I love making resources that take concepts from the curriculum, and express them in an abstract and engaging way. I have seen great improvements in the grades of the children in the classes as I teach as a result of this labour intensive (but ultimately rewarding) approach.
My big passion is reading. Whether it is a comprehension activity or something with a maths or grammar focus; you can guarantee that reading skills to develop understanding will underpin it.
Richard
Reading for Success
I love making resources that take concepts from the curriculum, and express them in an abstract and engaging way. I have seen great improvements in the grades of the children in the classes as I teach as a result of this labour intensive (but ultimately rewarding) approach.
My big passion is reading. Whether it is a comprehension activity or something with a maths or grammar focus; you can guarantee that reading skills to develop understanding will underpin it.
Richard
Reading for Success
AMUSING, ENTERTAINING AND EDUCATIONAL!
These reading comprehensions will test your students’ reading skills as they explore the four greatest April Fools of all time, as ranked by the Museum of Hoaxes. Using research skills and their reporter’s notebooks, the young journalists will find out about:
Spaghetti growing on trees in Switzerland
A fake volcanic eruption in Alaska
Instant Colour TV in Sweden
An iceberg in Sydney Harbour
Each story comes with questions and answers, and will require students to check dictionaries; summarise stories; think critically; retrieve facts; and prioritise statements. They will also generate lively and fun classroom discussion. Would your students fall for these pranks? Can they come up with anything better?
A template for a news story is also provided so children can write them up for themselves. A scaffold is included to show them how to fill in the boxes. Finally, posters are enclosed if you want to make the students’ work into a simple, effective display.
As a journalist and teacher, it’s my passion that children should have an awareness of what is going on in the world through engaging reading material.
Contents:
3: SWISS SPAGHETTI HARVEST
4: INSTANT COLOUR TV
5: ERUPTION OF MOUNT EDGECUMBE
6: THE SYDNEY ICEBERG
7-10: Questions
11-14: Answers
15: How to write a newspaper article
16: Newspaper template
17-20: Posters for display
I put this resource together as part of a package that I have created for the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. If you like this, and want more like it (with answers), then please take a look in my store.
A BIT ABOUT ME
Before teaching, I was a journalist. I still work as a freelance writer, and like nothing more than writing engaging texts to challenge and inspire children and young people. I choose subjects that may not be on the curriculum but are still of great importance for students to know about.
Everything I write has been comprehensively researched from a number of sources and been written by myself. No plagiarism here! This is all original material.
My questions are pitched at a high level, but with a bit of patience and persistence (and some adult help if necessary) most students will have great fun as they learn, especially as the penny drops
I am aware of the impact of printed resources on our environment so try to condense my reading activities into as compact a space as possible. Hopefully this will help you save time in printing, and keep the bills down!
Check out my store if you enjoy this – you’re sure to find more. Thanks!
Relevant, topical and engaging.
This reading comprehension will test your students’ reading skills as they explore an engaging news story from February 2017. Using research skills and their reporter’s notebook, the young journalists will find out about the sad story of the pilot whales that got stranded on Farewell Spit, New Zealand in February 2017. It was one of the largest whale strandings in recorded history, and hundreds of people tried in vain to help.
Your students will establish the facts of the story; find out all about pilot whales and work out why it might have happened.
This is part of a bigger pack of news stories, which can be found in my store.
IN THE NEWS, February 2017
This pack includes the story about the Australian farmer, Dan Miller, who survived for five hours with his nose above the surface of the water after being trapped beneath a digger in Australia; and the story about the discovery of a World War Two bomb in Thesalonica, Greece, which led to the evacuation of 75,000 people.
Each story comes with questions and answers, and will require students to check dictionaries; summarise stories; think critically; retrieve facts; and prioritise statements.
A template for a news story is also provided so children can write them up for themselves. A scaffold is included to show them how to fill in the boxes. Finally, posters are enclosed if you want to make the students’ work into a simple, effective display.
As a journalist and teacher, it’s my passion that children should have an awareness of what is going on in the world through engaging reading material.
In 2016, Her Majesty The Queen celebrates her 90th birthday.
