Andrea Levy’s Small Island: Activity Pack for A Level AQA B
- AQA B AS & A Level
Small Island’s four narrators tell stories of the British post-war immigrant experience. Levy’s poignant writing drives the reader to confront themes of racism and prejudice while providing humour and a sense of hope through strong characterisation, making it a fascinating work to discuss with A Level students.
Ready-to-use comprehension, discussion and creative activities cover the whole text, for you to mix and match to suit your class
Activities include:
- engaging questions
- critical thinking
- close reading
- pair and group tasks
- visual, audio and kinaesthetic tasks
- further research
Accessible for every level and linked to the AOs
Plus! Answers to all activities
Prepare
Pre-reading exercises provide a starting point for study
Explore
Appealing chapter-by-chapter tasks guide students through the
novel, allowing them to gain understanding and analytical skills while remaining engaged
Reflect
Whole-text activities show the bigger picture, exploring key
areas of: Characterisation • Relationships • Genre • Themes •
Attitudes and values • Writer's use of language • Form •
Structure • Context • Critical reception
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What do teachers say about this resource? (11206)
A detailed, thorough and structured set of activities designed to promote learner engagement with the text.
It was very clear that these activities were created by a teacher who had used them with learners and had carefully worked out the best way to support their pupils in approaching this text.
I also really valued the obvious focus on particular AOs. These were highlighted as such and clearly allowed pupils meaningful ways to usefully discuss the relevance of criticism and historical context to the novel as a whole. The text so strongly lends itself to historical context and understanding of Britain's imperial past, and so it was brilliant to see well-selected context that introduced such concepts as the Windrush generation.
In addition, I found the criticism included to be excellent and very thoughtfully chosen. Often criticism can be quite overwhelming to a pupil encountering it for the first time, yet I thought the selection was perfect in giving bite-size chunks of criticism that were thought-provoking and allowed pupils to interrogate the text at a deeper level.
This would be a brilliant resource to support anybody studying this text as part of the NEA component. It has made me think already about what possible text I can pair this novel with in the future! The beauty of this resource is that you could give it to pupils and leave them to work their way through it with remote supervision from a teacher.