A 3-week, fully resourced secondary English unit based on A Talk to Teachers: James Baldwin’s Critique of American Education by James Baldwin. KS4 Fiction. National-Curriculum-aligned grammar, WT/ARE/GD differentiation, and ready to teach.

What’s inside

This complete English unit gives you everything for three weeks of high-quality teaching, designed to match the standard of national-curriculum-aligned schemes of work and exam-board specifications.

• 15 lesson PowerPoints — illustrated cover slides, success criteria, vocabulary previews, modelled writing, “big questions” (Bloom’s-laddered), differentiation tiers, plenary, and reflection.
• 15 differentiated resource sheets — Working Towards, Age-Related Expectations, and Greater Depth, with sentence frames, word banks, and writing frames.
• Complete teacher unit plan — unit overview, key themes, model texts, full session-by-session plans, key questions, assessment focus, and vocabulary focus.
• Analytical rubric — clear criteria with exemplar tiers — analytical criteria for the final writing piece, ready for self- and peer-assessment.
• 3 weekly exit tickets — 5 multiple-choice questions per week, with teacher answer keys.

Final writing outcome

A 5-paragraph rhetorical analysis essay arguing how Baldwin uses direct address, biblical allusion, and structural reversal to deliver his critique of American education, with three pieces of textual evidence and proper attribution.

Grammar features (Year 10 NC-aligned)

• Literary/rhetorical present tense in analytical prose; preservation of distinctive sentence rhythms in direct quotation.
• Semicolons in compound sentences; embedded quotations with signal phrases and proper attribution.

Themes explored

Education and ideology, The role of the teacher, Baldwin’s prophetic voice, American education’s structural inequality, Intergenerational responsibility.

Key vocabulary

Direct address, allusion, structural reversal, attribution, signal phrase, rhetorical strategy, ethos, prophetic voice.

Format & compatibility

• Editable PowerPoint (.pptx) and Word (.docx) files.
• UK English spelling.
• One printer-friendly A4 page per resource sheet.
• Compatible with Literacy Tree, Write Stuff, and Power of Reading planning approaches.

Year groups & key stage

• Year 10 (KS4).
• 15 sessions over 3 weeks (≈45–60 minutes per lesson).

Tags

KS4, Year 10, English, fiction, James Baldwin, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, a talk to teachers: james baldwin’s critique of american education