10 worksheets, a video and full powerpoint with starters, team tasks, individual tasks, plenary, question 7B breakdown, group discussion and homework which focuses on section B of Paper 2. I have found that over the years that this lesson is diverse. It has been used in tutorials outside of the English department and by youth workers when delivering their sessions. I usually invite support workers and youth workers when delivering this session to help support any students for who this may bring up memories or for them or to help students overcome any of their own prejudices. Because of this sessions holistic and cross college appeal it was a big hit with managers and Ofsted. Hope it helps.

I know from experience with my own students that the more practice you do from a wide range of different texts, the more prepared you will be for the live exam. It is at this stage in the academic year that practice becomes very important and knowing your exam paper - the type of questions and layout of the paper - is vital to achieving the grades you want for your students. A diverse collection of interesting and engaging practice papers is difficult to come by as the 8700 spec is still relatively new. Therefore I have authored my own practice papers to use with my own classes, all with questions based from both the AQA exam papers. The sources for these mock papers include extracts from The Colour Purple, Harry Potter and Hunger Games. Paper 2 mocks include documents on the topics of Child Labour, disasters and celebrity culture. This bundle contains: Paper 1 mock x 3 Paper 2 mock x 3 All source materials A bite sized mock with focuses on a selection of the more tricky questions from both papers. That is 7 papers all together, which averages as £1.40 per paper. Please be advised that the TES preview can distort the look of the material so please keep in mind that this is not always a true reflection of the resource. Hope it helps.

I have decided to share his resource because it was a great success with my students and managers, who turned from a personal resource to a departmental resource. This came about because I decided to try and encourage my students to read more, as they don’t read anything that isn’t on Facebook or Snapchat, by creating this 28 page booklet filled with extracts from Literature to give to them at the start of the year. This worked very well as the extracts are all at different lengths and difficulty and also features extracts from modern literature such as Harry Potter and older texts such as Wuthering Heights. I found that this helped my students become more familiar with the texts they may get in the live exam, therefore preparing them from day 1. This is a great resource to have on the students tables or around the classroom for the students to look at at their leisure or to refer to in your classes, which is something both Ofsted and my department managers praised. I also gave a few copies to have in the college library which helped to extend the English / GCSE section and helped to engage a wider college interest in supporting English. From a teachers point of view, this booklet is very useful for helping you cut down on your planning time as you have a bank of sources which you can use either as the core of your session or as an extension, starter or homework tasks. This booklet was also extremely helpful for revision purposes and drop in workshops as we got closer to the big day. The booklet contains extracts from many works of fiction which have been turned into movies or TV shows to help engage your class. Extracts include The Hunger Games, The Help, The Handmaids Tale, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984. It also has older texts such as Frankenstein, an extract from the original manuscript by Solomon Northup which inspired the movie “12 Years a Slave”. Many of the extracts can be used to embed other topics such as equality / diversity / race and bullying in to your sessions whilst also underpinning British Values. Extracts range from 2-3 pages in length to short paragraphs and script format to help you both stretch and challenge but also support the weaker students and build confidence. I hope you find this as useful as I did. Please keep in mind that TES previews can at times distort the look of the resource and this is not always a true reflection, which is why I have included some screenshots to help you get an idea of what this booklet contains. Hope it helps.

This session can be used as a mock exam or as a progress assessment on Edexcels Paper 1. It comes with a full powerpoint in which each of the reading questions is answered and explained alongside a peer marking activity. It is designed to be student centered and supportive rather than frightening and off putting- as we know students do not always like mock exams. There is a 4 page helpful handout to support students with the questions and a paper copy of the assessment. Starters include a paired activity recapping / giving a summary of the exam paper and a break down of each question along with a short clip from the movie. I have engineered this session to be completed individually but it can also be used as a team / workshop session in where students work together through each question and help each other learn. Please keep in mind that TES previews can distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

