Booklets are, in my view, simply brilliant. The concept of the booklet is a simple one, yet the impact of their use in the classroom can be transformative. Having used booklets for several years, the advantages that strike me as the most powerful are as follows:
They avoid duplication in planning and reduce teacher workload.
They free up teachers’ time to plan explanations and demos, anticipate misconceptions, sample student books and plan feedback lessons.
They provide clarity and consistency for teachers and students.
They encourage deep thinking and are excellent CPD.
Avoiding the 10pm TES search and the 8am printer queue!
‘Planning, the one task we are meant to adore, has become one of the top three time sappers for teachers. As with any hobby, pastime or creative outline, that means if we are forced to squeeze it in between other jobs at hand, there’s a strong possibility that we’re not going to do it true justice.’ (Kat Howard, ‘Stop Talking About Wellbeing’)
Before introducing booklets in my department, the concept of ‘shared planning’ often involved one teacher planning a series of powerpoints and worksheets, which would be copied and adapted by every other teacher in the department. Each teacher would be responsible for printing their own resources, often resulting in frantic queues at the photocopier at 8am, an hour before the lesson was due to start. Booklets, resourced for the whole department and printed up front at the start of term, posed a solution to the planning conundrum. Imagine starting the term with all of your resources for every unit and every year group planned, printed and ready for you to collect!
Image: English department office at the start of the term (a booklet factory!)
If this is the reality, the sole focus of your planning time shifts: suddenly you have the headspace to think carefully about your verbal explanations; you can dedicate time to practising your live models in advance; when the students leave for the day, you can read their books and plan your feedback lessons. In sho booklets are a workload gamechanger.
Total clarity and consistency
‘With a booklet, which is like a textbook that you have created for your own class, every child has it and every adult has the same one. There is total clarity over what the class is learning and how.’ (Jo Facer, ‘Booklets’)
Not only do booklets save hours of teachers’ time, but they also help a department achieve consistency in lesson delivery and student experience. Once the core knowledge has been identified for the unit, and the booklets created, an expert or novice teacher can take the booklet and make it their own, but the student experience will be similar. Every teacher has absolute clarity on what the minimum expectations are for all students, in terms of knowledge they must secure and practice exercises they must complete. As a result, there is a minimum entitlement. Every student has access to this, no matter who they are taught by.
Deep Thinking
‘The codification of curriculum into booklets or other documents and materials is a powerful tool for resourcing lessons and developing staff thinking and planning.’ (Ruth Ashbee: ‘Booklets: The 10 Principles of Production’)
Creating a booklet takes time. It can take days, in fact! It works best when you can dedicate deep thinking time at the weekend or during the holidays, free from the distraction of the school bell. In creating a booklet, you are pushed to consider the unit as one body of work, thinking carefully about:
How content will be sequenced over a unit of work
How content will be sequenced within a lesson
What tasks or exercises will serve the content best within each lesson
How content will be revisited in the right places and enough times to be secured in long term memory
As such, creating the booklets acts as excellent curriculum and teaching CPD. In my department, after I created several booklets from scratch as a starting point, we shared the booklet planning, accepting feedback from one another as we went. Several teachers in the department commented on how much they learned from thinking so deeply about how to teach this content across an entire unit - much more so than when we’d used powerpoints and worksheets for individual lessons.
How I create a booklet
When creating a booklet, these are the steps I follow:
1. Create the unit plan. There’s little point in starting on the delivery unless you’ve decided what needs to be delivered and in what order. The unit plan should outline the substantive and disciplinary knowledge and lay out the sequence of lessons. One of my future blog posts will explore my thoughts on how to create priority content and a unit plan for a GCSE literature text.
2. Write exemplar essays to test out the knowledge. This is particularly relevant when planning for GCSE English literature, but could work for other subjects too. In the study of an English literature text, there are infinite possibilities when it comes to deciding on which quotations, Tier 2 and 3 vocabulary, themes and contextual ideas. But we don’t have infinite amounts of time and students are already overloaded, studying 10+ subjects at GCSE. As such, when planning for a literature text, I always test out the content selection, checking: do the 20 core quotations, four contextual points and three themes work for multiple essay questions in an exam setting? Writing the essays serves a dual purpose: it tests out the content selection and creates a bank of examples that can be used in thebooklets.
3. Create the recaps. Retrieval practice works best when the recaps have been carefully sequenced and planned to activate the prior knowledge for the specific lesson. The unit plan should specify the lesson focus. The recap can therefore be planned with this in mind. I’ve even sometimes gone as far as to tally the concepts/vocabulary every time they’ve been used in a recap. This enables me to check that the most important concepts have been revisited more frequently, and to ensure that all concepts have been revisited enough for them to have a chance at being secured in students’ long term memory.
