<p>Gamify your teaching to increase students engagement and learning by applying game design elements to a classroom setting. This PPT presentation and Leaderboard spreadsheet help to set up some of the basic gaming principles which will motivate the children to collaborate, engage, become independent learners and become responsible for their own progress.</p> <p>The PowerPoint presentation takes you and the students through the different gaming elements:</p> <ul> <li>The number of lives you have, how you lose a live and how you can get lives back.</li> <li>The Leaderboard, how you can collect points, how you can spend points, how you can work together as a clan and how you can level up.</li> <li>Perks you can earn (individual perks and clan perks) - these can be adapted so that they reflect the rewards that are handed out in your class/school.</li> </ul> <p>It is important to have a look at the teacher notes in the PPT presentation for additional, useful information.</p> <p>The Excel spreadsheet is a the place where all points are recorded. It consists of 7 different worksheets that are all linked to each others with cell references so that information only has to be entered in one place and it will automatically show in the other overviews. Any cells with references/functions are locked so that you cannot accidentally delete a cell reference or function. If you do need to make changes to locked cells, the password is “Banana”.</p> <p>Worksheet 1: Leaderboard<br /> This contains a summary of all points earned and spent. Students names can be entered here (up to 32). Each colour stands for a different clan. It is recommended to have a maximum of 4 students per clan. If you have fewer students per clan, do NOT delete any rows. Just leave the student name blank instead. If a new student joins during the year, they can then easily be added to one of the clans. Try to have roughly the same number of students in each clan (3 or 4). The student names you enter here will automatically appear in the other worksheets of this file so they only have to be entered once.<br /> Below the student names, you will see an overview of the clan names. The default clan names are colours, but, as the students start collecting points, they can use these to change their own or someone else’s clan name (my rule is always that it cannot be an insulting, rude or offensive name).<br /> All the numbers and totals in this Leaderboard Overview are automatically calculated from the other worksheets in this Excel file.</p> <p>Worksheet 2: Epic Win<br /> The PPT explains how Epic Wins can be earned. For each Epic Win, simply enter 100 points in the same row at the student name. The totals are automatically calculated and will appear in the Leaderboard overview.</p> <p>Worksheet 3: Home Quests<br /> The PPT explains how Home Quests points are earned. It might seem a bit tedious to record this for each piece of homework, but I have found it really handy to get an overview of who has missed pieces of homework on a regular…</p> <p>Further info included in Word doc (file attached).</p>

<p>This activity challenges KS2 students to match 6 poetic devices with their definitions and examples: Metaphor, Simile, Alliteration, Personification, Hyperbole and Onomatopoeia.<br /> The yellow cards are the definitions, the blue cards contain example sentences and the pink/orange cards are easier example sentences. The white cards can be used as an extension for rapid graspers to create their own example sentences.<br /> This activity should ideally be carried out in small groups to encourage lots of discussion and works well at the start of a poetry unit. A fun follow up activity is to identify some of these poetic devices together in the song Fireworks by Katie Perry.<br /> I have created this card sort for use in Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6. I tend to spread the cards out throughout the classroom to encourage children to move around during the activity, which is especially helpful for students with ADHD.</p>

<p>This activity is suitable for students in upper KS2 as well as KS3. They are given National Archives sources, paintings and photos of artefacts to use as evidence for deciding whether statements related to the Battle of Britain are true or false. These documents are all included in the PPT deck, ready to be printed.</p> <p>They will work in groups of 3, 4 or 5: each person in each group will have a different source which they will study (together with others who have been given the same sources in class) and then share with the rest of the group . They then complete an A3 sheet with True/False statements and provide evidence as a group.</p> <p>Show the children a good example and a great example (see PPT slides). Ask them what makes the great example great and generate success criteria based on this.</p> <p>Mini-plenaries: share group work with the rest of the class. This might start off some new discussions.</p> <p>Discuss within the groups how they would rank the sources for reliability. Which ones could have been used as propaganda?</p> <p>The sources vary in difficulty and can therefore be distributed accordingly.</p>

<p>This is a PowerPoint that can be used to discuss The New Normal with the children returning to school after lockdown. It gives them the chance to discuss their emotions related to the coronavirus / Covid 19 and it outlines the new routines they will have to get used to, such as social distancing, hygiene, bubbles/pods, etc. It should make the return to school easier and safer for them.</p>

These 6 spelling investigation sheets are for Year 5 and Year 6 and can be used for homework as well as independent classroom activity. They are linked to words which have to be learnt for dictation each week and include dictation sentences.<br /> They include investigations on the endings: -ence and -ance, -cious and -tious, -cial and -tial, -ieve and -eive.<br /> They also include an investigation on homophones ending in -ce versus -se and an investigation on the letter string -ough.