1. Themes in ‘A Christmas Carol’
Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.

2. Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
Starter
In the next few slides, you are going to be shown a variety of images, key moments, and quotations taken from A Christmas Carol.
In pairs, you have to discuss what theme these pieces of information could represent.
You will have 2 minutes to discuss each slide!
For those students who whizz through the themes, there are extension tasks at the bottom of the slides!

3. Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich.
Poverty
“The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”
“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!” 
EXT: Why did Dickens feel so strongly about this theme? (Think back to Dickens’ own life)

4. Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, tries many times to create a bond between him and his uncle.
Fan comes to collect her brother, young Scrooge, from the school to return home for good.
Family
“There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time;
EXT: Why was the theme of family included so prominently in the novella?

5. Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
Scrooge tells the Ghost of Christmas Past that he would like to have a word or two with his clerk after seeing a memory of himself with Fezziwig.
Redemption
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.
“Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life”
Scrooge is forgiven by his nephew Fred, and welcomed into their home for Christmas dinner.
EXT: Why was this such an important theme in the novella? What message was Dickens trying to send to his readers?

6. To get a band 5, you need to be able to evaluate the whole text, as well as the extract given. You need to be able to form your own opinions and inform these with reference to the text.
Show an understanding of the time, the themes, the social structures of the time (class), and relate these to the text and how they are portrayed.
You need to be able to analyse words and phrases that Dickens chooses, and what they mean in terms of themes, context, and the meaning behind the novella.

7. Group task Success Criteria:
Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
 Success Criteria:
Include overview of the novel, and how it relates to the theme.
Use the whole text to discuss how Scrooge and other characters relate to the theme.
Embed quotations into your writing, and discuss how these relate to the theme.
Analyse Dickens’ use of language and why he chose particular words and phrases.
Show an understanding of the context of the Victorian period, and why this is important to the theme.
Discuss Dickens’ meaning behind the theme, and who in society he was addressing.
Group task
Look at the themes that are stuck in your books. As a group, you are going to write down any key quotations, characters, moments, or context of the time that fits with that particular theme. You can use the texts, the quotations provided on your tables, and the profile pages that you have been updating through this topic.

8. Themes of A Christmas Carol
Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
Themes of A Christmas Carol
Bronze
How does Dickens present the theme of poverty in A Christmas Carol?
Silver
How does Dickens present the theme of family in the novella? or
How does Dickens present the theme of responsibility in the novella?
Gold
‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge!’
‘…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well’
Evaluate how Scrooge learns the meaning of redemption throughout the novella.
Try to challenge yourself and choose a question that will push you a little further in your understanding of the text.
Use the success criteria on the colour-coded sheets to ensure that you include all of the necessary details!

9. Self-assessment PIN P I N
Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
Self-assessment PIN
What do you feel that you have done really well?
Have you managed to relate your answer back to the question?
Have you challenged yourself in terms of relating quotations to the context of the period?
Have you used a variety of different points and quotations relating to the theme?
What SPaG errors have you made?
Did you make accidental errors that could have easily been avoided?
Did you forget to include correct punctuation?
Could you have re-read through your work to ensure that no errors were made?
What could you do to improve?
Could you always make sure that you refer back to the question to ensure you don’t lose track of what you are being asked to do?
Could you include more detail about the theme and explain why it is important within the text? P I N

10. Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
Fred tells Scrooge to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
If Scrooge doesn’t change his ways, he will be the reason that Tiny Tim dies.
Responsibility
“Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!” 
EXT: Why did Dickens choose to include this theme in the novel? Who did this theme relate to?

11. Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
Scrooge explains to the two gentleman that are collecting for charity that he can’t afford to make lazy people happy.
‘“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”
Want and Ignorance
‘“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s.’

12. Time ‘”My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost.’
Aspire: To be able to evaluate the recurring themes with reference to the text, contextual knowledge, and personal inferences.
Challenge: To be able to recognise and create links between the themes and the text.
‘”My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost.’
Bob Cratchit was 18 minutes late to work the day after Christmas.
Time
‘The clerk observed that it was only once a year.’
”The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can”
EXT: What?