One of our lovely content writers, Marie, has kindly written a blog explaining the exciting changes coming to our A Christmas Carol unit of work!
It’s November, so we’re safe to mention Christmas right? Well, I’m going to go right ahead because I want to tell you a bit about our resources for Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
Lesson 1 is free! Check it out here!
Who Am I?
I’m Marie and I’ve been with Twinkl Secondary since the very beginning and we’ve had resources on the site for this book since the early days as they were some of the first ones I wrote. It was an absolute pleasure for me because A Christmas Carol ranks as one of my all-time best books. I always loved to teach it in the autumn term in the run up to Christmas – it was a great excuse to watch the film in that last, crazy week before the holidays too!
It really is a win-win with this novella and something of a no brainer for me as a teaching choice for English Literature. It’s not too long (because, let’s face it, sometimes Dickens seems to go on forever), it’s uplifting and there’s just so much to say about the story and the very colourful characters within.
Why I Enjoyed Writing This Unit
When it came to writing these lessons, I had a ball. I got to research a Victorian Christmas, the problems of society at the time as well as being able to zero in on the text itself and examine the structure and language, probably more closely than I had done before. I found I often didn’t have the time for this sort of research when I was a full-time teacher – working for Twinkl really is a dream job for a self-confessed geek! As an added bonus, the text is on the GCSE English Literature syllabus for AQA, EDEXCEL and EDUQAS – so I knew it would be a popular choice for our users. There’s no doubt that the A Christmas Carol lessons are among some of my favourites on the site, even if I do say so myself.
Having said that, at Twinkl we rarely rest on our laurels and so, three years on from writing the originals, we decided to revisit the scheme and produce some new material so that teachers could use the lessons every step of the way, stave by stave, as they teach the novella.
More Than a Fresh Coat of Paint!
I stood by my original lessons and wanted them to be part of the new scheme (A Christmas Carol has become known as ‘my baby’), so we made several new ones to slot in and extend the series. Naturally this involved changing numbers and names, which was a bit complex but worth it to simplify and clarify. Then, because our up to date lessons look so different, it meant our designer Joe (who does the magic when it comes to making our lessons look fabulous) had to ‘rejig’ the old ones too.
So, ta da! Today the first ten lessons of the newly worked scheme are going online for your delectation and delight. I hope you like them – please feel free to leave feedback on the site on the ratings and reviews tab – we always read comments and act on them where we can. You can have a look for yourself here: https://bit.ly/2DgngoI
The next ten will follow shortly to complete this 20-lesson scheme to take you smoothly from Marley’s ghost to Scrooge’s transformation covering all the GCSE English Literature assessment objectives on the way.
And don’t forget the other resources available for A Christmas Carol too – revision questions, worksheets, one of our literary knowledge organisers and a host of other things to help your Key Stage 4 pupils understand, remember and answer questions for this classic GCSE text. https://bit.ly/2FeLhiK
I hope you enjoy teaching it as much as we enjoyed writing it!
Marie