I'm a published academic/educational author and poet (Unifrog, Original Plus Books, HEB Books, AQA, and Cambridge University Press). I have been an English teacher and Visiting Lecturer for 15 years and am the English Network Co-ordinator for BSME.
I'm passionate about pedagogy, particularly metacognition, and always seek to inspire a passion for English in learners of all ages.
I'm a published academic/educational author and poet (Unifrog, Original Plus Books, HEB Books, AQA, and Cambridge University Press). I have been an English teacher and Visiting Lecturer for 15 years and am the English Network Co-ordinator for BSME.
I'm passionate about pedagogy, particularly metacognition, and always seek to inspire a passion for English in learners of all ages.
Comprehensive 42-slide presentation that guides students through how to structure and compose their IGCSE transactional writing exam responses.
The first section offers exemplar responses and encourages students to identify what makes the responses high-level. The second section guides students through how to successfully structure a piece of extended transactional writing every single time with a tried and tested essay writing plan in the form of an easy to remember six paragraph poem. The third section offers a detailed and exhaustive checklist of spelling, punctuation, grammatical and stylistic considerations for students to achieve the highest levels, enabling them to check their work against what the examiners will be looking for. The fourth section includes ten past paper Section Bs with accompanying examiners’ reports. The final section includes marking criteria and a self/peer assessment task.
This matrix will enable students to make salient thematic links between the pre-1900 anthology poems and The Great Gatsby in preparation for their exam.
4 rows have been completed as a guide for students, including key quotations from both texts. The rest of the grid has been left blank to use as a lesson resource or revision aid, allowing students to make their own perceptive comparisons.
A detailed guide, covering everything students need to know in order to write sophisticated responses to Unseen Poetry and Of Mice and Men.
The guide includes:
How to breakdown and understand questions
Approaches to answering questions and structuring responses
Exemplar responses
Marked responses and commentaries from Edexcel
Context for OMAM
Character analysis and key quotations
Practise questions, indicative content and mark schemes
Advice on timings, planning and fluency
A sequence of lessons based on the premise that the Birlings and Gerald are on trial for Eva Smith’s manslaughter that encourages engagement with the play on a close textual level and improve students’ analytical skills.
The structured PPT guides students through the entire process in an emersive way, explaining their role and how to prepare their case.
There are slides for every aspect of the trial and an accompanying booklet of resources for students to use whilst they plan/deliver their address to the court.
Once the jury have deliberated, students are asked to reflect upon the process of gathering evidence and to consolidate their learning by writing an extended essay.
A comprehensive exploration of language, form and structure, including: contextual information, detailed analysis of each stanza, questions for further discussion and an exam-style timed response.
A 47-slide end of term/academic year English quiz that students will love. It combines fun and challenge, with beautifully designed slides and 10 rounds of questions:
Round 1: The History of the English Language
Round 2: Guess the Author
Round 3: Shakespeare
Round 4: Books made into Movies (in 2022/23)
Round 5: Loan Words
Round 6: Lexical Expansion (interesting words added to the dictionary in 2022/23)
Round 7: Strange but True - bizarre English facts
Round 8: Technique Scramble
Round 9: What am I?
Round 10: Answer Smash (questions that encourage students to make portmanteaus)
There is a printable answer sheet, slides containing all answers plus bonus info to challenge students, tie breaker round (should it be needed), and a celebration slide at the end that can be printed as a certificate for the winning team.
Enjoy!
A comprehensive exploration of Tim Turnbull’s poem, featuring detailed analysis of each stanza, context, form, structural considerations, questions for futher discussion and Edexcel exam-style practise questions.
A comprehensive series of slides that should last for approximately 4 hours of study, guiding students through Giuseppe by Roderick Ford.
Slides include:
Information about both Ford and historical context.
Student-led exploratory activities, such as independent, paired and group analysis.
An introduction to post-colonial literary theory.
Analysis prompt questions that promote deep thinking for each stanza.
A task where students design their own exam-style questions and a self/peer review task using the marking criteria.
Accompanying blank mind-map
An engaging project that can be delivered as discrete lessons, a mini-scheme to accompany reading, or as a homework project. Designed to develop all core English skills for KS3 learners.
Activities include:
creating a motto
designing a house crest
creating a vision statement
writing a speech
creating spells in Snape’s class
designing a maze
becoming an effective speaker
Could also be used for upper KS2.
