Over the past year, I’ve been conscious that we haven’t interleaved our texts as much as we should and that our pupils’ retention is poor so, this term, I’ve spent some time addressing both with my year 10 GCSE class.

Last term we taught ‘A Christmas Carol’ and this term we have moved on to Blood Brothers.

To ensure pupils do not forget what they have learnt from A Christmas Carol, I have embedded a simple three lesson structure (we have our literature pupils three times a week).

Lesson 1 – Do it now 1

Pupils are given a series of questions testing their recall of a particular stave. These are then gone through in class and green-penned (ticked, corrected or added to).

Lesson 2 – Do it now 2

Pupils are given the start of a series of quotations from that stave and they have to recall the second half of the quotation. These are then gone through, green-penned and marks logged.

Lesson 3 – Do it now 3

To aid pupils’ recall of wider themes and characters across the text in preparation for part b, pupils are given a planning grid (originating from LauraHW). We then go through and green pen.

To further support pupils

1. Quizlet to aid quotation recall. The same quotation starts are put on quizlet with pupils self-quizzing and completing the variety of tasks to aid recall. Once a month (every three weeks), a longer quotation test is given. I remove quotations in this test that I know pupils are confident with and focus on the ones they are struggling to recall.
2. I am lucky to be a Pixl school so whilst we study Blood Brothers in class, pupils’ homework is solely focused on revising A Christmas Carol using the Pixl Independence booklet. These Independence booklets are brilliant