Climate change is a hot topic of the moment and is engaging young people around the world to help start make a difference. To help support this and raise awareness in young people I have created this full lesson based around the subject of climate change and changes a everyday person can make. This pack is a complete lesson with enough material to fill a 3 hour session. It contains plenty of group and paired activities, 5 - 10 minute reading and discussion activities, video clips, an information pack which can be used for independent research for the final writing task based on paper 2 question 5 of the GCSE English language exam. It also underpins issues regarding climate change and also aims to raise awareness among young people by looking at the Nobel peace prize candidate Greta Thunberg, an amazing young lady who started the “School strike for climate change” protests at aged 15. There are various articles in which students look at language, sentence structure, language and tone and is best suited to classes who have already done work on language features. The resources are selected to include a range of levels and abilities and can be altered to suit your students needs and tasks not used in the session could be set as homework. This session can also double up to set presentations to help hit all the requirements of the GCSE spec. Please be aware that the TES preview can sometimes distort the look of the resources and is not always a true reflection. Hope it helps.

This resource aims to broaden students knowledge of our history, promote equality and diversity whilst also improving their read / obtain skills and engagement with texts. This resource focuses on the contributions of Sikhs during the two World Wars, as many students are unaware of their participation as it is rarely mentioned in movies and memes and unfortunately, this seems to be where many students get their information. This resource has enough material for an hour and half session but has enough substance to be developed further into any direction you see fit. The focus of the session is primarily E3/L1 read and obtain with some higher level vocabulary slotted in to stretch and challenge. The session also involves a class discussion, a video with task attached , paired and individual activity and is measured via a points system, as in my experience lower level students enjoy being awarded points as they progress in a session. I usually use these types of sessions to try and motivate disengaged students to engage with written text, as many “switch off” when there is text to read or they are required to write something themselves, and so this has been designed for that purpose, however there is room for development to suit your own students needs. Please be aware that the TES preview can at times distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection. Hope it helps.

A small set of starters (or plenaries) to actively promote mental wellness in your students. These small activities are designed to help prompt positivity and ownership of behaviours and attitudes with easy to do activities based on CBT techniques. These are easy to apply to your sessions, can be used as tutorials or to help overcome anxiety in the build up to assessments or exams. Feel free to elaborate upon or change depending on what your class needs are. Hope it helps. Please note that the TES preview can often distort the look of the resource and this is not a true reflection.

This resource looks at writers use of language to reflect opinion and bias in journalism. It can be used in relation to the AQA GCSE English Language exam (8700) for questions 3 and 4 from paper 2 but can also be used in the delivery of L1 and L2 Functional Skills. This resource includes an article with some read and obtain questions which range from simple retrieval of information to questions which require deeper thought and inference, which helps those teachers with mixed ability classes. It also includes a discussion element which looks at gender stereotypes and roles of women and motherhood, which the article touches upon. I have personally found that by including these deeper social and stereotypical elements into my classes helps students to navigate their own thoughts and feelings on certain topics, but also allows them to have their ideas challenged and to work towards accepting diversity. Female stereotypes and sexism is very topical at the moment in the light of the Weinstein scandal and so this is a resource which could be expanded upon. Hope it helps

I like to encourage reading in my classes, and one of the ways I like to do that is with a visual display of books which became blockbuster movies to help grab students attention. This resource is my collection of visuals that I use in different ways to create these displays. It includes 14 different movies which includes a range of diversity and genres, contains images of the book and movie cover with still from the movie itself. You can print these, play with the sizes, layouts and be creative as you feel to suit your learning environment, I like to laminate to provide a glossy look and drape a red cloth over the boards in my classroom to create a old school cinema / theater curtain to create some drama. Images include: Eat Prey Love War Horse Divergent The Hobbit Memoirs of a Geisha Atonement The Colour Purple The Help Brighton Rock Feel free to play with and tinker with this resource, these are just image templates to help you get going and create amazing in class displays of your own. Be advised that the TES preview does not always truly reflect the resource. Hope it helps

This resource can be used with L2 functional skills classes or with GCSE English classes with enough material to cover up to 2 hours. This resources covers language features and apostrophes in one lesson, underpinning proofreading and writing to describe. This is a quick paced session which involves both group and individual tasks, it has routes for stretch and challenge whilst also giving tasks enough scaffolding to support the weaker students in the class. This session is designed to be developed or split into two separate sessions depending on your classes needs. Please be advised that the TES preview does not always give a true reflection of the resource.