Year 1 writing frames/scaffolds for our first topic - 'Wish you were here...' We will be using the 'Holidays - joining with and - writing scaffolds' to practise orally rehearsing sentences including words joined with 'and' before writing them. Moving on from using the scaffold we will be writing sentences about our holiday with more independence. We'll be using the postcard templates as role-play writing materials but they could be used in a variety of ways including phonics application, early morning work or incorporated into a whole lesson. The postcards include three levels of differentiation.

Reading comprehensions on the UK government, general election and democracy. There are three differentiated versions that could be used for Year 2 and upwards. My more able Year 1s had a go at the comprehension sheet in the middle of the file and did pretty well, it was a good challenge for them - I'm amused that they would build more chocolate factories if they ran the government! Questions include multiple choice, short written and longer written answers. The highest level also contains a true/false table with statements to be ticked as appropriate.

Set up independent spelling practise of the Year 1 CEW with a selection of meaningful spelling activities to suit a range of learning styles. These could be used as morning jobs or small group work allowing you to work with a focus group whilst knowing that your independent groups are carrying out learning activities and not just ‘holding’ tasks. The recording sheets contain the 45 common exception words contained in National Curriculum for Year 1. There are two designs with a few different headings to suit your classroom practise. I use one for recording which words they can read and then a second one for those they can spell. Children enjoy colouring in the sheet and working towards completing the whole sheet. Included with this resource: Spelling practise menus in colour or in black and white. Notes on each activity for the teacher/TA. Rainbow spelling worksheet (colour / black and white) Spelling Hunt worksheet (colour / black and white) Common Exception Words pupil recording sheet

Display these synonym posters for over-used, everyday words to support your students in enriching their vocabulary. There are 12 separate posters for your display board and/or a table top page containing all 12 posters on one page for use on tables.

Looking for some fun Valentine’s Day literacy activities for your early readers and writers? Try these independent activities for early phonics skills and Valentine’s Day cards and postcards for writing practise. Included with this resource are: Initial sound clip cards CVC clip cards Valentine’s day postcards Valentine’s day foldable cards Rhyming hearts matching activity Valentine’s Race dice game board All of these activities are provided in colour and black & white. Looking for more Valentine’s Day themed activities? Check out these Valentine’s maths activity mats: Varied number representations - Valentine’s Day Don’t forget to leave feedback so I can improve what I do - or make more of what you like! Follow me to be notified when new products are uploaded. Happy teaching! Katharine7

Enjoyable and imaginative key stage 2 poetry lesson based on the classic 17th century British poem - ‘I saw a peacock with a fiery tail’ (anonymous). The poem has a ‘trick’ structure which breaks up lines that make perfect sense and rearranges them to create beautiful and wondrous imagery. When I’ve taught this lesson, the children have enjoyed playing around with their own ideas and creating fun, lively and unlikely poems of their own. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! This resource contains a lesson plan with matching presentation to support delivery and a colour-coded writing scaffold. The lesson plan also contains follow up ideas for this session.

Stories include: Little Red Riding Hood, The Gingerbread Man, The Frog Prince, The Three Little Pigs and Jack and the Beanstalk. Opportunities for pictorial or written responses - perfect for Year R and Year 1! This resource contains two files: 1. Making connections - children are encouraged to relate their own experiences to five different traditional tales. 2. Retelling - children are given a framework and some simple story vocabulary for retelling five different traditional tales. There is also a character and a speech bubble from each story where children can write recurring character phrases. Year 1 National Curriculum reading comprehension objectives: Pupils should be taught to: - develop pleasure in reading, motivation to read, vocabulary and understanding by: - being encouraged to link what they read or hear read to their own experiences. - becoming very familiar with key stories, fairy stories and traditional tales, retelling them and considering their particular characteristics. - recognising and joining in with predictable phrases.

Another set of red herring slides for my Year 1 class! Handy for the Year 1 phonics screening check, Year 2 revision and even end of Year R. The red herrings are a bit random, but the children love looking out for them. The ‘red herrings’ are slides within the powerpoint that don’t contain the featured grapheme, e.g. in a set of words for ‘ea’, a slide will pop up saying ‘shirt’ - a red herring. When they arrive the children put their hands together, make a fishy movement and call out ‘red herring!’ For some reason, they think it’s hysterical and I’m happy to go with it because they are engaged, they’re paying attention to the graphemes and best of all they’re having fun - I love hearing their cheeky giggles! I also use the slides to teach silent blending, how to break down longer words for reading and spelling patterns we’ve practised, e.g. words ending in ‘ed’ or ‘y’. I’ve really noticed their reading coming along and although it’s not entirely down to the red herring powerpoints as we do lots of stuff, I think they’re a solid part of it. I don’t use them every day because I don’t want the concept to get boring but I always get a ‘yessss!’ when I do. I’ve checked Letters and Sounds carefully against the National Curriculum and believe that all of the digraphs and trigraphs listed are included (between this set of powerpoints and the Phase 3 set) but if you spot any discrepancies, please get in touch and I’ll update the slides. I hope your class enjoy using this as much as mine do!

