A Christmas Carol - The Workhouse - teaching resource

A Christmas Carol – The Workhouse

(16-slide editable PowerPoint with 10 worksheets)

This GCSE English Literature lesson explores Dickens’ presentation of workhouses in Stave One of A Christmas Carol and examines the wider historical context of Victorian attitudes towards poverty and social welfare. Designed for KS4 learners, the 16-slide fully editable PowerPoint and ten accompanying worksheets develop students’ understanding of Dickens’ social critique while strengthening their analytical and contextual skills.

In this extract, Scrooge famously asks, “And the union workhouses? Are they still in operation?”, reflecting his belief in the harsh Victorian workhouse system. Dickens presents these institutions as austere, punitive, and inhumane, aligning with contemporary critics like Richard Oastler, who described them as “prisons for the poor”.

This resource includes:

• A differentiated Do Now starter activity where learners examine an image of a surviving workhouse and reflect on its function. Higher-ability learners explore their personal responses to the image and consider why such a building might be a tourist attraction today.

• A group research task, where learners read a range of historical sources about workhouses and complete a structured findings sheet. This activity develops key reading skills, including comprehension, inference, and analysis.

• A discussion activity where learners evaluate a controversial statement about the effectiveness and morality of the workhouse system, encouraging critical thinking and debate.

This lesson enriches learners’ understanding of the context of A Christmas Carol and supports their preparation for the GCSE English Language exam by giving them practice in reading and interpreting 19th-century non-fiction texts.

 

Get access to thousands of pages of resources. Find out more about membership here.

Our Price : £2.99 / 3 Credits  

 Add to basket