A Christmas Carol: Mind Maps and Activities for GCSE English Literature

Family, tradition, forgiveness and social responsibility – themes of Dickens’ well-known classic that transcend its Victorian context and festive backdrop. Get students revising this much-loved morality tale with a visual feast of 40 A3 mind maps with activities designed to support focused and creative analysis of the novella at GCSE.

Each mind map is provided as…
  1. A complete Revision Poster – concise, student-friendly knowledge reviews that cover the play scene by scene and as a whole
  2. A partially complete Activity Poster with exercises for active revision – quotation analysis, comprehension questions, literary feature analysis, extension tasks and much more!

… in both A3 and A4 formats

A very useful resource that would definitely enhance the revision of my students

S Kinsey , Teacher of English & Peer Reviewer
Flexible format!
  • Hand out at the end of the course or topic for revision and consolidation
  • Assign partially completed posters as in-class activities or homeworks
  • Display in classroom or use as place mats as visual cues

What do teachers say about this resource? (11935)

Encourages students to recall key information and quotations from across the novella and scaffolds students so that they can make links across the text to key themes. It is an extremely useful revision resource... I liked the fact that there are student copies and teacher copies. This can allow the teacher to adapt the resources for different abilities, taking away or adding certain information to encourage recall... It encourages the student to respond to the text as a whole through recall, then moves on to develop deeper close analysis skills, thinking about the use of language, form and structure, and the writers intent... It matches the specification well, addressing the content students need to meet each assessment objective... A very useful resource that would definitely enhance the revision of my students. 

S Kinsey , Teacher of English & Peer Reviewer

A great resource. I think there are different options in terms of how it could be used, for instance I think the pre-completed versions of the worksheets could be a great resource for teachers who are new to the text to give them confidence in assisting the students... I particularly liked the way it moves from working through an understanding of the book and key plot events to a more "zoomed out" look at the text. Similarly, I like how it moves towards making connections and noticing patterns across the text. I also think it's really detailed in terms of what it draws out from the text - it focuses on all the right important quotations and moments... This resource enhances learning because it consistently asks students to consider why Dickens has done things in the text - it asks them to look beyond the surface level... I think the educational value lies in the variety of uses it could have - to accompany a reading of the text; it could be used for revision tasks; it could be used to target gaps in understanding as teachers could readily select the sections appropriate to their students' needs... It matches the specification well... It is also a good match because it encourages students to explore methods beyond simple language analysis, which I think the exam board feel can often be reductive and limit student responses. I think the level of focus on context is about right here too - again, the exam board dislike extraneous contextual information, but it feels limited and purposeful as it is explicitly linked to the text.

S Jones, Teacher & Peer Reviewer

Useful... Could work as homework tasks/starter tasks in class or personal revision... I liked the activities... Would be a good recall task/displays/starter tasks... Fabulous resource for revision... Plot summary is nice... The resource matches the description well. It does what it says on the tin.

K Binding, English Teacher & Peer Reviewer

A good resource... The tasks are varied and cover all of the main areas I would teach my class... It would be particularly useful for retrieval work, which we all focus on so much today... I liked the resources on language and form, and the context resource on Malthus - this is an area I did not know about, and I have taught the text a few times... I also liked the completed resources - this saves a lot of teacher time! If I was using this resource, I would focus on using it for retrieval. The tasks have quite a narrow focus, which means they would be good for homework. They would also be good revision tasks... The layout is generally clear and appealing... All of the sheets are relevant to the specification and mark scheme... I like the way quotations are used to help students interact with the text... This would be useful for someone teaching the text for the first time, and for someone who wants revision/retrieval and homework tasks. It would certainly save a lot of time as a pick off the shelf resource in these situations.

J Lansley, Head of English & Peer Reviewer

Effective layout with clear and thorough information on the novel... Teacher answer sheets/models are available for each task which is useful for pupils and teachers... Like the layout, really clear and effective for revision and lower-ability groups. Effective for modelling pupil revision tasks and independent work revising theme and main characters.

C Peake, Teacher, Examiner & Peer Reviewer