Noughts and Crosses - KS3 Unit of Work - teaching resource

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman – KS3 Teaching Resource

This detailed KS3 teaching unit is based on Malorie Blackman’s award-winning novel Noughts and Crosses. Designed for Year 8 or Year 9 classes, the scheme of work contains a 161-slide editable PowerPoint presentation, 28 PDF worksheets, and 15 fully planned lessons.

The unit explores the novel chapter by chapter, guiding students through its plot, characters, themes, and language while developing essential reading, writing, and analytical skills.

Key features and activities include:

• Exploring the social and historical context of the novel, including apartheid, civil rights, and Blackman’s motives for writing

• Guided chapter-by-chapter study with comprehension tasks and example answers

• Character analysis of Sephy, Callum, Kamal, Jasmine, Meggie, Ryan, Jude, Lynette, and Minnie

• In-depth exploration of themes such as racism, prejudice, privilege, friendship, love, power, and segregation

• Developing inference, deduction, and use of evidence in written responses

• Analysing Blackman’s language choices, description, conflict, and tension

• Speaking and listening activities such as hot-seating and debate

• Empathy and creative writing tasks to build deeper understanding of character and theme

This flexible and engaging scheme can be used to support whole-class teaching or guided reading programmes, and is fully editable to suit the needs of different groups.

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