A single power point designed to be taught as a walking-talking mock examination. This can extend over several lessons - I predict you'll need at least three to do this justice. The source materials are included.

A unit of work I did not design, but these are the lessons I created to teach it. The lessons focus on The Tempest and Othello. These lessons were designed to be taught to a bottom set Year 9 class with more interest in staring out of the window than exploring the linguistic delights of the Bard. However, once I started to Story Woosh the plays, the analytical lessons became much more productive.

I've found another use for all that knowledge we have about the old AQA English Lit anthology (The Sunlight on The Grass anthology). I have started to turn them into English Language Paper 1 Section A Mock Exams! This is one of them. There is no mark scheme, but if you use the Paper 1 mark scheme from the AQA website you should be fine. This one uses the opening of My Polish Teacher's Tie.

Designed to be taught in support of a Year 9 class doing a GCSE-style task on Of Mice and Men. These powerpoints make good activities as part of a lesson, or they can be printed off as individual worksheets. The worksheet element contains a RAG rating system and some generic targets, suited for peer or self assessment.

A useful little tool. It allows you to RAGB(red, amber, green, blue) your students understanding/annotations of the 15 Power and Conflict poems in the AQA anthology. Also, it provides you with a poem by poem breakdown of your classes understanding/quality of annotations so you can see where the gaps are all the clearer. The spreadsheet is set up for a class of up to 40, but the coding can easily be altered to allow for a whole year group.

A summer spent playing word games with my kids lead me to this idea. The idea is that the students are supplied with a grid of letters. They use these letters to build words which cause damage to a cartoon monster. The bigger the word, the more damage done to the monster. I’ve made it more and more difficult as the monsters develop - you have to use certain letter types for example. I plan to give each child one grid per week to complete and have their peers mark it. So you are completely aware, I have left all of the grids blank apart from on a few. You will need to fill these in yourself. Also, I have left the challenge component blank too. This will allow you to create challenges that reflect the specific types of spellings you are looking at - double damage awarded for homophones for example. There’s massive scope for differentiation in here too. I’ve included a whole class version of the spelling levels, as well as a photocopy friendly version too. I have long believed that making school a little more like computer games can be helpful - this is my first attempt at exploring Gamer Theory as I have dubbed it. Watch this space for more. Have to figure out how to do something similar with the other components of SPAG and Reading now… ADDITION: I’ve included some completed versions of the pack to give you an idea of what they could look like. Pay attention to the NOTES section of the power points too. These grids have been designed to be used in tandem with the Escape From Kraznir scheme of work. ADDITION: I’ve also added a new powerpoint that works as a whole class exercise. You don’t need the sheets, just paper and the will to go on…

I used these lessons with year 9 classes. They still adhere to the old AQA specification (they talk of bands). But, each lesson is a complete poem and will save you some work.

A bare bones SoW that focuses on introducing the Literature aspect of study at KS3, but assesses the students on a piece of creative writing. The lessons assume you have a copy of the text for students to follow. Look at this as a starting point. Designed with a bottom set in mind.

A reintroduction lesson that should be taught with the understanding that the students have read the text beforehand. Designed as an entry point into year 13; ideal for new teachers looking to get the measure of a new class (as in my case). I found this lesson particularly useful when combined with FAR marking the material surrounding the quotations. You should view this as a starting point - future lessons will get much more specific.

My second lesson. Here, I focus almost entirely on ACT 2 SCENE 1 and Iago's soliloquies therein. The notes element of the power point pulls a lot of thinking together from across a lot of sources - you'll need these notes to flesh out the tasks. I tie it up with an exam style question at the end focusing on what we can infer about attitudes to women. Quite pleased with how this looks and how it goes.

Lessons designed to engage and interest my year 10s as they step into GCSE-land for the first time. They enjoyed the analysis of the song lyrics a lot. I found that my previous classes found it very hard to engage with the poetry element. These lessons (combined with a couple of others that don't belong to me) worked well.