4. Create the body of the lessons. This is the part that takes the most time, as it requires explanations, examples, questions and tasks to be carefully planned out. But I have found that planning a body of lessons in a booklet in advance of the term starting is far less time consuming than planning lesson by lesson, hand-to-mouth. There are certain principles that underpin every lesson I plan in the booklet:
The lesson starts with a recap of previously taught content
Vocabulary, if relevant, is taught and revisited using Isabel Beck’s strategies from ‘Bringing Words to Life’
Content is delivered with memory and overload in mind. If articles are used, they are checked for overload and edited, if needed.
Understanding checks are built in. Questions are often pre-planned so that they can be carefully considered and check the most important knowledge.
Writing is broken down into manageable chunks, modelled and practised.
Written accuracy checks are completed.
5. Allow time for feedback. Starting the work on the booklet way in advance allows time for you to share with colleagues, meaning the draft can be revised and improved before teaching. It’s also really important to gather feedback as the booklet is being used in the classroom, so that it can be improved before being used again.
Example lessons from my booklets
This booklet is for use with mid set GCSE students in the teaching of ‘Jekyll and Hyde’. To enable our teachers to meet the needs of individual classes, we developed our booklet approach by creating three separate booklets for the different classes.
LESSON 2
Recap
What does the reader not discover until chapter 9?
What do all characters not know about Jekyll and Hyde?
Which character learns the most in ‘An Inspector Calls’ and what do they learn?
Why did Priestley write ‘An Inspector Calls’?
Why does Friar Laurence marry Romeo and Juliet?
Extension: list quotations from Romeo and Juliet from memory.
In Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson explores ideas about morality in the Victorian era.
Task 1: New vocabulary: morality
Definition: understanding that some behaviour and actions are good and right, and some are wrong.
Correct examples:
He wasn't known for his morality or good values.
The man who stole from an old lady has very questionable morality.
Morality in ancient times was very different from our ideas about right and wrong today.
Views about morality may be different in different time periods because people had different ideas and values.
1B: Incorrect examples. Write the correct sentences in your exercise books.
‘An Inspector Calls’ is a play with morality behaviour.
‘An Inspector Calls’ is a play about m___________.
Victorian morals was based on ideas from the bible.
Victorian __________ _____ based on ideas from the bible.
He is a character with a strong sense of moral.
He is a character with a strong s_______ of __________
1C: Moral or immoral?
When we think about morality, we are thinking about actions people take that are considered right and actions that are considered wrong. We can use the words ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’ to describe those people. If you are moral, you behave in ways considered good and right. If you are immoral, you behave in ways considered bad and wrong. For example, stealing is immoral behaviour. Someone moral would be unlikely to steal. Someone immoral might be likely to steal.
Answer these questions about the morality of characters from ‘An Inspector Calls’. You must explain your answers.
Who is more moral: Arthur or Sheila?
________ is more moral because...
Who is more moral: Sybil or the inspector?
Why might Eric’s treatment of Eva Smith be described as immoral?
________’s treatment of Eva Smith might be described as immoral because...
Why might Sheila’s actions in getting Eva Smith fired be described as immoral?
Extension: Provide more examples of characters behaving in a moral or immoral way in the play
Task 2: Read this information about Victorian society with your teacher
Task 3: Check your understanding. Underline or circle the correct answer.
1.Which of these behaviours were not acceptable in the Victorian era? Tick three.
Honesty.
Controlling spending.
Expressing sexual desires.
Drinking.
Overspending.
2. Why did many people have secrets? Tick two.
They wanted to protect their reputation.
They liked having secrets.
They wanted to behave in ways that were considered immoral.
They didn’t care what other people thought of them.
Extension: why might Victorian society be accused of being fake? Write your answer in your exercise book.
Task 4: copy and complete the sentences using ‘because’, ‘but’ and ‘so’. Read the example carefully.
Example:
Respectable people were expected to behave well in public because they needed to protect their reputations.
Respectable people were expected to behave well in public, but this meant they had to hide natural parts of their personalities.
Respectable people were expected to behave well in public, so they often committed immoral acts in secret.
Your turn: copy and complete these sentences in your exercise books.
1. There were high standards of public behaviour in the Victorian era because...
Give a reason why this is true.
2. There were high standards of public behaviour in the Victorian era but..
Make a contrasting statement or give a contrasting example.
3. There were high standards of public behaviour in the Victorian era, so ...
Make a prediction about the consequence of this.
