Making Connections is a very valuable skill to teach in Guided Reading. Children learn to connect what they read to themselves, another text and the wider world, helping them to understand the text on a deeper level. Most of us tell the children that a good reader “makes connections”, but for the most part, only a handful of the children actually know what this means. This resource will explicitly teach your children how to make connections with what their reading to themselves, another text and the wider world. This resource can be used with ANY text. It teaches the SKILL of making connections and that can be applied to fiction, non-fiction and poetry. What’s included A detailed daily PowerPoint to structure the lessons and encourage children to engage in child talk/cooperative learning. Making Connections support cards- to provide children with the sentence stems in order to be successful when structuring a connection. Summarising Tweet template- to ensure children have understood the text read on a basic level before engaging in making connections. Children are challenged to include the main events, main characters etc in 280 characters. Making Connection activity Sheets. I hope this resource is useful for you. Please leave some feedback and let me know how these lessons went. I’d love to hear from you.

4 reading skills graphic organizers and 5 support cards to structure children’s answers for comprehension questions. These post-it note graphic organizers are engaging and encourage children to discuss what they have read to arrive at the correct answer. They can be printed in Black and White or can be printed on colored paper to make them nice and colorful. I love to use them during my guided reading sessions as it encourages children to engage in paired work, extending and elaborating on their own ideas. See how I use them over on my blog: rebeccatheirishteacher.com Reading skills/strategies included: -Main Idea/Details -Making Connections -Theme -Summary Support Cards include: -Making Connections Support -Evaluating -Author’s Choice -Characters -Vocabulary Follow my Instagram to see these products and more in action. The whole idea behind this resource is to structure and build on children’s understanding, by giving them the scaffolding to write their own answers. Reading lessons have become much more ‘talk based’ and fun as a result.

Time to move away from the guided reading carousel and onto whole class guided reading! This lesson plan is FREE to show you step-by-step how you can carry out a whole class guided reading lesson in your class too. Outline: 10 mins teacher/student/chorus read 5 mins quick fire questions (to check understanding) 5 mins modeling the task 15 minutes task and feedback This way your whole class are being guided in their reading daily, as opposed to once a week in a teacher led group. It’s a free resource, so give it a try, let me know your thoughts, and check back later to see more resources like this! Good luck! *This is a follow on lesson from Whole Class Guided Reading: Vocabulary (see my store for more details)

Time to move away from the guided reading carousel and onto whole class guided reading! This lesson plan is FREE to show you step-by-step how you can carry out a whole class guided reading lesson in your class too. Outline: 10 mins teacher/student/chorus read 5 mins quick fire questions (to check understanding) 5 mins modeling the task 15 minutes task and feedback This way your whole class are being guided in their reading daily, as opposed to once a week in a teacher led group. It’s a free resource, so give it a try, let me know your thoughts, and check back later to see more resources like this! Good luck!

St. Patrick’s Day Activities (Reading and Writing) - Let’s celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with these fun no-prep activities in your class for March. These activties are based around a persuasive text, encouraging you to visit the country of Ireland. This Product Includes: Page 1- How to use this product. Page 2- Clumping Activity (learning how to group similar information into the same paragraphs). Children will cut up and un-jumble the statements about Ireland, justifying why they have grouped certain statements together. Page 3- Persuasive Passage about ‘Ideal Ireland’. Page 4- Questions based on the passage ‘Ideal Ireland’ (retrieval and inference). Page 5- Plan your own text on YOUR home country/home town (for those who are also from Ireland). Page 6- Draw a labelled diagram of your home country/home town to persuade the reader to come visit- even MORE! Page 7- Terms of use and credits. Description Use this St. Patrick’s Day mini unit to supplement any St. Patrick’s Day activities you may have! It’s not directly linked to St. Patrick’s Day itself, however it’s based on the lovely country where St. Patrick’s Day was born- Ireland! How to teach this lesson: You can use this fully designed mini-unit as long as you need, because it includes all of the resources you need to teach it! You could also use it alongside your ‘Persuasive Writing’ unit too! It’s up to you :) Let’s connect: Instagram

