Essay writing teaching pack

Last updated: 15/11/2023
Contributor: Teachit Author
Essay writing cover
Main Subject
Key stage
Resource type
Teaching pack

Develop your KS3 and KS4 students’ formal writing skills with our ‘toolkit’ of creative classroom activities, genuine student exemplar essays and exclusive teaching resources.

This pack features activities to help students write well-planned, well-structured and sophisticated essays in readiness for GCSE English Literature and for the longer essay-style questions in GCSE English Language.

Essential for teaching all aspects of essay writing for your class novel, play text or reading unit.

What's included?

  • sections include: getting students started, planning and structuring essays, introductions and conclusions, using quotations, inference and deduction, formal essay vocabulary and drafting and redrafting
  • real student essays from year 9 students in a range of comprehensive schools.

What's inside?

Introduction (pages 3-5)

Getting students started (pages 6-15)

  • Resource - Imperative verbs, recipes and … mmm, cake
  • Resource - Cut open her heart and sprinkle it with love …
  • Resource - What do the Bloom’s words mean?
  • Resource - Second guessing essay questions
  • Resource - Setting the questions
  • Resource - Making light of tricky imperatives
  • Resource - Bloom’s examples’
  • Resource - Knowledge – Level 1
  • Resource - Comprehension – Level 2
  • Resource - Application – Level 3
  • Resource - Analysis – Level 4
  • Resource - Synthesis – Level 5
  • Resource - Evaluation – Level 6

Planning and structuring essays (pages 16-25)

  • Resource - Mind-mapping
  • Resource - Reading the question
  • Resource - ‘What makes a good essay?’
  • Resource - What should I include in my essay?
  • Resource - Does the order matter?
  • Resource - Using connectives
  • Resource - What makes a good essay?
  • Resource - Dictionary definitions
  • Resource - Writer’s word bank

Introductions and conclusions (pages 26-34)

  • Resource - Eye spy introductions
  • Resource - Summarise that!
  • Resource - Psst …
  • Resource - Summarising with precise vocabulary
  • Resource - Good conclusions
  • Resource - How to conclude
  • Resource - Peer assessment
  • Resource - Students’ introductions
  • Resource - Read this extract taken from Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
  • Resource - Complete the table below for your chosen text

Using quotations (pages 35-48)

  • Resource - What is a quotation?
  • Resource - Why use a quotation?
  • Resource - Using evidence
  • Resource - Introducing a quotation
  • Resource - Where should I put the quotation?
  • Resource - Paragraph sandwiches
  • Resource - Which quotation?
  • Resource - Embedding quotations

Inference and deduction (pages 49-60)

  • Resource - Reading between the lines
  • Resource - Practising inference
  • Resource - Fully understanding the text
  • Resource - Finding the evidence
  • Resource - Identifying the best words to comment on
  • Resource - Considering opinions about a text
  • Resource - Forming independent opinions about a text
  • Resource - How would this make the reader/audience feel?
  • Resource - PEE mobiles
  • Resource - Peer assessing
  • Resource - Look at the rectangles below and try to complete each one in turn
  • Resource - Read through the poem once. What is it about? Who are the characters featured?
  • Resource - Opinion statements
  • Resource - PEE mobile activity

Formal essay vocabulary (pages 61-67)

  • Resource - Formal essay vocabulary
  • Resource - Words for analysis SNAP!
  • Resource - Linking your ideas together
  • Resource - Linking words and phrases

Drafting and redrafting (pages 68-75)

  • Resource - Writing a conclusion
  • Resource - Improving vocabulary and structure
  • Resource - Self-assessing
  • Resource - Peer-assessing
  • Resource - Developing vocabulary and choices of sentence structure
  • Resource - Rubric
  • Resource - Student examples

This is an example student activity on planning and structuring essays:

The paragraphs below are all from a sample essay written by Student C about the poem ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ by Wilfred Owen. Work out what order the essay should be in, by cutting up the parts and arranging the paragraphs in the correct order.

 Finally Owen used rhyme in his poem, he rhymed on nearly every other line which really made the poem flow. Because of how the poem flows, it links every line together creating a story, this makes it feel as though what happens on that line will have a big effect later. I think this was the point Owen was trying to get across by using rhyme, the fact that every thing that happened during the war could have an effect later on, causing a chain reaction.

Owen also used personification in his poem, ‘monstrous anger of the guns,’ and, ‘stuttering rifles' rapid rattle,’ are both expressing the sounds the guns made. ‘Monstrous’ could be talking about how shocking the sound of the gun is and how it is also incredibly frightening for the soldiers to listen to. ‘Stuttering’ is suggesting how the noises can be very repetitive. Owen could have just written this to show the reader how even just the noise of these weapons could terrify the soldiers.

Secondly, on the second and third line Owen used repetition of the phrase, ‘only the,’ he uses this as he talks about how the soldiers dying will only be able to hear the sound of gunfire etc as they are dying. By writing like this he is suggesting that they won’t even be able to hear what every-person would get to hear at their funeral, the sound of bells. All they get is the sound of what killed them and what will kill their comrades.

For this assessment, I am going to write about how Owen presents the realities of war in his poem, Anthem for Doomed Youth. To do this I will make several different points about his techniques and how they help to portray the reality of war.

In conclusion, I think Owen used different techniques to give across different points on the war, however I think the main point he was trying to get across was that the soldiers who died probably won’t be noticed and they probably won’t get a funeral. I think Owen successfully got his point across and presented the realities of war by using different techniques his own thoughts on war, which also gave the reader a chance to think about how the soldiers died on the battlefield.

To begin with I am going to talk about rhetorical questions he included, for example, ‘What passing-bell for these who die as cattle,’ is inquiring whether soldiers who died on the field – or as cattle as he saw it – will get any recognition for what they did or if they’ll just die silently. The quote, ‘those who die as cattle,’ is a metaphor for the soldiers and how they are most likely to be stood with a crowd of fellow soldiers not knowing what to do. Owen wrote it like this to put across the fact that they died as innocent people who didn’t know how/couldn’t prevent their and their fellow soldiers deaths.

Explain why you chose to put the essay in this order, saying which clues you used. 
1. What structural techniques can you use to make your essay writing clearly organised for your reader?
2. What problems would there be if the essay was in a different order?

Essay writing pack
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All reviews

Have you used this resource?

5

01/05/2021

I have just purchase this resource when i try some of the ideas i will post another review. thanks

Marie Rowtham

19/09/2020

5

22/05/2020

5

19/05/2020

5

01/05/2021

I have just purchase this resource when i try some of the ideas i will post another review. thanks

Marie Rowtham

19/09/2020

5

22/05/2020

5

19/05/2020

Thank you so much for all these materials . I don't have to search high and low for interesting materials for children who need to be fired up and challenged.

Valerie Long

02/05/2020

5

30/03/2020

5

20/09/2019

5

31/08/2019

5

21/07/2019

5

23/06/2019