This collection of three reading comprehensions celebrates this occasion, providing biographical information about The Queen and her family.
Your children will find out about:
A day in the life of The Queen
The Queen’s two birthdays
The Royal Family Tree
The wedding of Prince William and Kate
Each comprehension task come complete with answers and suggests how many marks are available for each question - perfect preparation for reading assessments.
Find out about the mysteries of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster. Discover the heartbreak of the tsunami and the sinking of the Titanic. Revisit the shooting of JFK and Apollo 13. Marvel at the miraculous escape of the miners in Chile. Find out why we have Christmas trees. Learn about soldiers stories from World War One…and much much more!
This collection of reading activities are a selection of some of my favourites. I have put them together as a bigger collection to allow teachers to plan a whole year’s worth of reading comprehensions for their children.
Each activity contains a range of challenging questions which test inference, deduction and retrieval skills – ideal preparation for reading assessments. Children are also given an indication of marks on offer for each question, and teachers are provided with answers.
As with all of my reading activities, I try to make the subject matter informative as well as engaging. Children get the chance to find out about a whole range of interesting stories and topics that may not be covered in the curriculum.
CONTENTS:
2 - 10 Stories of Survival
11 - 22 Mysteries of the World
23 - 30 Soldier’s Stories – World War One
31 - 36 The Queen and the Royal Family
37 – 42 Christmas
43 – 50 Days that made the world stop
51 – 74 Answers
I have received excellent feedback, for which I am very grateful. This should give you confidence in the products I offer. Hope you enjoy these!
This package on the 2022 Winter Olympics is full of interesting facts, stories and statistics which will inspire and challenge your students through a range of Common Core-aligned reading activities. The reading skills that children will develop are in finding and recalling facts, inference, word meaning and summarising.
CONTENTS
2022 Winter Olympics: Beijing – Comprehension questions based on the 24th Winter Olympics and further questions on China. This includes some geography.
Sports of the Winter Olympics – A guide to four prominent winter sports with some interesting questions based on photographs that refer to the text.
An Olympics like no other – A text exploring the use of artificial snow at Beijing 2022, and the threat of Covid-19 during the games. These questions rely on children using inference and summary skills.
History of Winter Olympics – Tables and infographics containing statistics on where past games have been held and which nations and individuals have won the most medals. A series of number-based questions follow.
Unlikely Olympic Heroes – The wonderful stories of the Jamaican Bobsled team and Eddie the Eagle, who lit up the 1988 games in Calgary. Questions compare the stories, request students to identify the obstacles, and relate the stories to personal experience.
A Bit About Me
Before teaching, I was a journalist. I still work as a freelance writer, and like nothing more than writing engaging texts to challenge and inspire children and young people. I choose subjects that may not be on the curriculum but are still of great importance for students to know about.
Everything I write has been comprehensively researched from a number of sources and been written by myself. No plagiarism here! This is all original material.
My questions are pitched at a high level, but with a bit of patience and persistence (and some adult help if necessary) most students will have great fun as they learn, especially as the penny drops
I am aware of the impact of printed resources on our environment so try to condense my reading activities into as compact a space as possible. Hopefully this will help you save time in printing, and keep the bills down!
Check out my store if you enjoy this – you’re sure to find more. Thanks!
At 6:30pm on Thursday 8th September 2022, Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen had died at the age of 96. An official statement was placed outside the palace stating “The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon.”
In these reading comprehension activities, your students can find out all about her life including:
-her birth and early life
-her wedding and children
-her coronation as queen
-her seventy year reign
-her declining health
-tributes paid to her when she died
-plans for her funeral
Please see the preview - what you see is what you are purchasing. Questions include a range of reading skills. I hope this is an informative way for your students to find out about the life of the Queen while challenging your students in their reading comprehension skills.
BIGFOOT. LOCH NESS. LORD LUCAN. MARY CELESTE. ROSWELL. TURIN SHROUD.
Does an ape-like biped roam the forests of North America?
Is there a monster lurking in the depths of a Scottish lake?
Is the face of Jesus miraculously printed in a piece of linen?
Did Lord Lucan really kill the nanny?