OBSERVATION LESSON: Today was my observation and it was day 1 for us, engaging with Persuasive Writing. The children had to identify the features of a persuasive text using the AFOREST technique. (We used this support mat and it was EXCELLENT! This resource includes: a very detailed, differentiated lesson plan, which allows you to follow it step-by-step (just like I did). Links to the texts I used. Key for annotating. Advertisements for Lower Ability pupils. To start: children will try to persuade their teacher to allow them to go for break 5 minutes early. To you (and the observer, this will show their prior knowledge of persuasion, which should be little at this stage). Main: Using a key, children will highlight and annotate a piece of persuasive writing using a key to spot the different features. There are 3 different persuasive texts for high, middle and low ability children so that they can all access the content. Plenary: Children will be placed into mixed ability groups of 4/6 and asked to SELL you a random object from the class (e.g. a pencil case) in a dragon’s den type fashion. This will show the observer (and you) the progress made since the start of the lesson as the children apply the techniques that they have learned. Please let me know your thoughts on this lesson plan.

I’ve added these key terms (in yellow) here for you to create a working wall for your English display. These headings can be kept up all year round, even when you change genre. All you need to do is to change the work around it, accordingly. See my blogpost on my blog to see how exactly I use this display in my class. (Note: only the headings in yellow and the clouds are included).

These spellings are based off the statutory spellings of the English National Curriculum 2014. Children in years 3&4 are expected to spell these words by the end of Year 4, and in my classroom, we try to learn and familiarise ourselves with them as much as possible. With this resource, I print, laminate and cut up these words and have them in a basket or box in the classroom. As a starter to guided reading or any English lesson really, I take out the basket and give each table 5 words to focus on. They discuss the words and the spelling patterns, along with the meaning. This way the words are familiar to them. To increase children’s use of these words, any time they use one of them in their writing, they are encouraged to underline it to show they can spell it. Thus, the spelling of my year 4s has greatly improved, thank god! This resource comes with 109 words in both yellow and black and white. Please leave a review and let me know your thoughts. Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram for more ideas :)

My most recent class assembly was based on Theseus and the Minotaur (with a twist). We had covered this story during our topic of myths https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/myths-understanding-the-features-11943412 and the children LOVED it. I wrote this play script based on the myth however we added a little twist. The minotaur is known to be a FEARSOME, UGLY creature, but in our story he turns out to be nice once people get to know him. Moral: Don’t judge a book by its cover. The play script is editable to ensure that there is enough lines for the children in your class. I have 25 and there is 25 parts. However, it is an easy script to edit and adapt. To tie it all together, we sang ‘Eye of the Tiger’ in the middle of the performance which went down a treat with the parents and the school. Masks NOT included This resource contains the script ONLY and in total the play lasted about 15 minutes. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did and please let me know how you and your class got on.

Prior to a ‘big write’, I ask the children to stick these into their books as a check list to ensure they include all of the necessary features of our chosen genre. You can add extra things on there too, such as a whole class target or focus you’ve been working on that week (e.g. similes or openers). I use it as a slight assessment tool for myself to see how my children are progressing in writing. They complete a big write at the end of our genre which is usually every 2-3 weeks. It’s a simple tool to show progression in writing as well as make use of self and peer assessment. Just edit this document to suit the needs of your class/genre in writing. I’d love to hear how you got on using them :)

6 challenge cards for children to solve upon finishing a comprehension task early or if looking to encourage them to think deeper. We have been trying to use the A.P.E (answer, prove, explain) technique for inference questions, which encourages children to PROVE their answers by looking at clues in the text/pictures. These challenge cards remind children to prove their answers.

