On this page you can find a set of resources for teaching George Eliot at KS2. These were designed for our work with local schools in the Midlands around Eliot’s bicentenary, but they can be adapted for use anywhere with some tweaking.
Please do reuse and adapt and share these resources. We would be very grateful if you left some feedback on the resources as a comment on this page letting us know how you are using them and suggesting any thing we might add to support you.
The set includes brief teacher notes and outlines for each task:
- 1. a brief intro to Eliot’s life and work pitched at Y5/6 listeners (this is followed by a site specific quiz relating to St Mary the Virgin Church, Astley and Eliot’ Scenes of Clerical Life (1857);
- 2. A monologue by Mary Ann Evans (Eliot’s real name) with a task in which pupils write questions for her to answer;
- 3. A creative writing exercise designed by project writer in residence Anna Lawrence, asking pupils to devise a new everyday setting for Eliot to use in her next novel;
- 4. Two short-story frames/openings adapted from Eliot’s Silas Marner and ‘The Lifted Veil’;
- 5. A poetry cut-up exercise in which pupils piece together phrases from Eliot’s ‘Brother and Sister Sonnets’.
George Eliot's Provinces 