This amazing short film by Aidan Gibbons 'The Piano', will really tug on the heartstrings of you and your class and produce some brilliant emotive writing. Included in this pack is two Literacy lessons (planning/writing recount and edit/improve), a planning sheet for the first lesson and a worksheet to make notes using stills from the film. The writing activity takes the form of a first person recount (also easily adaptable to third person) which challenges the class to infer the main character's thoughts and feelings as he is playing the piano and recalling key memories from his life.

Here is a lesson presentation and writing plan based on Teacher's TV 'spooky graveyard' short film. I enjoyed using this English/Literacy across all KS2 classes to develop children's descriptive writing (setting, atmosphere) in the form of a recount. This is especially good to use around Halloween time! Resource includes lesson presentation (Notebook) and planning sheet.

Two lessons worth of worksheets, getting children to study examples of Ancient Greek clothing, before going on to design their own Ancient Greek top (which in my class we made using cheap white t-shirts!)

Monkey Spoon is a hilarious animation about two monkeys who find a spoon and proceed to mess around with it. I have used this resource over and over to promote various writing skills, the most successful of which I have found to be adopting one of the character's points of view in a recount of events. Included in this resource is the whole lesson notebook and a plan for children to make notes on before writing their recount.

As part of the children's cross-curricular studies about the Black Death, I linked my Art by learning about Masks. The class had previously studied the Egyptians, so this linked well with their knowledge from that. This is a simple presentation which will allow you as a class to discuss what masks are, who wears them and why, and to compare different examples from cultures around the world. I haven't included a specific activity, but from this we went on compare/contrast the examples, and then over future lessons focus specifically on Death Masks before the class designed and made their own. Can easily be adapted for a different topic which features masks!

This lesson introduces children to Limerick poetry and gets them to try writing one of their own. I used this as a one-off lesson, but could easily be extended across one or multiple weeks. I made a cross-curricular link with our class topic, water, and again, this resource could easily be adapted to suit your topic or year group. Also included is a planning worksheet for your class to brainstorm their ideas before writing their poem neatly either on the sheet provided or independently in their books. Enjoy!

This individual lesson teaches children how to structure lines in poetry to make them rhyme. I have linked this lesson to our Science work on the body, but this can easily be adapted to suit any cross-curricular theme or year group. Included is a whole lesson presentation, which allows you to model skills to the children and to challenge them to have a go themselves, and a worksheet for children to brainstorm their vocabulary ideas and structure before writing their poem up neatly into their books. Enjoy!

When it came to teaching Roman Numerals in Year 5, it was daunting. I didn't know them up to 1000 when the curriculum change came in, never mind having the subject knowledge to teach them to children! And although there are good worksheets and powerpoint presentations out there, I wanted my class to KNOW each of the key symbols so they could apply it to any 4 digit values So I spent a long time making these lessons - especially day one - where I thought of a (slightly cheesy) way of how the children could remember them. BUT IT WORKED! And even I know all the Roman Numerals up to 10,000. So I hope these 3 days worth of lesson presentations help you too!

Lesson presentation introducing acrostic poetry. Can be used as a theme opening lesson or as a stand-alone lesson. I made a cross-curricular link with our 'pirates' topic theme, but this can be easily adapted to suit a particular class theme or year group. Also included in this pack is a worksheet for your class to brainstorm their vocabulary ideas and practise writing their poem before writing it up neatly into their books. Enjoy!

This worksheet develops children's understanding of maps and atlases by addressing the following criteria: • I can explain what ‘latitude’ is • I can explain what ‘longitude’ is • I know why we use latitudinal and longitudinal lines on maps/atlases • I can estimate the latitudinal/longitudinal points of a location • I can use given latitudinal/longitudinal numbers to find a point on a map It would be most suitable for KS2 classes and is differentiated to suit different learners.

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 Telegraph in 2013, a new species of tarantula roughly the size of a dinner plate is discovered in a Sri Lankan village. Included in this pack is a copy of the article (still available online) 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 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!

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.

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.

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!

This worksheet challenges children's atlas skills as they try to locate 8 major world rivers and then accurately draw them onto the map. Rivers: 1. Mississippi 4. Thames 7. Nile 2. Danube 5. Huang Ho 8. Niger 3. Ganges 6. Amazon