As last week was Book Week, I planned a week’s worth of lessons based around the book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Each day, we read a chapter of the story and then engage in lessons based on what we’ve read. As you can see from the cover image, this involves lots of chocolate!! The children absolutely adored these lessons and were so engaged in the process of melting chocolate. They needed to see which chocolate would be the best to build the Indian Prince’s palace out of by melting different types of chocolate. HINT: flakes don’t melt! Honestly, a really fun week and trust me, you’ll enjoy it too. Please check out my Instagram for more of my activities for Book Week: Rebecca.the.irish.teacher

An editable book cover hunt. Children will follow the clues on the reverse side of each book cover and hunt around the school for some hidden treasure. They must write down the names of the book covers that they come across too and aim to read at least one of them that week. Just something a bit different during Book Week to engage them with different books. For more information of activities that we did during Book Week, check out my Instagram: Rebecca.the.irish.teacher.

A complete booklet to hand out to staff outlining events for Book Week. There are ideas, timetables for the week, overviews, checklists for teachers etc. This booklet can be edited to suit your school, but also can be used directly as is to make your Book Week run successfully. This has just been used by my school and was incredibly successful. See photos on my Instagram for more details (Rebecca.the.irish.teacher).

A comprehension based on the story of ‘Who killed King Tut’. (a report) Children are encouraged to use their inference skills and comment on why the author has used a certain structure to help the reader. Children will use a range of reading skills and strategies when answering this comprehension.

This is a follow on lesson from:Non-Chronological Reports: Understanding the features. Children cannot and should not be writing their own report without first of all familiarising themselves with the text type. Having completed that step, they can then begin to think about planning their very own report. This resource includes: *4 day detailed lesson plan with a step-by-step guide on how to deliver these lessons. *Report adaption sheet for drawing their new idea to change. *Pictures to caption- this confirms children’s ability to order the report. *‘Who murdered King Tut’ text for reference. *Comprehension on the text used to ensure understanding. *Success Criteria for children to self and peer assess their report writing. *Drama ideas: such as text tennis, hot seating etc. The idea behind this week of teaching is that children are reciting/acting out the text each day, confirming their understanding of the report structure/sentence structure orally. Once children can do this, they will be able to write their very own version. They are encouraged this week to change one part of the report in order to write their very own version. For example: instead of ‘Who killed King Tut?’, it could be ‘Who killed King Thor the Viking’ children will have to adapt the report they know so well to make it their own. Now that they have a basis to go off, their report will be much more successful.

After hours of reading and PD on Pie Corbett’s Talk4Writing, I decided to plan my English lessons around his style of teaching. The idea behind it is fun filled, active and different so my children and I absolutely love it! Included: 4 day, detailed lesson plan (differentiation included). Power Point of the features of a report. ‘Who killed King Tut’ text resource (colour coded). ‘Boxing it up’ plan Report starters- which allow the children to get into the mind of writing report style sentences. Text mapping opportunities- which allow children to act out and DRAW the entire report so they can recite it, thus learning the sentence structure orally. I have put a lot of detail into the lesson plan, so it can be easily followed to apply this style of teaching to your English lessons. The idea behind it is: Week 1= Imitation Phase. In this week, children need to learn off a text to fully immerse themselves in the style of writing, structure, language etc. This is done through actions and also text mapping (drawing pictures). Only when children fully understand a text type, should they begin to write. The writing of a report will be done at the end of week 2. (This resource is only week 1). By the end of the week, your children should fully understand the features of a report, and should be able to recite the whole thing using their text map. It’s lots of fun and a fantastic scaffolding for children to understand before they write. Give it a try!

An editable powerpoint presentation for a workshop to give to parents in supporting their children’s reading at home. It’s 20 pages long and covers: *How to support your child in comprehension *Activities to engage with while reading *How long to spend reading with your child *Links to websites for further help It can be used from 5 y/o to 12 y/o children.

In my class, I got really fed up of using the carousel for teaching guided reading. I felt only 1-2 groups benefited from it, while the others were in engaging in monotonous activities. The idea behind this is to engage in whole class reading/discussion about a picture or text and answer only 3 questions in the CAR format: C- Choice of the Author A- Always Infer R- Retrieval Included in this pack is: 6 different activities to use CAR technique How to use page Display of CAR to remind children what the different letters stand for.