Language Paper 1: the scheme in five minutes

Transcript

Introduction0:00

This is Between the Lines, and this is the walkthrough of our Language Paper 1 scheme of learning. I'm Hannah.

The scheme at a glance0:07

Language Paper 1 is written for AQA English Language Paper 1, explorations in creative reading and writing, in the format examined from June 2026. It's 20 lessons of sixty minutes, about five weeks, with three levels of support throughout. The lessons run in four sequences: Reading fiction: language, lessons 1 to 5; Reading fiction: structure and evaluation, lessons 6 to 9; Writing fiction, lessons 10 to 15; The exam, lessons 16 to 20. There are four assessment points. Three are Feedback Loop kits, each tied to one exam question: Lesson 5 on Question 2, language, Lesson 9 on Question 4, evaluation, and Lesson 15 on Question 5, descriptive or narrative writing.

One lesson0:56

Let me show you with Lesson 3, Images and senses. The big question is: How do images make a place feel alive, or dead? Apply is about fifteen minutes, and it has two parts. First you explode one quotation together. In this lesson it's "ashes grow like wheat". Before you reveal anything, students try the four empty boxes on the first explode slide: method, zoom in, effect, purpose. Then you think aloud through the full version. The method is a simile that compares a dump to a farm. The words to zoom in on are "grow", a word for living things, when ash is what is left after something has burned. The effect: the reader pictures a harvest of waste, a farm where only dead things come up. The purpose: Fitzgerald turns a place of life into a place of decay, so the valley feels unnatural from the first sentence. That is the whole analytical move the reading questions reward, done out loud, once a lesson, for the whole scheme. Then the hinge question, on mini-whiteboards. The ash-grey men "move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air". What does "crumbling" suggest about them? The right answer is B: they seem made of ash, falling apart like the land around them. And this is the bit I'd ask every teacher to use. The handbook tells you what each wrong answer means. A student who picks A, that they are tired after a long day, has a sensible but literal reading that misses the image, so you recap that imagery makes a picture and ask what usually crumbles. A student who picks C has added facts the text never gives, so they start on Securing and you model how to stay with the words on the page. The hinge question is how you decide, in thirty seconds, who starts on which level of support. That's what it's for.

Three levels of support2:48

Master is the last twenty-five minutes, and it's where the three levels do their work. Everyone in the room answers the same task. In Lesson 3 it's in the style of the exam: Look in detail at the first paragraph. How does the writer use language here to describe the valley of ashes? In the style of Paper 1 Question 2, eight marks. Securing, aiming for a 4, gives a choice of exact quotations, here "ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens", "ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air" and "gives out a ghastly creak", a worked example on a different quotation, and sentence starters for What, How and Why. Strengthening, aiming for grades 5 to 6, gives prompts instead of starters: a clear point for What, then for How, choose a quotation, name the image, simile, metaphor or personification, zoom in on one word, and say which sense it appeals to, with a checklist. Soaring, aiming for grades 7 to 9, gives a debatable statement to argue with: Fitzgerald makes the valley of ashes more frightening than beautiful. How far do you agree? Two paragraphs, the second beginning with an alternative reading. Same source, same question, same standard. Only the scaffolding changes.

Feedback Loop kits4:06

Three times in the scheme, the Master phase is a Feedback Loop kit: a twenty-five minute progress check that fits inside the lesson, and each one practises one exam question. You place the paragraph in one of AQA's four levels for that question, using our indicative content. There is no raw mark, and that's deliberate. A four out of eight tells a student one thing, that they got four. A level, in AQA's own words, tells them what the answer does now and what the next one asks for.

Every scheme, the same shape4:35

That's the Language Paper 1 scheme. The same structure runs through every Between the Lines scheme, so a teacher who has taught one has taught the shape of all of them, and a student who moves classes mid-year lands in a lesson they recognise. Lesson 3 of every scheme is free at btl.education if you want to show a colleague what a lesson looks like before they open the folders. Thank you for watching, and good luck with the paper.