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My introduction unit for A-Level Language and Literature. It assumes that the academic voices of the students needs sharpening somewhat. I source a lot of stuff from various corners of the net and use it in the power points - pay particular attention to the notes element of the power points by the way. I also include a “model essay” the purpose of which is to get the students to move away from their formulaic essay structures that they have used in their GCSEs. Think of this as a starting point that may need a little shaping to suit the needs of your class.

This is my attempt to engage and develop my Year 12s academic voices in their Paris Anthology related essay responses. The main issue my class had seemed to focus upon when and where to start. What I do is show them how they can place a particular emphasis on one of several potential areas of focus initially. I show them how they could use Mode, Audience, Purpose, each of Grice’s Maxims and each of the different levels of language as a starting point for an analytical response. The attached word document appears to be an “essay”.It isn’t. It’s the collected starting points placed in one document so that the students can focus more on the “how you do it” instead of trying to copy down the best bits. It worked reasonably well and is suited for a class with similar needs. Hope you find this useful.

These resources assume prior knowledge on the part of the students - they will have covered the greater majority of the texts before hand. The lessons go back and fill in the gaps. I try a few different things here in terms of approach. The "Mike and Sophia" extract guide is a guided annotation lesson; I'd be interested to see how classes respond to this.

A couple of lessons that focus on improving creative writing skills. I allude to tasks that have already been completed by the students - you can easily edit these to reflect your own tasks. Particularly pleased with the descriptive writing task as it got a bunch of lads who don’t “do” creative writing to talk about their feelings.

A text I taught to year 7 (second set) which we all absolutely loved! There are so few lessons here in comparison to my other resource bundles because we often spent large amounts of time just reading the book. The video is pretty awesome - I take no credit for creating it, I downloaded it from youtube and converted it to a format I could use. May the crows find you willing and able.

There doesn't seem to be much out there for DNA, which is a shame really as it's a great text to study. Attached are ALL of the DNA resources I have created; hopefully this will give you a few different ideas and starting points. This is a mish-mash of resources from three years of teaching this text across two schools. Some organising and sifting-through is needed here.

I had SO much fun with this unit of work! It helped that the TA in my class went on to become a local MP for Labour (still is as far as I can tell...). Essentially, this series of 5 lessons - which, by the way, totally went over the 5 lessons I gave myself to teach this - explores a number of different political speeches. Included in the pack are a number of transcripts - Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, Alex Ferguson's farewell speech, Bush's post-911 address to the nation and the transcripts of Clegg, Cameron and Brown from the First Televised General Election Debates (heavy stuff). I was a little tentative at teaching this to a bottom set year 9 class, but they totally got on board with the debates (they tore shreds out of Brown...) and engaged well with the controlled assessment task at the end. I know that the controlled assessments are now null and void (a shame really), but the exploration of speeches might be useful to someone out there in the teaching ether...

Two powerpoints (both alike in dignity…); the larger of the two covers the deconstruction of an English Language Paper 2 Section A mock exam - we go through common mistakes, areas of concern and identify how to improve on what we’ve done. I’ve provided the sources too, so you could use this as the basis of a Section A walking-talking mock; the smaller powerpoint covers speech writing, an area my lot particularly struggled with. Happy hunting…

A unit designed to be taught to Year 7. It introduces them to the basics of the Media and gets them writing creatively - a Travel Brochure. Includes resources and articles.