Opening doors to a richer English curriculum for ages 10 to 13

Opening Doors to a Richer English Curriculum for Ages 10 to 13 takes Bob Cox's award-winning 'Opening Doors' series into bold new territories, providing a treasury of techniques and strategies all carefully selected to support the design of a deeper, more creative and more expansive curriculum.

Together with Leah Crawford and Verity Jones, Bob has compiled this rich resource to help teachers enhance their learners' engagement with challenging texts and develop their writing skills as budding wordsmiths. It includes 15 ready-to-use units of work covering a range of inspiring poetry and prose from across the literary tradition, complete with vivid illustrations by Victoria Cox.

Bob, Leah and Verity's innovative ideas on theory, best practice and how to cultivate a pioneering classroom spirit are all integrated into the lesson suggestions, which have been designed for both the teacher's and the learners' immediate benefit.

Together they empower teachers to explore with their learners the scope and depth of literature capable of inspiring high standards and instilling a love of language in its many forms. Furthermore, they help teachers to lay down intricate curricular pathways that will prompt their pupils to better enjoy literature, read and analyse texts with a greater sense of curiosity, and write with more originality.

The book includes a great range of texts both as the core of each unit and as link reading, incorporating some contemporary texts to show how past and present co-exist - and how various literary styles can be taught using similar principles, all of which are open to further adaptation. The authors have also suggested key concepts around which the curriculum can be built, with the units providing examples with which you can work.

All of the extracts and illustrations you will need in order to begin opening doors in your classroom are downloadable, and the book also includes a helpful glossary of key terms.

Suitable for teachers of pupils aged 10 to 13.

Units include:

Part 1: Opening Doors to Poetry. 1. Go and Open the Door - 'The Door' by Miroslav Holub. 2. One Star - 'Speak of the North!' by Charlotte Brontë. 3. Fire in My Head - 'The Song of Wandering Aengus' by W. B. Yeats. 4. Among the White Clouds - 'Cold Mountain' by Han-Shan. 5. The Bird That Sings - 'Sympathy' by Paul Laurence Dunbar. 6. Over It Dashes a Waterfall - 'A Coloured Print by Shokei' by Amy Lowell. 7. Old King Time! - 'Song of Old Time' by Eliza Cook. 8. Zoom in - 'The Dong with a Luminous Nose' by Edward Lear.

Part 2: Opening Doors to Prose. 9. Fifty Degrees Below Zero - 'To Build a Fire' by Jack London. 10. The Green Door - 'The Door in the Wall' by H. G. Wells. 11. The Torpor of Death - The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins. 12. A Home for David - David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. 13. A Ghost Mystery for Flaxman Low - 'The Story of Baelbrow' by E. and H. Heron. 14. Shame and Pain - Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. 15. Fake News - In Search of the Truth.