Retrieval of prior learning and the development of oracy skills

Noticing a remarkable difference (of confidence, structure and poise) between some of our students' presentations skills, I decided to dedicate my end of term lessons on developing our students' speaking and listening skills. Naturally, I couldn't help but add a Literature revision element to their lessons with respect to the number of quotes and set texts that they're expected to know very well. As a result, you'll find below a selection of some of the resources I developed with these objectives in mind.

Please click on the image in order to download the resources for yourselves. I would be grateful if you could tweet how your students have responded to these materials in future lessons (@3dimension1) in the new academic year.

The start of the lesson involved getting students to make a series of random links connected to current affairs.

Then links between characters from the same Literature set text.

 I decided to get our students thinking about links between different set texts so that they could get an  understanding of overlapping themes to help them with their revision.

Students were given the choice to write their speech (with the support of the template below) or to improvise their speech.

All in all, I can see how this strategy can be easily adapted to promote students' higher level thinking skills across all departments with the aim of simultaneously developing their oracy skills.

Please find the link to these resources here.

Change-O-Meter and the concept of structure in English Literature and Language

Thanks to @mrthorntonteach's Change-O-Meter idea on Twitter, my students are effectively engaging with structure in Literature texts. I've adapted his original idea (see below) for AQA Literature Section A Papers 1 and 2. I've added extracts for comparison for earlier on and later on in each set text and the students are responding to it really well. I will be uploading their responses later on today.

Here is an example for An Inspector Calls:

You can download a copy of the sheet for yourself from here: click here

I've also created one for Macbeth here. 

I can't wait to create some Change-O-Meters for Language Papers 1 and 2 too.

Thank you, Greg!