Do aliens exist?
Where were the crew of the Mary Celeste?
Answer these questions and more in this exciting Guided Reading resource looking at some of the greatest mysteries of the world.
This collection of six guided reading activities, aimed at 10 and 11 year olds, tests children’s comprehension, retrieval, inference and deduction skills. It will also promote lively and engaging classroom discussion as children try to solve these mysteries for themselves.
Each activity has questions and answers, with an indication of how many marks are on offer at the end of each question. This is particularly helpful for children preparing for reading tests and exams, encouraging them to give fuller answers where required.
It is over 100 years since World War One. This remarkable set of TEN guided reading activities uncovers the horror, humanity and humour of life in the Great War.
Each activity focuses on a different part of the war, such as life in the trenches; the Christmas Truce and the assasination of Franz Ferdinand. Also, find out about the fascinating story of the British soldier who spared the life of a young Adolf Hitler.
These guided reading activities, aimed at children aged 10-13 years old, test children’s retrieval, inference and deduction skills. They will also promote lively and engaging classroom discussion as children explore these stories for themselves.
Each activity has questions and answers, with an indication of how many marks are on offer at the end of each question. This is particularly helpful for children preparing for reading tests and exams, encouraging them to give fuller answers where required.
These reading comprehensions will test your students’ reading skills as they explore three engaging news stories from February 2017. Using research skills and their reporters notebooks, the young journalists will find out about:
Mass whale stranding in New Zealand
World War Two Bomb panic in Greece
Miraculous survival of Australian farmer
Each story comes with questions and answers, and will require students to check dictionaries; summarise stories; think critically; retrieve facts; and prioritise statements.
A template for a news story is also provided so children can write them up for themselves. A scaffold is included to show them how to fill in the boxes. Finally, posters are enclosed if you want to make the students’ work into a simple, effective display.
As a journalist and teacher, it’s my passion that children should have an awareness of what is going on in the world through engaging reading material.
CONTENTS
3: INCHES FROM DEATH!
4: Heartbreak of the Whales
5: PANIC IN GREECE!
6-8: Questions
9-11: Answers
12: How to write a newspaper article
13: Newspaper template
14-16: Posters for display
Here is a bundle of my ‘In The News’ stories.
Your students take the role of journalists researching and writing avout the stories involved, which feature April Fools; Elon Musk’s rocket car; the Terracotta Army; and the world’s oldest message in a bottle.
Students start by using reading comprehension skills to read the stories, and can use this as a model to write their own stories.
Highly engaging as a reading, writing or whole class literacy project.
These reading comprehensions focus on news and current affairs, ideal for a topic on newspapers. They are aimed at 9-14 year olds.
Engaging texts and challenging questions are provided with a full mark scheme. They can be purchased individually, but there is a big discount on this bundle.
Thanks for your interest.
Here is a bundle of five of my bestselling products looking at the following sporting events:
The Olympics
The Winter Olympics
The World Cup
In total, there are sixteen reading comprhehensions exploring the history of these sporting festivals, as well as looking at recent sporting stars like Usain Bolt, Simone Biles and Lionel Messi.
There is a big saving on offer for this bundle - ideal for those readers in your class who love sport!
Have you ever wondered how far Mary and Joseph travelled on the donkey? Or why Bethlehem was so busy at the time of Jesus birth? Or what myrrh actually is?
Your students will find out these and more through these fascinating stories from the Nativity. From Mary and Joseph to the shepherds and wise men, these accounts paint the picture of what life must have been like in Nazareth and Bethlehem at this time.
Each passage comes with a series of questions that will test students’ comprehension skills through fact retrieval, word meaning and inference and deduction.
This set of language flashcards explores key greetings in the 26 most commonly spoken languages in the world.
The greetings that they teach are:
Hello
Goodbye
Thank you
Please
Sorry
Yes
No
Including on the flashcards are flags of countries where each language is spoken and facts about that language.
