Twelve lessons with powerpoints and resources to help students to create their own magazine on a topic of their choice. Scheme comprises of: Analyse the title of magazines and decide on your own title. Analyse mastheads and create your own masthead. Design your own front cover. Write a celebrity profile features article. Write a travel article. Write a how-to article. Design a competition. Write an article on a food of your choice. Use emotive and sensationalising language. Create a contents page. There are extra folders with a GCSE media task comparing two front covers and a WAGOLL analysis of a front cover. Students love this scheme of work as it allows them to be creative while exploring their own interests.

Calling all Harry Potter fans, this fifty question quiz with answers will test your knowledge of JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel - “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. A fun way to encourage reading.

This Powerpoint introduces the historical context of witches in Macbeth with a true or false game where students have to identify the correct or incorrect statements about witches. Students are then given some information about James V1th’s role in witchcraft persecution. Before studying Act One Scene One they are presented with a modern translation so that they understand what is going on. They then read Shakespeare’s Act One Scene One and consider what was lost in the translation and why Shakespeare’s scene is much more powerful. Students enjoy reading and acting out the scene in groups. They are then asked to design three costumes for a modern version of the play, focusing on representing the witches as powerful, evil and frightening. At the end of the lesson, you can show them Roman Polanski’s opening scene and compare and contrast their costumes with Polanski’s choices. Could be used as a precursor to my lesson on the witches’ spell; as part of an introduction to Shakespeare or as part of a scheme on Macbeth.

Many students write stories in which they jump between the present and the past tenses. This Powerpoint explains the difference between the simple past and the simple present tenses and contains a variety of exercises to encourage tense consistency and to help them to feel more confident. The zipped file also contains two informative and practical follow-up worksheets which ask students to put a passage about William the Conqueror into the past tense. The other worksheet asks them to put information about the Titanic into the past tense also.

In Act One Scene One of “Romeo and Juliet”, we meet Romeo for the first time and realise that he is in love with the idea of being in love with Rosaline due to his use of elaborate oxymorons to describe his feelings. This powerpoint explains the context of the play, the definition of oxymorons. The accompanying worksheet guides students to identify Romeo’s oxymorons and then gives them the beginning of oxymorons for them to create themselves. Could be used with the play or as a stand alone lesson on oxymorons.

This twenty slide Powerpoint guides students through how to have fun creating a 50 word mini-story with lots of examples, tips and golden rules. Students are given help to polish and re-draft their stories, culminating in them reading them out. It will take two to three lessons. It is good for getting them to think about beginnings, middles and ends, which they need for the creative writing element of the GCSE.

Shock. Horror! One day a woman went to her local shop and guess what she found inside her newly-purchased bag of bread? Unbelievably, to her amazement the whole bag was full of crusts of bread!! And you probably wouldn’t believe it either, but this story did actually make it onto BBC online news. This lesson takes this story and shows students how to blow trivial things up out of all proportion in order to sell newspapers. You can expose the serious nature of newspaper sensationalising while having some fun. Students add even more emotive language into the already existing newspaper report. The newspaper report with blanks for students to fill in is included, along with a twelve slide Powerpoint to introduce the subject. This is also a good introduction to the ethics of the press.

Four different activities allow students to become increasingly independent in their ability to create complex sentences using relative pronouns - who; whose; that which. Answers given where appropriate. Activities could be delivered as starters or as a whole lesson.

This eighteen slide powerpoint begins with an exercise to identify the nouns, followed by explanations and examples of common, proper and abstract nouns. Students are then given twenty-five different nouns which they have to classify into the three different categories. There is an exercise to differentiate between common and proper nouns and whether they need capital letters or not. A short exercise encourages students to use abstract nouns. The plenary is a cloze exercise to embed the learning. All answers provided and fully adaptable.

Enable your students to focus on effective structure and language features by inspiring them to write a story with the title “The Rescue” by giving them a real life newspaper report on a dramatic mid-sea rescue of a cargo ship. The report contains all the details they need and all they have to do is to transform the structure of the report into the five-part story structure, enabling you to focus on what makes an effective narrative. The folder includes: A powerpoint with pointers and tips. A Word version of the report. A Word planning sheet. Designed for both AQA and Eduqas GCSE narrative writing.