A series of activities designed to develop writing skills in line with AO5 of the AQA GCSE Language specification. These tasks can be used as bell work or as stand alone tasks incorporated into a series of lessons.
Each task explains which element of AO5 is being addressed, why this skill is essential for success in the examinations, has expert tips and prompts and engaging activities.
These resources are bright, uniform and specifically tailored to develop essential examination skills and to foster familiarity with the assessment objectives.
Tasks are differentiated so that lower ability students can attempt a word or sentence level task whilst more and most able students can attempt structural/whole text level tasks.
Critical essay writen by literary critic, poet and A Level teacher, Samantha Roden (author of Roth Through the Lens of Kepesh, 2016, and Catch Ourselves in Glass, 2017) exploring the relationship between The Great Gatsby and the American Dream.
Ideal for AQA AS and A Level Literature AO5 and to demonstrate to students how to write academically about literary texts.
Abstract:
The pursuit of happiness, the most pervasive of American ideologies, is embedded in the American psyche. But for Fitzgerald, the American Dream in its original form seemed as dry as the constitution from which it was born. The idealised view of the dream, which saw honest, hardworking men reap the just rewards of freedom and financial security is far removed from the champagne, bright lights and capitalist hegemony of Fitzgerald’s world. Whilst it could be argued that The Great Gatsby is little more than a critique of the American Dream, signifying its inherent frailties, it is equally apropos to suggest that the novel is symbolic of an American society struggling to free itself from the limitations of social conscience, having been seduced by individualism, material happiness and a more innate form of morality, whereby man is only answerable to his conscience.
Complete set of Role-on-the-Wall worksheets. These tasks will encourage students to consolidate their knowledge of characterisation in An Inspector Calls, learn key quotations and forge contextual links. Excellent independent revision tasks or teacher-led consolidation activities.
This resource allows students to track Attwood's use of language, symbolism and imagery. Students make notes as they read (as a whole class or autonomously), creating a compendium of revision notes as they progress through the novel. Visually engaging and with structured headings, this resource was popular with both my Y12 and 13 classes. (print 1 copy for every chapter).
Students use this knowledge organizer to focus their attention on key themes, language techniques, quotations and critical interpretations. Each section contains a prompt which then leads to autonomous note taking.
This resource can be issued as homework task or used as a tool in class when exploring this crucial section of the novel.
A structured PPT exploring John Proctor's use of language in a pivotal speech. This resource explores Miller's use of lexical sets, interrogative and exclamatory sentence forms in order to develop Proctor's character and augment the audience's response to him. The PPT includes annotated and exemplar 'WAGOLL' slides that can be printed off for students.
An exemplar response to Macbeth for GCSE Literature with a comprehensive commentary. Ideal for revision or to use for modelling purposes when teaching the text.
An A Level revision aid which explores the various techniques Atwood uses in The Handmaid’s Tale. Particularly useful for supporting AO2 when analysing writers’ methods.
This 45 slide PowerPoint guides students through the revision process for the AQA GCSE Love and Relationships Poetry Anthology. It has been designed to stengthen neural pathways by linking revision notes with bespoke images for each poem.
The package includes:
A 4-page student booklet that allows students to make notes on all of the key areas of analysis for each poem as well as a comparative analysis exemplar for reference.
A comprehensive ppt linking all poems to a bespoke image, along with a fictional narrative to facilitate students’ ability to remember every poem in the cluster. In addition, there are examiner’s tips, a strategic approach to analysis using the SMILE+C method, an exemplar analysing language, student-friendly explanations of the question format and the marking assessment objectives/marking criteria, and a bonus section on approaching unseen poetry with a Grade 9 exemplar.
My students love this - I hope yours will too!
Role-on-the-Wall templates for the characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
This activity enhances students understanding of the protagonists, encouraging them to learn character-specific key quotations, contextual links and relationships with other characters. An excellent consolidation activity in class or revision activity.
A complete lesson analysing extracts from Ray Bradbury's crossover novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury's rich prose forms the basis of students' exploration of figurative techniques and their effects. The lesson encourages students to explore Bradbury's stylistic choices, such as divergence from conventional grammatical rules, with a view to understanding authorial methods.
This lesson assists students with the skills required for AQA Paper 1 GCSE English, in terms of A0s 1,2,5 and 6.