The languages are:
English
Spanish
Portuguese
German
French
Mandarin
Hindi
Bengali
Punjabi
Urdu
Persian
Marathi
Vietnamese
Cantonese
Korean
Malay
Swahili
Japanese
Javanese
Russian
Tamil
Turkish
Arabic
Italian
Hausa
Telugu
There are many uses for this with your students. My students enjoy taking a card each week and answering the register with a greeting in their chosen tongue.
They could also be used as a class ‘language of the week’; as a multi-cultural display; or as part of a geography project.
I hope you find them helpful!
January 2017
Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, but few people know the name of the last.
In January 2017, Eugene Cernan passed away. He was the last man to set foot on the surface of the Moon in the final Apollo mission, 1972.
In this comprehension, your students will learn about the life and of this US hero. They will answer questions on a timeline; look through facts, stats and records from his remarkable career; and read tributes paid to him.
Students will use inference and deduction skills as well as fact retrieval. They will be given a chance to choose key facts about his life and justify why they are so important. They will also make a judgment on whether humans will ever walk on the Moon again, based on what they have read.
Questions and answers are provided, with an indication of how many marks are on offer at the end of each question. This is particularly helpful for children preparing for reading tests and exams, encouraging them to give fuller answers where required.
As with all of my reading exercises, I try to write content that is interesting and engaging - stories that may not be on the curriculum, but are important for children to know.
I hope you enjoy this activity on the life of a remarkable astronaut and United States hero.
Here is a reading pack on Cinderella for grades 1 and 2.
It includes a number of activities that encourage children to develop close reading skills, including a wordsearch and spot the difference (which are building blocks to help children find information in texts), as well as comprehension questions and a sequencing activity.
As with all of my products, I aim to make them enjoyable for children to engage with reading, helping them to develop a love for literature.
This is the first product I have produced like this. I will await feedback on this before developing similar packs on other fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
My aim is to create a bundle that explores traditional tales, before moving children on to writing creative stories of their own.
Here is a reading pack on Cinderella for grades 1 and 2.
It includes a number of activities that encourage children to develop close reading skills, including a wordsearch and spot the difference (which are building blocks to help children find information in texts), as well as comprehension questions and a sequencing activity.
As with all of my products, I aim to make them enjoyable for children to engage with reading, helping them to develop a love for literature.
This is the first product I have produced like this. I will await feedback on this before developing similar packs on other fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
My aim is to create a bundle that explores traditional tales, before moving children on to writing creative stories of their own.
Find out about the mysteries of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster. Discover the heartbreak of the tsunami and the sinking of the Titanic. Revisit the shooting of JFK and Apollo 13. Marvel at the miraculous escape of the miners in Chile. Find out why we have Christmas trees. Learn about soldiers stories from World War One…and much much more!
This collection of reading activities are a selection of some of my favourites. I have put them together as a bigger collection to allow teachers to plan a whole year’s worth of reading comprehensions for their children.
Each activity contains a range of challenging questions which test inference, deduction and retrieval skills – ideal preparation for reading assessments. Children are also given an indication of marks on offer for each question, and teachers are provided with answers.
As with all of my reading activities, I try to make the subject matter informative as well as engaging. Children get the chance to find out about a whole range of interesting stories and topics that may not be covered in the curriculum.
CONTENTS:
2 - 10 Stories of Survival
11 - 22 Mysteries of the World
23 - 30 Soldier’s Stories – World War One
31 - 36 The Queen and the Royal Family
37 – 42 Christmas
43 – 50 Days that made the world stop
51 – 74 Answers
I have received excellent feedback, for which I am very grateful. This should give you confidence in the products I offer. Hope you enjoy these!
These comprehensions are taken from real newspaper reports of major news events that made the world stop in its tracks. These are important stories for your children to understand, as they play a significant part in recent world history.
The comprehensions focus on:
The sinking of the Titanic
9/11
The Asian tsunami
and
The assassination of JFK
There are a variety of questions styles, testing skills in retrieval, inference and deduction. Answers are provided, and children are given an indication of marks on offer so this is good preparation for reading tests and assessments.
As with all of my work, I try to make the subject matter interesting and exciting for the children to engage with. As these stories may be familiar, I have made some of the questions particularly challenging, focussing on the parts of the story that your cohort won’t know about.