An Inspector Calls pack

Last updated: 15/11/2023
Contributor: Teachit Author
An Inspector Calls cover
Main Subject
Key stage
Resource type
Teaching pack

Bring this popular and thought-provoking play to life with our comprehensive six-week teaching pack for GCSE.

‘An Inspector Calls is such a popular play at GCSE that I wanted to bring together a mix of teaching approaches and ideas to appeal to a wide range of teaching styles. I had used many of these successfully in my classes, building in activities such as freeze frames and peg puppets, as well as feeding in some of the latest pedagogical trends, like the learning grids. There’s plenty of choice of engaging and active teaching and a close text focus throughout, leaving students with a lasting enjoyment of the play.’

Helen Stacey, writer

Choose from socratic discussions, venn diagrams, game templates, visual learning grids and sequencing activities – tasks to engage even the most reluctant readers!

What's included?

  • lesson plans and ideas along with tailor-made resources
  • practical, student-facing activities.

What's inside?

Introduction (pages 1-2)

Route through – week one (pages 2-3)

  • de Bono’s detective skills
  • Word wall
  • Play production template
  • Pre-teaching (intro)
  • Quiz on BBC’s Text in Context series
  • Tension graph
  • Historical context
  • Jigsaw pieces

Route through – week two (pages 4-5)

  • Role on the wall
  • Analysing stage directions
  • Pyramid
  • Tricky situations
  • Act One: Who said …?
  • Act One learning grid
  • Point, evidence, explanation technique

Route through – week three (pages 6-7)

  • Wordplay in Act Two
  • Gerald’s affair
  • Chat show: who is to blame?
  • Describing character
  • Write Eva Smith’s diary
  • Bullseye
  • Whose bag is it?

Route through – week four (pages 8-9)

  • Theme definitions
  • An Inspector called
  • Speaking and listening: The committee meeting
  • Socialism and capitalism
  • Links in a chain

Route through – week five (pages 10-11)

  • Pictures strip exercise
  • Bingo!
  • Socratic discussion
  • Moral message team game
  • Politics and persuasion in the final speech
  • Snakes and ladders
  • Treasure hunt

Route through – week six (pages 12-13)

  • Engdoku
  • Taboo revision game
  • Tension graph
  • Word analysis quadrant
  • Revision game
  • Mind palace revision
  • Decorate a chair!
  • Revision calendar

This is a sample student activity on Act Two of An Inspector Calls.

Wordplay in Act Two 

Task 1
J. B. Priestley uses words carefully for comic effect in Act Two of An Inspector Calls.  Sometimes the humour is due to dramatic irony, or because the audience has a better viewpoint of all the characters at this point.  It’s worth knowing the meanings of some of these words to understand the humour.

Which is the correct definition?
Impertinent adj means...
a. deceiving or sly
b. intrusive or presumptuous; insolently rude
c. excitable or silly; childishness
d. limp

Working in a pair, decide which of you will be ‘A’ and which will be ‘B’.  If you are an ‘A’, choose a word from the ‘A’ column and if you are a ‘B’, choose a word from the ‘B’ column. Create three extra false definitions for your chosen word.  Reword the real definition too, so that it sounds more like something you’d write!

Once you have your word, with all four definitions (real and invented), swap with your partner and each of you chooses what you think is the correct definition. 

Words to choose from:

A

B

hysterical adj in a state of uncontrolled excitement, anger, or panic

vindictive adj maliciously seeking revenge

responsible adj responsible for having control or authority over

dubious adj not entirely honest

impressionable adj easily impressed or influenced

carcass (or carcase) n the dead body of an animal; a person’s body (informal)

notorious adj well-known for some bad reason

sot n a person who is frequently drunk

offence n  a breaking of a law or rule; crime

imperturbable adj not easily upset; calm

NB All definitions are adapted from the Collins English Dictionary.

An Inspector Calls pack
£15.00
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All reviews

Have you used this resource?

5

13/04/2021

An excellent resource. I spotted a mistake: page 21, answer 2 should read 'Radical' not 'Conformist'.

Cerys Slatter

22/02/2021

5

15/02/2021

5

31/01/2021

5

13/04/2021

An excellent resource. I spotted a mistake: page 21, answer 2 should read 'Radical' not 'Conformist'.

Cerys Slatter

22/02/2021

5

15/02/2021

5

31/01/2021

5

06/08/2020

5

25/06/2020

Some highly useful materials. Thank you!

Valerie Long

02/05/2020

5

23/04/2020

5

25/02/2020

The resource was most hrlpful. It hflped a student who had moved school's due to a private school vlosing. It helped him greahly to hain an understanding he would not have otherwuse. It helped me as I have retired from teaching, to enable his understanding.

Christine Edwards

12/02/2020