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Pedagogy and professional development

Of Mice and Men - Characterisation of Curley's Wife
This engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge and understanding of the character of Curley’s Wife in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: Her dreams, her loneliness, and how her plight is a product of the Great Depression. The lesson also aims to improve students’ analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character.
This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with animations and key information, a double-page worksheet with clear and concise instructions, True and False cards for the starter activity, a writing to analyse help-sheet, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of progressively more difficult tasks, including:
- An engaging true or false game to help students understand what life was like for women in the Great Depression;
- A worksheet that enables students to demonstrate understanding of key quotations about Curley’s Wife, and also to link Curley’s Wife to key themes and ideas.
- Close reading of a modelled analysis paragraph;
- Joint creation of an analysis success criteria;
- An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Curley’s Wife;
- A chance to peer assess against the success criteria.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation.
You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

Of Mice and Men - The Themes of Dreams and Loneliness
This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of the main themes (Dreams and Loneliness) in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, understanding the writer’s ideas and opinions, and making precise and confident interpretations about texts.
The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interactive skills. It follows this learning journey:
- Understanding what dreams and loneliness are, and how we each experience them;
- Defining themes and understanding how writers use them;
- Understanding how and why themes are used in other famous texts;
- Retrieving evidence from the text to demonstrate where the characters experience dreams and loneliness;
- Analysing how the themes are used to help get across John Steinbeck’s ideas about 1930s America;
- Evaluating each others’ analytical attempts.
The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet for recording the retrieved quotations, a helpful template for the main task, and a lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet.
All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation.
You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

Of Mice and Men - Characterisation of Lennie
This informative and engaging lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge and understanding of the character of Lennie in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to improve their analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character.
This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with animations and key information, a worksheet with clear and concise instructions, an example analysis extract, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of progressively more difficult tasks, including:
- An engaging memory game task to recognise and remember items and ideas that are related to the character of Lennie;
- A worksheet that enables students to demonstrate understanding of key quotations about Lennie, and to link Lennie to key themes and ideas.
- Close reading of a modelled example analysis paragraph;
- Joint creation of an analysis success criteria;
- An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Lennie;
- A chance to peer assess against the success criteria.
Students should have read, (or during this lesson read) up to the section in which George and Lennie meet their new boss, in order to fully access the lesson.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation.

Of Mice and Men - Context: The American Dream and The Great Depression
This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of the social, historical, and cultural context of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in creating clear and specific links between the text and it’s context, focusing on a specific extract from the novel.
The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interactive skills. It follows this learning journey:
- Understanding what dreams are and how they differ for each of us;
- Defining the American Dream, The Wall Street Crash and The Great Depression;
- Creating a timeline which visually depicts the other influential events of the time;
- Reading and reflecting on an extract from the text;
- Analysing the links between texts and contexts, from a success criteria;
- Evaluating each others’ analytical attempts.
All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation.
You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

The Falling Leaves - Margaret Postgate Cole - Literary Heritage Poetry - Double Lesson
This full double lesson (the resources require at least 2 hours of teaching time) provides an engaging and highly-informative study of Margaret Postgate Cole’s war poem ‘The Falling Leaves.’
Students learn to analyse the poem in terms of content, language, and structure, learn more about the context of World War I, and gain crucial skills in structuring analytical responses to texts.
Included is:
- Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and substantial;
- Engagement quiz to learn more about the context of WWI;
- Copy of poem with devices identification task and structural questions;
- Analysis template with success criteria for creating well-structured responses;
-Comprehensive lesson plan.
There are also opportunities for group learning, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. This was originally taught to a middle-ability year 10 group, but can easily be differentiated for groups of different ages and abilities.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.

