Festivals and celebrations comprehension practice

Our Festivals and celebrations comprehension practice year 6 teaching pack is designed to help children recap, practise and consolidate comprehension and writing skills in preparation for KS2 SATs.

The pack is divided into nine lessons aligned with the Y5/6 English Programme of Study. Each lesson is based on a text extract or poem relating to a particular festival or celebration.

Lessons feature a starter activity, a whole class teaching activity with PowerPoint slides, paired/group or independent tasks, assessment opportunities and a plenary, with accompanying resources.

Comprehension questions are KS2 SATs-style. Answers are included.

Festivals and texts included in the pack:

Lesson 1: Halloween – Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Lesson 2: Bonfire Night – ‘The Fifth of November’ (English Folk verse)

Lesson 3: Diwali – Prince of Fire by Jatinder Verma

Lesson 4: Hanukkah – ‘Season of Skinny Candles’ by Marge Piercy

Lesson 5: Christmas – ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’ by Clement C. Moore

Lesson 6: Chinese New Year – The Firework-Maker’s Daughter by Phillip Pullman

Lesson 7: Easter – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Lesson 8: Earth Day – My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

Lesson 9: Eid al-fitr –’Yusuf and the Great Big Brownie Mistake’ by Aisha Saeed

You may also like our Festivals and celebrations maths challenges teaching pack.

An extract from the resource:

Read the extract from The Firework-Maker’s Daughter by Philip Pullman on PPT slides 32-34). Then provide each child with a copy of the extract (Chinese New Year resource 1) and ask them to reread it, underlining all the different ingredients for fireworks. Take feedback and compile a list on the board.

Ask: What makes these ingredients sound exciting? Draw out that the author has paired ordinary words such as powder and grains with attention-grabbing words such as thunder, fly-away and scorpion.

In groups, ask children to plan their firework recipe poem using the scaffold in Chinese New Year resource 2: Firework recipe. First, they must create a list of exciting ingredients, then some powerful imperative verbs. Then children use these as an idea bank to write a recipe poem for an explosive new firework! What will be the name of their firework?