Diverse anthology teaching pack

Diversify your KS3 and KS4 English curriculum with 12 lessons on a range of engaging unseen texts, including unseen poems, unseen fiction and unseen non-fiction.

Our Diverse anthology teaching pack celebrates diverse voices in literature and language, and features the work of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic writers, as well as other underrepresented groups, including writers with a disability, LGBTQ+ writers and working-class or disadvantaged writers.

Introduce your students to accessible YA authors and popular GCSE poets, as well as non-fiction writers and journalists with an anthology of vibrant, thought-provoking examples of literary and narrative non-fiction writing, including travel writing, autobiographical writing, memoirs, essays and speeches.

These powerful and inclusive texts for year 7-11 learners have been specifically chosen to diversify and enrich your curriculum delivery and to develop students’ understanding of the importance of more diverse representation in English lessons, and to encourage discussions about intersectionality.

A complete scheme of learning for key stage 3 and key stage 4

In this collection of 12 texts, students will explore each writer’s craft, as well as how writers develop their narrative or poetic voice, experiment with form and structure and use language to engage their reader. Learners will also understand more about how own voices fiction writers create a variety of different narrative voices, perspectives and characters.

To anticipate one of the most challenging GCSE exam skills — approaching unseen texts — this teaching pack also includes reading comprehension tasks to build students' reading skills and confidence with unseen texts.  

About the selected texts and writers

Almost all the anthology texts are recently published, with extracts from bestsellers and popular young adult books, as well as new writing from breakthrough writers as well as established literary voices.

The diverse anthology includes three complete poems, and nine fiction and non-fiction extracts by popular and award-winning Black, Asian and Jewish writers including Salena Godden, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Daljit Nagra, Sathnam Sanghera, Keren David, Kiran Milwood Hargrave and Hussain Manawer.

The anthology also includes writers who champion disability rights and LGBT+ representation in literature, and mental health campaigners and anti-racism activists.

What's included in the teaching pack?

The anthology is divided into two sections for KS3 and KS4 teachers and learners, enabling teachers to dip into the teaching pack to complement an existing scheme of learning, or to teach the texts consecutively over the course of the term. There are six lessons for KS3 and six lessons for KS4, followed by a summative assessment task for each key stage, with answer schemes for self-marking or peer-marking in class.

Written by three experienced English teachers, the teaching pack includes a scheme of learning, 12 lesson plans, teaching notes, differentiation suggestions, homework activities and answers, as well as printable classroom resources and learning activities for 12 lessons.

The 124-page photocopiable teaching pack is student-facing for use in the classroom, and is accompanied by 12 PPT lessons for classroom delivery, and 12 extracts for reading in class. 

Each lesson includes: 

• Do now activity

• Starter activity

• 3-4 main lesson activities

• Extension or stretch and challenge tasks

• Plenary activity

• Homework tasks

Many of the activities are carefully scaffolded, with differentiated, ladder up support and sentence starters for writing tasks, as well as a range of stretch and challenge suggestions for early finishers and higher-attaining students.

The pack includes fun and creative tasks, as well as a focus on developing learners' reading comprehension and analytical writing skills. It also includes drama activities and engaging speaking and listening tasks to encourage lots of animated, on-topic classroom talk, and word banks to help with disciplinary literacy and vocabulary development.

There are 3 summative assessment tasks for students to complete, with a suggested mark scheme or model answers for each.

Texts included in the teaching pack: 

• ‘Diversity in the media and films’ (2016) by Idris Elba

• Extract from Life is Sad and Beautiful (2022) by Hussain Manawer

• ‘Beatitudes for a queerer church’ (2021) by Jay Hulme

• Extract from What We're Scared Of (2021) by Keren David

• Extract from The Island at the End of Everything (2017) by Kiran Milwood Hargrave

• Extract from Mrs Death Misses Death (2022) by Salena Godden

• ‘Di Great Insohreckshan' (1981) by Linton Kwesi Johnson

• ‘Father of Only Daughters' (2017) by Daljit Nagra

• Extract from ‘The Dark Hole of the Head' (2019) by Jill Dawson

• Extract from Empireland (2021) by Sathnam Sanghera

• ‘Ask about my disability if you are curious, but don't patronise me’ (2019) by Samantha Renke

• ‘As the Philadelphia Youth Choir Sings Katy Perry's Firework' (2019) by David Levithan

Download the zip folder for 12 complete PowerPoint lessons (with answers) for use in class. 

Download the accompanying Word document for a photocopiable pack of lesson activities and worksheets to use in lessons. 

This teaching pack is designed to complement our KS3 short story anthology, Diverse short stories teaching pack, which celebrates the work of Black and Asian writers, and includes own voices stories, science-fiction stories, epistolary stories and young adult stories.

About the teaching pack authors:

Harmeet Matharu is a Head of English, author and examiner. She has taught for over twenty years and is passionate about diversity in literature, having written several resources and blogs about the subject and delivered nationwide training on this issue. She’s also a member of NATE's Diversity in English working group. She was one of our first Teachit contributors.

Beth Kemp has taught English for over 20 years and is the author of a range of textbooks. She also writes for young people. She is currently working on her PhD, researching diverse YA authors and young people’s reading (at home and in schools) within the context of the National Curriculum. She’s a long-standing Teachit contributor. You can download her own voices / diverse reading recommendations.

Caroline Gooden is an English teacher and Inclusion Team Lead (Literacy and Reading) from East London with a passion for history, anthropology and philosophy. Born to working-class parents of English and Jamaican heritage, she has devoted the last 20 years to academia and learning.