Vocabulary and Comprehension Building - Complete Approach and Tracker
This is a highly-effective tool for implementing a vocabulary and comprehension element to school-wide ‘literacy across the curriculum’ initiatives. Not only does it encourage students and teachers to focus upon fully understanding key words in each of their subjects, but it provides the school with a clear and concise measuring device for gauging students’ vocabulary and comprehension improvements.
Students first sit the baseline test in each subject - a booklet that tests their complete knowledge of whichever subject-specific terms they need to learn in the next assessment period. Examples of the tasks they are asked to complete are:
- Spelling the word;
- Defining the word;
- Giving an example of the word in a sentence;
- Self-evaluating their understanding of the word;
- Selecting what type of word it is;
- Thinking of synonyms for the word, and more.
They are given a score for their performance in the tasks.
Upon completion of the teaching unit, students complete the ‘End-Point’ booklet, completing the same tasks. The two scores (from the baseline and the end-point) are recorded into the tracker document, (10 sheets are provided for different departments) which automatically calculates baseline and end-point percentages, and percentage increase or decrease. It also colour codes red or green dependent upon student performance. This gives the user a clear measure of the effectiveness of the literacy scheme across the school - perfect for performance management, reporting to OFSTED, and school improvement.

Truly Effective Persuasive Devices!
This visual and highly engaging set of resources is designed to enable students to use imaginative and original persuasive devices in their own writing. Through following the interesting learning journey, students are given the opportunity to:
- Define each persuasive device;
- Identify these in existing persuasive texts;
- Analyse their effect in a longer persuasive text;
- Create their own persuasive device-filled piece, using a jointly-created success criteria based upon their analysis task;
- Peer assess each other’s persuasive writing attempts.
All resources are provided, including:
- Visual PowerPoint presentation;
- Definitions cards (they just need printing and cutting out)
- Analysis worksheet;
- Lesson outline for teachers and learning support to follow.
Note: All pictures licensed for creative use - authors and sources labelled on the final slide of the presentation.

Creating Engaging Starters - CPD Session and Resources
This CPD session is designed to enable teachers and learning support to facilitate highly engaging and motivating lesson openings. The session is interactive, rooted in educational theory, and contains video/collaborative resources to encourage staff participation. Participants learn to:
- Understand the key features of meaningful engaged learning;
- Identify and analyse these features in video examples of lesson starters;
- Discuss/evaluate these concepts with regards to their own practices/settings;
- Design, plan, and implement their own engaging lesson starters, using the provided handy prompts and planning materials;
Provided in this pack is:
- Visually-engaging presentation with embedded videos.
- Engaging Starters checklist;
- Planning sheet for engaging starters;
-Teacher/Trainer guidance.
NB: Internet connection needed for embedded videos. Bibliography/further reading on last slide.

Amazing Verbs and Adverbs!
This is an exciting and engaging lesson/set of tasks aiming to build students’ skills at using varied verbs and adverbs in their writing . It was taught during an observation lesson where the teacher received an Outstanding judgement.
Students learn to:
- Define and give examples of what verbs and adverbs are;
- Identify verbs and adverbs on funny posters and captions;
- Analyse what makes verbs and adverbs effective;
- Create their own verb and adverb filled writing piece;
It comes complete with:
- Engaging and visual PowerPoint to guide students (and teacher!) through the lesson;
- Colourful and thought-provoking worksheet for the main analysis task;
- Lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet, which goes through the lesson step-by-step;
- Resources to enable the teacher to make ‘flags’ for the development task.
All pictures are licensed for commercial use, and image authors cited on the final slide.
This lesson can also be bought as part of the Descriptive Devices bundle for just £5. The bundle leads students through each language device needed in order to write to describe confidently.
Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £6.

Teaching and Learning Performance Grids
This resource pack is comprised of:
1.) Observation & Learning Walk Performance Grid
2.) Marking and Feedback Performance Grid
For use alongside lesson observations, learning walks, and book monitoring, these succinct performance grids enable observers to gauge, categorise, and feedback on teaching and learning sessions using OFSTED guidance for effective teaching. The documents provide descriptors of ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’ practice within appropriately considered teaching and learning focus areas, for example: Questioning, Positive Feedback, Use of Additional Adults, etc. Schools who still grade individual teachers have noted that these are helpful aids in arriving at an overall judgement.