Starters:
1. Use the white boards to experiment with subordinate clauses.
 Give two or three simple sentences eg Alice entered the room. She slammed
the door behind her. She was furious. The students are to combine the three sentences into one in as many different ways as possible. eg Alice entered the room, furiously slamming the door behind her. Furiously, Alice
entered the room, slamming the door behind her. Entering the room
furiously, Alice entered the room, slamming the door behind her. (Using complex sentences to add atmosphere and tension. Revision of sentence punctuation.) This is a useful revision exercise with all abilities and the students enjoy it.
2. Use the white boards to change adjectives to adverbs.
 Teacher writes an adjective down and students turn the adjective into an adverb. (Adding to atmosphere and tension/descriptive writing/spelling revision
– happy/happily, gentle/gently, graceful/gracefully.)
3. When studying texts from any time, use white boards at the beginning and ends of lessons during the plenary to reinforce knowledge and understanding of characters and themes.
 Eg When studying Romeo and Juliet, the previous lesson’s work on the characters can begin with the students completing the following sentence. “At the beginning of the play I think Romeo feels .... “ The students write the word or phrase that best describes the character at the chosen point and all show their white boards. The teacher can immediately monitor for understanding and many ideas are shared. Such an exercise can also take place during the planning of an essay about a text.
4. Sorting exercises can be very helpful with Literature texts.
 Prior to studying a pre-1914 text give the class sentences from the text to be studied and from a more modern text. They are to sort the sentences into pre-
1914 and post-1914. When the students are confident they have done this they can work out with a partner which features of the texts helped them to decide on their respective ages. eg lexis, formality/informality of language/tone, sentence structure. This will help them get to grips with the sometimes distant style of pre-1914 texts. (See material below for “The Speckled Band”)
 Weaker students can be supported by being provided with adjectives which describe more than one character. They have to then sort the words according to character. (See material below for the full lesson plus the boys’ collaborative draft. The draft was produced in only 15 minutes).