It's simple really: English grammar can be a very dry subject, but this need not be the case. For a few years now, I have been developing a games-based approach to teaching important grammar concepts. It is amazing how the introduction of dice takes the learning into a new place - the element of chance making it seem less like work and more like play. Because I test my games extensively in the classroom, I get a feel for what works. Dump your boring worksheets and start dicing with grammar.
It's simple really: English grammar can be a very dry subject, but this need not be the case. For a few years now, I have been developing a games-based approach to teaching important grammar concepts. It is amazing how the introduction of dice takes the learning into a new place - the element of chance making it seem less like work and more like play. Because I test my games extensively in the classroom, I get a feel for what works. Dump your boring worksheets and start dicing with grammar.
This is a whole lesson about the spelling patterns able and ible.
It includes 2 short quizzes, making up new words and a fun writing activity that encourages children to apply their understanding, using a tried and tested word bank and a fun (persuasive) context.
Great for spelling and sentence work.
I can say and write simple, compound or complex sentences
If children become confident at using a blend of simple, compound and complex sentence structures, their writing will be varied and accurate. For many young writers, this is not easy to achieve. These sentence skills must be revisited and rehearsed over and over again.
Practising sentence skills could get boring! This lively dice game, to be played in pairs, generates lots of purposeful talk about sentences. Children collect game cards to win! If children record their sentences, it also generates plenty of good examples to refer back to during whole class sessions.
The activity is differentiated three ways. At its most basic, children generate a mixture of the three sentence types. On track writers try a wider variety of subordinating conjunctions. More able writers are moved on to creating sentences with a greater number of clauses.
I used this for myth writing. If you wanted to, the ‘game cards’ and sentence examples on the ‘dice guides’ could be easily changed to match any story or text. It’s a great way of learning or revisiting these three important sentence types.
*I have added a version of the game with Beowulf game cards and another version with ‘ough’ words, to demonstrate how the game can be adapted to different texts or spelling patterns.
Quiz, Quiz, Trade is a fun and active way for children to learn facts. The cards can be tailored to cover any subject area, topic or learning objective and are particularly useful for introducing a new subject area that your class wouldn't already know lots about. You could include a range of differentiated questions, but I have often found that the children you least expect will learn the more complicated facts after playing this game.
The idea behind Quiz, Quiz, Trade is that it is a fun, non-threatening and exciting game that is inclusive for all and will help all children in your class to acquire knowledge quickly. Really handy when you just need them to have a bit of background knowledge or learn something quickly in order to apply or develop the knowledge in their work. Quiz, Quiz, Trade can be used for any age group (my cards are all aimed at years 4-6) that will be able to read the questions and answers.
I have used Quiz, Quiz, Trade in observations with much success (see instruction page) and consistently use it to introduce new topics in class-the children love it!
Quiz, Quiz, Trade is a fun and active way for children to learn facts. The cards can be tailored to cover any subject area, topic or learning objective and are particularly useful for introducing a new subject area that your class wouldn't already know lots about. You could include a range of differentiated questions, but I have often found that the children you least expect will learn the more complicated facts after playing this game.
The idea behind Quiz, Quiz, Trade is that it is a fun, non-threatening and exciting game that is inclusive for all and will help all children in your class to acquire knowledge quickly. Really handy when you just need them to have a bit of background knowledge or learn something quickly in order to apply or develop the knowledge in their work. Quiz, Quiz, Trade can be used for any age group (my cards are all aimed at years 4-6) that will be able to read the questions and answers.
I have used Quiz, Quiz, Trade in observations with much success (see instruction page) and consistently use it to introduce new topics in class-the children love it!
Two different sets of quiz, quiz, trade cards for learning about shape.
Quiz, Quiz, Trade is a fun and active way for children to learn facts. The cards can be tailored to cover any subject area, topic or learning objective and are particularly useful for introducing a new subject area that your class wouldn’t already know lots about. You could include a range of differentiated questions, but I have often found that the children you least expect will learn the more complicated facts after playing this game.
The idea behind Quiz, Quiz, Trade is that it is a fun, non-threatening and exciting game that is inclusive for all and will help all children in your class to acquire knowledge quickly. Really handy when you just need them to have a bit of background knowledge or learn something quickly in order to apply or develop the knowledge in their work. Quiz, Quiz, Trade can be used for any age group (my cards are all aimed at years 4-6) that will be able to read the questions and answers.
I have used Quiz, Quiz, Trade in observations with much success (see instruction page) and consistently use it to introduce new topics in class-the children love it!
Quiz, Quiz, Trade is a fun and active way for children to learn facts. The cards can be tailored to cover any subject area, topic or learning objective and are particularly useful for introducing a new subject area that your class wouldn't already know lots about. You could include a range of differentiated questions, but I have often found that the children you least expect will learn the more complicated facts after playing this game.
The idea behind Quiz, Quiz, Trade is that it is a fun, non-threatening and exciting game that is inclusive for all and will help all children in your class to acquire knowledge quickly. Really handy when you just need them to have a bit of background knowledge or learn something quickly in order to apply or develop the knowledge in their work. Quiz, Quiz, Trade can be used for any age group (my cards are all aimed at years 4-6) that will be able to read the questions and answers.
I have used Quiz, Quiz, Trade in observations with much success (see instruction page) and consistently use it to introduce new topics in class-the children love it!
A simple time saving resource.
Working in pairs, children have to pick numbers from one group and then pick operators from another group. Every class I have taught needs practise at this key skill, and this is a quick and easy way for them to generate lots of questions and discuss their answers.
This resource is 3 PowerPoint slides designed to be used as activity sheets. The activities become more challenging, involving more decimal places and more digits.
