For teachers
Teaching Fire on the Mountain
Everything on the student site, organised for the classroom: a scheme of work across the whole novel, lesson sequences that follow Desai’s three-part structure, and assessment guidance for the Cambridge IGCSE Paper 1 prose question. Written for a teacher arriving cold, with a set text to cover and a closed-book exam at the end.
Scheme of work
Eight to ten weeks from first context lesson to a full timed essay, mapped to the novel’s three Parts and the student pages.
TeachLessons by Part
Lesson sequences for Parts I, II and III, plus exam-skills lessons: reading by chapter, a key question, activities and a written outcome.
AssessAssessment
The four Assessment Objectives in plain language, the Paper 1 prose task, a practical level ladder, and the comment-only marking workflow.
Orientation: what is here and how to use it
The student side is built to be read alongside the novel, not instead of it. It carries a part-by-part guide, a themes page, characters, the context of post-independence India and Desai’s writing life, a quotation bank with method and effect for each line, an exam skills page for paragraph and essay technique, and a marking desk at Get Feedback on Your Writing. Set the Part guides as pre-reading or catch-up, and use the lesson sequences here for teaching. References throughout are by part and chapter, never page number, because editions vary and the exam is closed book.
This is an exam text, so the site has a marking desk
Fire on the Mountain is an examined prose set text on Paper 1, Section B. Because students will write about it under timed conditions, the site includes a marking desk that reads a draft and responds. Every written outcome in the scheme of work and the lessons can be routed through it, so classroom time goes to redrafting rather than first marking.
Comment-only marking, on purpose
The marking desk gives annotations and next steps, never a grade or a level, even when asked. Students read comments when no number is present to read past; put a mark on the page and the comment goes unread. Keeping the desk grade-free also keeps you the sole source of level judgements. It declines off-task use and will not write paragraphs for students.
A note on copyright
The site quotes the novel only in short extracts for criticism and review, and all summaries and commentary are original. Nothing from the Cambridge syllabus or mark scheme is reproduced; the assessment guidance here is paraphrased, and you should mark against the current published Cambridge grid. Students still need their own copies of the novel.