Track errors, diagnose areas of development and organise groups and interventions to prepare your class for the Year 1 phonics screening check. This document contains a set of instructions, the diagnostic tool, a worked example for an individual pupil and whole class with a follow-up breakdown. This should help you complete the diagnostic tool and see how you can use the information it provides to plan your priorities for teaching whole class, small groups and/or 1:1 interventions. This really worked for me last year, I used it within my own class where I achieved a 90% pass rate for the screening check, and as year leader across Year 1 to inform the teachers of phonics sets, where we achieved an 84% pass rate collectively.

Children choose the course of the story in this dynamic story-telling PowerPoint. I originally wrote this for an assembly in National Storytelling Week and had huge fun with the whole school choosing which characters, setting and plot developments to follow. The children showed me via hands on heads or crossed arms which options they wanted to pick. The children were incredibly excited and engaged; I really enjoyed the assembly. If you miss off the first two slides about National Storytelling Week, this resource could also be used in an English lesson to look at story structure, character, setting and/or the use of descriptive language, e.g. adjectives and similes. Or simply use it in class as an enjoyable story to revisit and retell, allowing the children to make different choices to build a different story. I’ve tested the PowerPoint thoroughly (including in assembly and at home with my own daughter!) as there are a lot of action buttons to click on that lead you to the next slide in the chosen story. However, if I’ve missed anything, please do contact me via TES conversations and I will straighten it out asap. PS The fonts don’t look very good on the preview pane on the TES website, but should be fine when downloaded. I created the resource using PowerPoint 2016.

Words containing Phase 3 graphemes for reading practise. I made this resource this term for my Year 1 class and they love it! The red herrings are a bit random, but the children love looking out for them (they are words in the powerpoint that don’t contain the featured grapheme). When they arrive the children put their hands together, make a fishy movement and call out ‘red herring!’ They generally fall about laughing too. I don’t know why it’s so funny but I’m happy to go with it because they are engaged, they’re paying attention to the graphemes and best of all they’re having fun! I also use the slides to teach silent blending and how to break down longer words for reading. Handy for preparing for the Year 1 phonics screening check and I’ve really noticed their reading coming along. It’s not entirely down to the red herring powerpoints, they’re only one aspect of what we do, but I think they’re a solid part of it. I don’t use them every day because I don’t want the concept to get boring but I always get a ‘yessss!’ when I do. I’ve included the graphemes are, ore and ear (as in pear) in the trigraphs powerpoint as they’re in the Year 1 curriculum (although not in letters and sounds). I thought they would fit most conveniently in the trigraphs powerpoint. I also took out ‘ure’ as it doesn’t appear in the curriculum until Year 2 but you can easily add it back in by editing the powerpoint if you would like to use it. Many of the graphemes are also appropriate for Year R. I hope your class enjoy using this as much as mine do!

8 session Year 2 English creative writing unit of work that can be easily adapted for other year groups. There is a focus on correctly sequencing a story and the use of adjectives and expanded noun phrases to describe and specify. The planning is based around ‘The Snail and the Whale’ by Julia Donaldson but can be tweaked to apply to an adventure story of your choice. Cutaways are suggested within the planning for a variety of groups of children. This resource includes: - 8 sessions of planning - sentence opener and suffix scaffold cards for children requiring additional support - ‘think about it’ prompt cards for more able writers - lesson starter activities - suffixes presentation (also available separately) - emotions graph template - planning frame and vocabulary gathering extension sheet

15 lessons of story writing planning for primary school children! The planning is based around Year 1 curricular objectives but could easily be adapted for other year groups as it is written around the universal themes of - beginning, middle and end - story problems and resolutions - use of adjectives to describe This download includes 15 lessons on writing short narratives including ideas for linking your guided reading to the writing, key questions and differentiation. There is also a story planning frame included.