Extension: Turn these fragments into sentences
...outstanding morals and public behaviour.
In Victorian society, people were expected to...
...perfect.
...often hid what they were really like from…
To be respectable meant not…
...couldn’t express their desires, so…
...forced to suppress (squash)...
..ignored natural parts of people’s...
End of lesson checks.
At the end of every lesson, you will check for written accuracy because:
You will be awarded marks for SPAG in your GCSE exams.
It is important for life, in all forms of communication.
Check that:
Every sentence starts with a capital letter.
Every sentence ends with a full stop (except for questions and exclamations).
Capital letters are only used for unique things, the word 'I' and starting sentences.
In green pen:
Tick each correct capital letter, full stop and spelling.
Correct each incorrect capital letter, full stop and spelling.
LESSON 5: UTTERSON
Recap
In what ways is Utterson strict with himself? List at least two examples.
Why does Stevenson describe Utterson as the ‘last good influence on the lives of downgoing men’?
Why did many Victorian people repress (cover up) their desires?
Who is the narrative perspective until Chapter 9?
Which two characters learn the most in ‘An Inspector Calls’? Explain your answer.
Practise spelling Jekyll: J_kl_ J__ll J_k__ J____
Extension:
Why does Enfield name the back of Jekyll’s house ‘blackmail house’?
What does Dr. Jekyll’s will state?
What interrupted the friendship between Lanyon and Jekyll?
Task 1: Read this extract with your teacher.
In this extract, which is the very opening of the novel taken from Chapter 1, ‘The Story of the Door’, we are introduced to Utterson - our moral and reliable narrator of the story. Mr Utterson is a lawyer - someone who advises people about the law and is qualified to represent them in court.
As you read, highlight examples of Utterson being a moral Victorian gentleman.
Task 3: Check your understanding. Short answer questions.
Teacher note: have students self-correct, ask for hands up to indicate which students got each question right and address whole-class misconceptions straight away.
How is Utterson described?
What is Utterson’s profession
Who are Utterson’s friends?
What does Utterson not do because he may believe it is not moral?
Extension: write two of your own sentences explaining the duality of Victorian society.
Task 4: quotation explosion. Annotate this quotation with your teacher. Consider context: Victorian morality.
‘the last good influence in
the lives of downgoing men’
Task 5: Why does Stevenson choose Utterson as his narrator? Jot down your answers to these questions, then discuss with your teacher.
What is Utterson’s job?
Does Utterson’s job make him trustworthy or not trustworthy?
Does Utterson’s job make him moral or immoral?
Is Utterson a moral character?
Why is he a reliable choice for the narrator of Stevenson’s novella?
Task 6 (if time in the lesson) Expand this sentence. Look at the model first.
He presents Utterson as strict with himself.
When? chapter one
Who? Stevenson
How? ‘austere’
Challenge: Why? moral Victorian gentleman = high standards for own behaviour
Expanded sentence: In chapter one, Stevenson presents Utterson as strict with himself by describing him as ‘austere’. Perhaps Stevenson does this to present Utterson as a typical moral Victorian gentleman, who sets high standards for his own behaviour.
He presents Utterson as a good influence on others.
Who?....................................
How? ..................................................................
Challenge: Why? ................................................................
Expanded sentence (exercise books)
Extension: turn these fragments into sentences
...is a good influence on…
...doesn’t drink or go to the theatre because…
...is an example of how many Victorian gentlemen stopped…
...is the narrator of the novel.
End of lesson checks. Check that:
Every sentence starts with a capital letter.
Every sentence ends with a full stop (except for questions and exclamations).
Capital letters are only used for unique things, the word 'I' and starting sentences.
In green pen:
Tick each correct capital letter, full stop and spelling.
Correct each incorrect capital letter, full stop and spelling.
Key Takeaways
Time is our scarcest resource. Booklets save time by avoiding duplication.
They free up teacher time to focus on explanations, models and feedback.
They provide clarity and consistency, ensuring students all have access to the highest utility content and rigorous tasks that will set them up well for GCSEs and for life.
By creating them well in advance, teachers think deeply about the sequence of knowledge over time. The result is excellent CPD and higher quality resources.
In these excellent posts from Adam Boxer and Adam Robbins, lots of FAQs about booklets that you might have or encounter have been answered, particularly around teacher autonomy. I thoroughly recommend reading!
In the resources section of my blog, you’ll find links to some of the booklets I’ve created.
There are also some excellent blogs about booklets that I’ve come across from these bloggers:
My next blog post will explore how I use a booklet in the classroom.
Previous posts have explored:
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this blog!