Students write a speech to persuade people not to drop litter and to look after the environment. They are supported to do this with a forty slide powerpoint that gives historical background on the Dunkirk evacuation during World War Two. An extract from the famous Churchil “We shall fight them on the beaches” speech teaches them how to use persuasive language features, with excellent examples of how to use emotive language. Perfect preparation for GCSE transactional writing.

Using an extract from the brilliant Roadl Dahl’s memoir “Going Solo”, students analyse how he appeals to the senses to describe his arrival in Africa for the first time. Students are then given lots of ideas for places, times of the day, what they can see, hear, smell, feel and they write their own description, just like an expert. The folder contains a worksheet of the toolkit vocabulary and copy of the Dar Es Salaam extract. All you need to inspire your students to describe places like a professional.

Designed as a follow-on to the powerpoint on colons, this lesson explains the three uses of semi-colons with activities for students, complete with answers. Activities then become more complicated as students are given passages to punctuate with both colons and semi-colons, helping them to become supremely confident in the use of these two pieces of punctuation.

With an activity to create compound sentences, this powerpoint also helps students to identify the effects of using both simple and compound sentences. First of all students add a conjunction to a sentence to create compound sentences. Then students change a passage of description just using compound sentences in to a combination of simple and compound, considering the effect. Finally students write a set of instructions using both simple and compound sentences.

Did you know that sixty percent of English words are derived from Latin and Greek? This forty-nine slide Powerpoint contains clues to twenty-two prefixes either related to place or time from Greek or Latin. Students receive the prefix and clues to at least two English words. Designed as a quiz, students can work independently or in groups. Answers are provided at the end and there is a final slide with a table of all the prefixes for students to fill in to consolidate the learning. Extend your students' vocabularies and understanding of the English language with this Powerpoint.

Students are given a look/cover/spell/check sheet with 20 words with silent letters to spell. The powerpoint then gives each of the words with the letter missing and students write the correct spelling of the word. The answers are provided on the powerpoint and cartoon graphics are included to help second language speakers. A further worksheet supports a spot the silent letter activity in a passage about a ghastly day. Students then use the words which they have learnt to write a story using as many silent letters as possible.

Adding the suffixes -ful and -fully to the ends of words can be tricky because if the word ends in y, then you change the y to an i. This rule is explained and then there are twenty sentences that students have to complete with key words, either ending in -ful or -fully. Cartoon graphics are included to help second language speakers. All answers provided, so students mark their own work. A workheet is provided to consolidated the learning either at home or in class. A free suffix worksheet is thrown in for good measure too.

Have fun learning about the influence of the Viking language of Old Norse on the English Language. The powerpoing lesson begins with students having to guess the Old Norse words from clues; then they use spelling patterns introduced by the Vikings to guess more words introduced to the language. Finally students are given lots of examples of the Vikings’ poetic form of kennings and have to come up with five of their own to describe modern objects. They then make a poster to celebrate their success.

This apprentice-style group task begins with a look at the case study of Lucozade and how it was successfully rebranded from a medicinal product to an energy drink. Students are then tasked with rebranding boring old Snugfit Thermal Underwear. In groups they have to work together to diversify the range; create a storyboard for a TV advert; create the script for a radio advert and design a billboard poster. Finally, they have to present their ideas to the rest of the class. You decide on the success criteria and the winning group. This twenty-two slide Powerpoint has all you need to get them doing an enjoyable and challenging speaking and listening activity. It also introduces them to the world of marketing.

Five lessons on Alfred Noyes’ romantic and ghostly poem “The Highwayman”. The lesson sequence is as follows; Lesson 1: Background information on highwaymen. Class questions on plot to clarify understanding and worksheet cloze exercise to consolidate understanding. Lesson 2: Similes in poem with worksheet and then opportunity for students to create their own similes. Lesson 3: Metaphors in poem with worksheet and then opportunity for students to create their own metaphors. Lesson 4: Sound effects: Worksheet on alliteration, onomatopoeia,rhythm and rhyme. Activities for students to create alliteration poem and brainstorm more onomatopoeic words. Lesson 5: Discussion of key themes - loyalty, betrayal, death and love. Students plan a story on one of these themes as final assessment. Links to AQA GCSE English Paper One Section B: Write a story. 56 slide powerpoint and six worksheets in folder with copy of poem.