Reading non-fiction texts teaching pack
Equip students with the skills and confidence required for their English Language GCSE.
Aimed at developing students’ critical reading skills, Reading non-fiction texts is an anthology of ten literary non-fiction texts from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries combined with supporting lesson plans and resources.
There are two overview lesson plans for each text, with starter activities, main lesson activities and plenaries which teachers can easily pick up and run with.
The practical classroom activities include comprehension, language analysis tasks and quizzes as well as exam-style questions for each exam board.
With all the texts and tasks you need in one place, Reading non-fiction texts will save you hours of planning time!
What's included?
- 10 non-fiction text excerpts with a thematically linked 'partner' text
- 20 lesson plans and ideas along with 41 tailor-made resources to developed students' understanding of assessment objectives
- Exam-style questions for AQA, OCR, Edexcel and WJEC Eduqas for every text.
The pack includes an engaging range of 10 modern and nineteenth-century non-fiction texts, including letters from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and extracts from The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences by Sir Frederick Treves, My Left Foot by Christy Brown, A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr and Behind the Wall by Colin Thubron as well as The Guardian article on ‘Why teaching table manners can do more harm than good’.
What's inside?
Introduction (page 3)
Text 1: Jane Austen’s letter to her sister, Cassandra Austen (pages 4-18)
- Resource - Jane Austen: true or false quiz
- Resource - uncovering context: What was life like in 1805?
- Resource - picture clues
- Resource - reading non-fiction text analysis grid
Text 2: The Guardian article: ‘Why teaching table manners can do more harm than good' (pages 19-27)
- Resource - summarise and attack
- Resource - exploring food, exploring language
Text 3: Excerpt taken from The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences by Sir Frederick Treves (pages 28-43)
- Resource - pre-reading activity
- Resource - unpicking imagery
- Resource - whizzy wiki: Factsheet on The Elephant Man and Frederick Treves
- Resource - attitudes towards the Elephant Man
Text 4: Excerpt taken from My Left Foot by Christy Brown (pages 44-52)
- Resource - exploring and comparing attitudes
Text 5: Charlotte Brontë’s letter to her father (page 53-64)
- Resource - word sort activity
- Resource - whizzy wiki: Factsheet on The Great Exhibition
- Resource - Great Exhibition quiz
- Resource - letter writing lingo
- Resource - what was the Great Exhibition like?
Text 6: Excerpt from A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr (pages 65-77)
- Resource - comprehending the text
- Resource - caption competition
- Resource - what was the Millennium Dome like?
- Resource - chain of comparison
Text 7: Excerpt from Henry Morley, Household Words, ‘Our Phantom Ship: China’ (pages 78-90)
- Resource - the typhoon unravelled
- Resource - views about visiting China
- Resource - comparing attitudes about China
- Resource - attitude adjectives
Text 8: Excerpt from Behind the Wall by Colin Thubron (pages 91-100)
- Resource - comprehending the text
- Resource - Chinese cultural revolution
Text 9: Excerpt from Charles Darwin The Voyage of the Beagle (pages 101-114)
- Resource - quick recall quiz
- Resource - attitudes towards the native tribes
- Resource - formal and informal vocabulary grid
- Resource - close-up on writing technique
Text 10: Excerpt from Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence (pages 115-123)
- Resource - pre-reading activity
- Resource - the language of pain and suffering
Lesson plan activities from the teaching pack:
Lesson 2: Starter activity
Text features. Ask students to identify the features of this text which make it fit the purpose of argue and persuade. Share the following checklist of features and ask students to find an example of each:
- facts
- opinions
- rhetorical devices
- quotes from a reliable source/ expert opinion
- personal experience/ anecdote
- circular structure
Ask students if they can identify a secondary purpose for the text from this list: explain, inform, describe, entertain, advise.
Main lesson activities
- Exploring food, exploring language (AO2, AO4). Ask students to complete the worksheet exploring the effects of language in the text. They should identify the technique being used by the writer and consider its effect. This resource leads into a short exam-style answer. There is also a differentiated version of this resource.
- Prepare to compare. If you are preparing students for the AQA, OCR or WJEC Eduqas specifications you might like to ask students to compare this text with the Jane Austen letter by completing the Text comparison grid. Having completed the comparison grid, you can ask students to ‘zoom in’ on one or two sections of the grid and write a short comparative answer to a sample question such as:
How do the two writers use language and structure to engage and interest their readers?
- If you are preparing students for the Edexcel specification, you may wish to find a 20th century text to pair up with the 21st century Guardian article or give students the Text analysis grid so that they can work on this single text.
- If you are using the single text approach, then you can ask students to ‘zoom in’ on one aspect of the grid for detailed analysis.
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