I recommend using place value sliders with this activity - they are easy to make if you don't have any.
I have also included a very simple dice game, covering the same objective. This can be easily differentiated by using more (or less ) dice.
I hope you find these activities as useful as I have.
Quiz, Quiz, Trade is a fun and active way for children to learn facts. The cards can be tailored to cover any subject area, topic or learning objective and are particularly useful for introducing a new subject area that your class wouldn't already know lots about. You could include a range of differentiated questions, but I have often found that the children you least expect will learn the more complicated facts after playing this game.
The idea behind Quiz, Quiz, Trade is that it is a fun, non-threatening and exciting game that is inclusive for all and will help all children in your class to acquire knowledge quickly. Really handy when you just need them to have a bit of background knowledge or learn something quickly in order to apply or develop the knowledge in their work. Quiz, Quiz, Trade can be used for any age group (my cards are all aimed at years 4-6) that will be able to read the questions and answers.
I have used Quiz, Quiz, Trade in observations with much success (see instruction page) and consistently use it to introduce new topics in class-the children love it!
Children will need access to Base 10 (or Diennes) and 0-9 dice for this activity.
My year 5 class were struggling with decimals so I made up this simple activity, and had quite a lot of success with it - children fed back that it helped their understanding.
First children use 0-9 dice to generate a decimal and record it on the sheet.
Next, they make the number using Base 10 and draw it on the sheet.
Finally, they place their decimal on a 0-9 numberline. They should record it as a fraction and a decimal at this point.
Children repeated this activity three or four times until they felt confident with their understanding.
It is differentiated so that children can work with tenths, hundredths or thousandths.
Five straightforward worksheets that require children to think about the meaning of prefixes, and select correct prefixes. A time-saver.
Prefixes covered: dis, re, mis, over, in, il, im, ir,
Suffixes covered: ence, ance
This is a fun and engaging whole class activity about organisation within a paragraph. Using a non-fiction context (information about space) pupils go to a paragraph party. They have to work out who is hosting the party (the topic sentence), who is the uninvited guest (information that doesn't belong) and various other activities.
In short, it's a lively and memorable way of exploring non-fiction paragraphs.
A lesson pitched at upper KS2 that breaks down solving a multi-step word problem. Multiplication, addition, and subtraction are required!
Work is differentiated to two different abilities.
Answers also provided.
THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO MAKE PARAGRAPHING A FUN AND CONCRETE EXPERIENCE. This is a fun and engaging whole class activity about organisation within a paragraph. Using a non-fiction context (information about football) pupils go to a paragraph party. They have to work out who is hosting the party (the topic sentence), who is the uninvited guest (information that doesn’t belong) and various other activities.
In short, it’s a lively and memorable way of exploring non-fiction paragraphs.
This lesson is planned in detail and fully resourced, with warm up activities and 5 independent activities, all about subtracting from multiples of 10.
First there is a subtraction fluency warm up activity, to get children involved straight away.
Using the mastery approach, the lesson begins with simple concrete activity (using counters) that everyone can access. Following this, children can quickly move on to other activities, at their own pace.
I used this in a Y3 class and it was a great session. It could work well in Y2 or early in Y4, to check understanding.
Working on biographies? Teach your class a simple structure for organising information within a paragraph. This whole class activity supports both reading and writing skills.
Assessment focus
I can group information into paragraphs
I can organise the sentences in my paragraph into a sensible order
I have used this ‘paragraph party’ approach several times for information texts and persuasive texts, and it really helped children to improve how well their writing was organised. That’s why I have developed a similar approach to use when tackling biographies. Children will learn a simple pattern and later on they can apply to their own writing.
Using lots of constructive talk, children have to work together to organise different sections of Anne Frank’s life. Children need to find the host of the party (the ‘topic sentence’) and throw out any information that is not relevant (the ‘uninvited guest’). Then they explore the subtle way information is ordered. Later on, children explore whole text structure.
Finally, children pick a new subject (Greta Thunberg, Boyan Slat, Marley Dias or Pele) and apply their learning; they have to organise their facts into paragraphs.
Each paragraph follows the same pattern, and children can use this pattern to support any biography writing that follows.
Teach children the important skill of organisation within a paragraph. Essential for non-fiction writing. This bundle is suitable for information writing, persuasive and biography writing.
Learning about 3D shapes? Why not kick off the lesson with a quiz quiz trade to get everyone moving and using mathematical vocabulary. Just print off enough cards for one per child or get adults involved too.
This session teaches children one way of structuring a biography paragraph. Prior to the session, children will need to have gathered some information for the biography they are going to write. Everything else you need is here!
You are buying:
- a detailed lesson plan;
- a 'paragraph party' resource, based on Anne Frank's life;
- a presentation, including suggested shared/modelled writing.
Play this to develop children’s understanding of clauses and to encourage children to vary the number of clauses they include within their sentences. I have tried so many approaches to teaching this, and I have had the most success with this one.
Assessment focus
I can understand the terms ‘clause’ and ‘conjunction’.
I can write sentences with one or more clauses.
I can write sentences with many clauses, without confusing the reader.
Here you will find three versions of the engaging dice activity ‘Clauses, clauses, clauses’.
In its simplest form, children write one or two clause sentences, using a limited number of conjunctions. Other versions go up to six clauses - very tricky!
I have also included an extra version (my favourite activity for teaching clauses, conjunctions and multi-clauses sentences) called ‘Clauses, clauses, clauses - scavenger hunt version’. This activity promotes lots of talk around word classes and building multi-clause sentences.
I recommend playing this a few times across the school year, as these skills need revisiting many times to build confidence.
I hope your class find these activities as useful as mine did. Good luck!