I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
I used this lesson to revisit time connectives to improve the flow of my class' writing. The lesson itself starts with a recap of what time connectives are, why writers use them, and the brainstorming of different examples.
It then moves on to challenging the children to use time connectives when recounting the events from the funny short film, 'The Black Hole', before they go on to independently complete a piece of writing - either recounting the events of the film or by writing their own story featuring a mysterious black hole.
When developing my children's comprehension skills, I don't like using photocopies from text books and meaningless expectancy sheets. I prefer to use purposeful, educational and REAL LIFE examples to engage and inform them, while still challenging them and looking for those reading skills.
Therefore a lot of my comprehension challenges are based around interesting newspaper articles. In this example, taken from the BBC News website in 2013, a huge blizzard brought much of the north-eastern US and eastern Canada to a standstill, leaving about half a million homes without power.
Included in this pack is a copy of the article and linking comprehension questions suitable for KS2.
Enjoy!
When developing my children's comprehension skills, I don't like using photocopies from text books and meaningless expectancy sheets. I prefer to use purposeful, educational and REAL LIFE examples to engage and inform them, while still challenging them and looking for those reading skills.
Therefore a lot of my comprehension challenges are based around interesting newspaper articles. In this example, taken from 2013, a new map of Pangaea, the supercontinent from 300 million years ago, shows where modern day countries would have been located in the ancient land mass.
Included in this pack is a copy of the article and linking comprehension questions suitable for KS2.
Enjoy!
A collection of six reading comprehension activities using real life newspaper articles. Each contains a copy of a newspaper article suitable for KS2 (new species of spider / Pangaea / blizzard / Remembrance Day / St Andrews Day/ Hedgehog preservation / Fifa Poppies) and questions that I have made myself to test their comprehension of the articles.
03/07/16 - UPDATED TO INCLUDE MOUNTAIN REPTILE ARTICLE
I’ve used this lesson every Autumn to engage children into the Literacy skills needed to write a good instruction text, by linking it to how to use sparklers safely on bonfire night. This pack includes a Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for one lesson, and differentiated worksheets for pupils to plan their instructions before independently writing them up into their books.
Suitable for KS2 - and do get a health and safety check before demonstrating with a real life sparkler. I did, and it amazed the kids and really energised their writing!
UPDATE 02/11/2018 - RESOURCE NOW INCLUDES PRESENTATION IN POWERPOINT FORMAT!
I have used Pixar's brilliant 'Lifted' animation for two short-burst English/Literacy lessons - one as a general recount and the other as a first person recount from one character's point of view. The latter is the resource that I have shared, as I found it to be the most useful out of the two in my teaching practise. I requires children to infer a character's thoughts and feelings and to convert a given narrative into the first person, therefore allowing teachers to test a range of writing skills in one lesson, which the children themselves love because of the engaging resource!
I made this lesson to help my class develop their variation of sentence starters. My lesson notebook models different examples using the helpful poster (which can be made into a dice) and then gets children to apply their understanding by recounting the animation of George and The Dragon (as our Literacy topic at that time was Myths and Legends).
This can easily be adapted to link with a particular theme or year group.
'Hunted' is a short animation film which starts with a young, naive, native tribesman wandering into a hunter's campsite. The comedy and animation effects really draw in children and I have found it a brilliant resource to use to develop their writing description.
This resource contains a full lesson and planning worksheet for the children. It focuses on developing the children's description of the setting, characters and their feelings as events progress. It can easily be adapted to challenge a different Literacy skill or to suit your class.
Enjoy!
When developing my children's comprehension skills, I don't like using photocopies from text books and meaningless expectancy sheets. I prefer to use purposeful, educational and REAL LIFE examples to engage and inform them, while still challenging them and looking for those reading skills.
Therefore a lot of my comprehension challenges are based around interesting newspaper articles. In this example, taken from the BBC News website in April 2017, a new species of reptile is discovered in Spain, linking to crocodiles and the dinosaurs.
Included in this pack is a copy of the article and linking comprehension questions suitable for KS2.
Enjoy!
A range of lessons that will bring your class’ WWII topic to life, learning about everything from why the war started and who was involved, to evacuation and how events were broadcast, to the social changes brought into effect from the conflict, from the role of women to economic and industrial changes.
I made this resource based on the 2017 John Lewis Christmas advert. It is about a little boy who struggles to sleep at night, scared that in the dark, a monster lives under his bed. Eventually, the boy becomes friend with the monster, but it continues to affect his sleeping, leaving him tired during the day. For Christmas, he gets a special present to help him sleep well at night, content that his monster friend, Moz, will be sleeping too.
It's got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children can relate to.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children's description, focusing in this instant on character emotions. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and a Notebook presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
13/11/17 - UPDATE to include a direct link to the video in the presentation
As it is hot topic in the news at the moment, I took one of the articles about the poppy / FIFA debate from the BBC and made it into a reading comprehension exercise to give children a purposeful activity in their reading time and something that could later be discussed in PHSE/circle time.
In this pack is a PDF copy of the article (which is still available online) and linked questions suitable and easily adaptable for all KS2.
A pack of engaging Science lessons (made by a school Science co-ordinator) put together in one handy bundle linking to the Earth and Beyond (e.g. magnetism, Earth - and eventually will include resources linked to Space and the Solar System)
I love making Science as interesting, informative and hands-on as possible for children in order to develop their understanding of various concepts.
A simple but fun Macbeth-themed word search and crossword puzzles to help children to embed their knowledge of the Shakespeare tragedy. Available in PDF, Pages and Word formats!
All words link to the plot, including characters names, themes and places. Enjoy!
I made this resource based on the 2018 Aldi Christmas advert. It is about Kevin the Carrot, who has previously featured in Aldi adverts. The advert starts as a spoof of the famous Cola Cola ‘Holidays Are Coming’ advert, until the truck hits snowfall on a mountain road and slides off the road, balancing precariously on the cliff edge, ending the advert literally on a cliffhanger.
Aldi themselves ask the audience at the end of the advert to help Kevin, so I thought this would be a great opportunity for children to have a go at writing their own version of the end of the story.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this activity on being able to continue the flow of a story. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
I made this resource based on the 2018 Barbour Christmas advert. It is about a girl who appears to have loved watching and reading The Snowman; the famous Christmas animation short film, 40 years since it was first released; and wants the story to come to life for herself.
It’s got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children can relate to.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this instant on character emotions. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
Suitable for Y3-5, and differentiated, this resource allows children to put into practise their understanding of synonyms and the skills of using a thesaurus by up-levelling words in a given sentence.
I made this resource using a BBC article about Captain Tom’s achievements and subsequent recognition. I made up the questions based on the article, so it is more of a comprehension - but the children don’t need to know this!
Carrot Crazy is a fun animation widely available on Youtube. This resource is made up of two worksheets; screenshots ordering events from the animation to guide children, and a planning sheet to help children recount the events of Carrot Crazy using lots of description.
