Unseen fiction
Unseen fiction is a step-by-step introduction to the unseen element of the GCSE English Language exam, developing students’ analytical skills and confidence.
The perfect foundation for KS4 students, this pack addresses AO1, AO2 and AO4 and will help your students develop their skills and confidence in approaching unseen fiction.
With eight detailed lesson plans for each text, the pack includes starter activities, main lesson activities, plenary ideas and extension activities, as well as worksheets and classroom resources.
Featured text extracts:
Kerfol by Edith Wharton
The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
'The Christmas Present' by Richmal Crompton
Mort by Terry Pratchett
'Printer's Devil Court' by Susan Hill
'Down to a Sunless Sea' by Neil Gaiman
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
What's included?
- eight text extracts
- exam-style questions
- exam-style practice papers with suggested ‘answers’ for the final extract for AQA, Edexcel and WJEC Eduqas.
What's inside?
Introduction (page 3)
Specification summaries (pages 4-6)
Top tips (pages 7-8)
Text 1: Kerfol (pages 9-17)
- Resource 1 - finding information
- Resource 2 - the black greyhound
Text 2: The War of the Worlds (pages 18-28)
- Resource 3 - the storm
Text 3: My Ántonia (pages 29-37)
- Resource 4 - guess what is being described
- Resource 5 - character descriptions
- Resource 6 - author's use of language
Text 4: ‘The Christmas Present’ (pages 38-50)
- Resource 7 - structural terminology
- Resource 8 - the beginning
- Resource 9 - developing the story
Text 5: Mort (pages 51-59)
- Resource 10 - venn diagram
- Resource 11 - close analysis of Mort
Text 6: ‘Printer’s Devil Court’ (pages 60-68)
- Resource 12 - evaluating writing
- Resource 13 - exam-style questions
Text 7: ‘Down to a Sunless Sea’ (pages 69-84)
- Resource 14 - narrative voice in the story
- Resource 15 - imagery
- Resource 16 - planning grid
Text 8: A Thousand Splendid Suns (pages 85-107)
- Resource 17 - exam style questions
Example lesson plan from the teaching pack:
Starter activities
- Radio broadcast. Remind students of the first aspect of AO1 ‘identify information and ideas’ and then listen to the first few minutes of the original radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Ask students to jot down five things they have found out. Support students by giving them ideas, e.g. where and when is the story set?
- Storms. Display an image of a storm or stormy weather and ask students to discuss why a story would feature a storm. Challenge them by introducing or revising the term ‘pathetic fallacy’ and ask them to suggest what sort of events or atmosphere the use of a storm may suggest.
Main activities
- Read the extract with your students. It is a complete chapter from the novel so is quite lengthy. Use a method which works for your students. You could reduce the length of the text or stop after every few paragraphs and ask questions. Some questions you could ask:
Paragraphs 1–3 (up to ‘I wanted to be in at the death’): How do the two characters feel at this point?
Paragraphs 4–6 (from ‘It was nearly eleven’ to ‘the terror of the night’): What is the atmosphere in this section?
- Hot-seat the narrator. Working in groups of four or five, get students to look closely at the extract. They could focus on the middle section, not used for the writing task, below. In their groups they should write questions to ask the narrator about his experiences of the evening. They should work collaboratively to devise five relevant questions and discuss the answers referring to the text.
- Summarising the text. The independent writing activity in Resource 3 (The storm) focuses on the second bullet point of AO1, ‘Select and synthesise evidence from different texts’ but asks students to summarise the differences between the start and end of a single text. Different examination boards may examine this aspect of AO1 in various ways: AQA for example, asks students to ‘select and synthesise from different texts’ in Paper 2, question 2, using two non-fiction texts instead.
Plenary activity
- To sum up. Ask students to summarise the extract in no more than 100 words. They could do this as bullet points or as continuous prose.
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