Teaching guide: Modern times - Literature from 1945 to the present day

A range of resources to help you plan your teaching and assessment for the Modern times: Literature from 1945 to the present day component of A-level English Literature A.

How to use these resources

Whichever texts or text combinations you teach, the sample assessment materials give you details about some of the aspects of Modern times the texts cover. Don't forget to consult the specification for a list of possible aspects.

These documents will help you to focus your teaching on those aspects and to work towards the relevant exam question in the sample assessment materials. The example student responses with marking commentary act as models for the students and help you to assess their work.

Paper 2B, Section A

• Creating your own questions
• Exemplar student response - band 2 - A Streetcar Named Desire
• Exemplar student response - band 5 - A Streetcar Named Desire
• Download the full package for Paper 2B, Section A

Paper 2B, Section B

• Creating your own questions - Unseen text
• Creating your own questions - Comparative texts
• Exemplar student response - band 4 - Unseen text
• Exemplar student response - band 3 - Unseen text
• Exemplar student response - band 5 - Comparative texts
• Exemplar student response - band 2 - Comparative texts
• Specimen question commentary - Unseen text
• Specimen question commentary - Comparative texts
• Download the full package for Paper 2B, Section B

Unseen extracts

These prose extracts can beused to develop students' unseen extracts essay writing skills, as theyconsider the representation of key aspects of the time period in a range ofliterary prose extracts.

Using these extracts studentswill:

• be able to apply the knowledge gained doing the prose study to theanalysis of unseen prose extracts
• understand the demands of A-level paper 2B, section B
• learn how to structure a response to a practice exam question.

• Unseen extract 2: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
• Unseen extract 3: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson
• Unseen extract 4: Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
• Unseen extract 5: The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
• Unseen extract 6: The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
• Unseen extract 7: The Help, Kathryn Stockett
• Unseen extract 8: The Help, Kathryn Stockett