Unit of work including power points, activity cards and writing frame for teaching command sentences. Based on the Fire of London and the commands that King Charles II gave during and after the fire, pupils role play the part of King Charles and l. earn how to write commands using imperative verbs. Our Year 2s loved this unit, in particular the role play element. In hindsight, I would have split session 3 into two sessions as the children enjoyed the acting so much. The whole class, even the less able, were able to identify a command sentence with confidence following this unit - even many months afterwards. Most were able to write commands independently in a variety of contexts. This resource contains: - the planning document (4-5 lessons) - powerpoints to support teaching of the unit - activity cards to support less able and whole class improvement of speaking and listening - speaking and listening learning journeys to share with pupils - a writing template

11 session unit of work with a grammar focus of question marks and exclamation marks based on Julia Donaldson's 'Room on the Broom'. Children make their own character puppets and perform a play, generating lots of talk for writing. The planning was created for the Year 1 curriculum but is equally valid for Year 2 work on exclamations, questions and statements. This resource includes: - A comprehensive planning document including suggestions for cutaways, pullbacks, guided reading activities and differentiation. - Room on the Broom planning resources pdf containing writing frames, word mat, introductory activities and keep up activity ideas (all referenced in the planning document). - Sentence identification activities used in the planning as assessment for learning opportunities. My class loved making the puppets and doing the puppet show. We performed our shows to small groups of Year R and got feedback from the Year R kids which was lovely. I hope your class enjoy it too!

Planning and resources for the Year 3 and 4 English national curriculum based around Satoshi Kitamura’s story, Stone Age Boy. Eight literacy sessions are planned for children to plan, draft and write, evaluate and edit their own adventure story using the structure, vocabulary and grammar of the Stone Age Boy story as a ‘master’ example. The planning covers the following objectives from the English national curriculum: to identify themes in stories to participate in discussions about books, taking turns and listening to what others say to discuss and record ideas to organise paragraphs around a theme to use simple organisational devices to use vocabulary and grammar from a story when writing to assess the effectiveness of my own and others writing and suggest improvements. This resource is also available as part of a Stone Age bundle which also contains a DT textiles unit of work for the same topic, saving you 20% of the total cost.

Planning, PowerPoint and activities for an engaging poetry unit based around a Fire of London topic. My Year 2s produced some excellent quality poetry that they were very proud of. I have included two examples of the children's poems (before and after editing) that you could share with your class. Each planned lesson is accompanied by the resources required to deliver it. The unit touches on many objectives from the 2013 English National Curriculum (Key Stage 1) and the main ones are listed at the beginning of the planning document. There was a spelling and grammar focus of adding -ing to verbs and using expanded noun phrases. I hope your class enjoy it as much as we did! This unit contains: - Planning document containing 5 sessions - An original fire poem with recurring literary language - Adding -ing activity cards - Vocabulary gathering mind map - Differentiated poem writing frames - Examples of children's poems before and after editing - High quality vocabulary cards and word mat

Great for Key Stage 1 SATs revision! Help your pupils to practise and become confident with the types of questions that arise on the end of KS1 SATs reading comprehension papers. Use these editable question templates to create limitless questions - based on your choice of text - and practise the content domains that the children will encounter in the KS1 reading SATs papers. These question templates create smarter comprehension questions for whole class and guided/focused reading groups. Example templates include: - 'Tick one' and 'tick two' style questions - True or false tables - Sequencing events by number - Matching boxes - 2 mark extended answer questions ...and many more. Also included in this download are two samples to model how to copy, paste and edit the template questions to create SATs style comprehensions either in PowerPoint or Word. Additionally, a 'question of the day' style model is included, generated from the editable question templates, that gives children practise at one particular style of question. Make sure your children are prepared and being tested on their reading ability, not their exam technique. All the best, Katharine7

Comprehensive KS2 unit of work on recounts based around a school trip or school event but could easily be adapted for other recount subject matter. The planning uses Red Nose Day as a model and was originally written for Year 3, also suitable for Year 4. The unit of 6 lessons follows the composition progression laid out in the National Curriculum - plan, draft and write, evaluate and edit, including proof-reading. Planning includes ideas for cutaway and pullback groups and EAL/SEN activities. All resources required to deliver the unit of work are included in this download. There are starter activities as pdfs, but if you would like to change any of these, or edit the success criteria to suit your class, there are also editable powerpoint slides for you to adapt. All editable resources are indicated below; if they do not include ‘editable’ they will be a pdf file. There’s so much in here! Included in this unit: - Recount unit of work planning document (editable) - Session 1 presentation - Session 1 presentation (editable version) - Recount example (editable) - Time connective word cards - Recount writing prompt cards - More able recount lesson planning activity template (editable) - Photos of my recount skeleton framework and recount plan displayed in my classroom - Recount planning writing frame (editable) - Session 2 presentation (editable) - Four starter activity slides as a pdf - Session 3 presentation (editable) -Sentence builder activity for SEN/EAL (editable) - More able evaluation checklist (editable).