I am a teaching Deputy Head in a primary school in Hampshire and TES recommended author. I've been teaching in primary since 2007 with experience in most year groups, although my heart lies in Year 1! I enjoy making helpful, time-saving and engaging educational resources for teachers and pupils - I hope you find them useful!
I am a teaching Deputy Head in a primary school in Hampshire and TES recommended author. I've been teaching in primary since 2007 with experience in most year groups, although my heart lies in Year 1! I enjoy making helpful, time-saving and engaging educational resources for teachers and pupils - I hope you find them useful!
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
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
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.
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.
Use these slides to introduce some of the Year 2 suffixes, including spelling rules, and then practise some examples before children apply what they are learning in their own writing.
Suffixes included:
-y
-ful
-less
-ness
-ment
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
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.
Children can practise consonant blends as games with these sets of cards and create their own words by mixing and matching cards. Great preparation for the phonics check if you have identified consonant blends as a sticking point for a pupil. I find that even simple final consonant blends can trip up children, e.g. reading ulb as lub.
There are two files included in this download:
- initial consonant blends practise, e.g. fl, br, st
- final consonant blends practise, e.g. lb, rt, sp, lm
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.
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!
Using Talk for Write ideas, this sheet was created to encourage children to consider the character of Plop in Jill Tomlinson's story, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark.
Physical attributes are written outside of the outline and thoughts & feelings are written inside the outline.
A game to help pupils practice their high frequency keyword spellings.
The first page - the game board - should be blown up to A3 size and I’ve laminated my copy. The keyword pages should be copied onto card and cut up. You will need a dice and a counter for each child playing (my class have used their mini robots that they created as part of our topic work).
Have a bit of fun and keep the children busy with these classic logic puzzles. Children can practise their reading and reasoning in an engaging and different way!
Read the clues and eliminate possibilities to crack the puzzle. Children can draw pictures or use the grids provided to logically reason which pirate captains each ship.
There are 3 differentiated puzzles and answers are provided with this resource.
If you’ve enjoyed the pirates puzzle, why not try another logic puzzle:
Who’s Who
Perfect for your Year 2 SATs preparation and the upcoming coronation! This 3-page reading comprehension gives your children a general introduction to King Charles III and the coronation. It’s an opportunity to practise retrieval, vocabulary and inference questions using the format and wording of Key Stage I SATs papers.
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.
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).
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
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.
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.