An English Lead who has been teaching for over 10 years, sharing high quality, time saving resources so you can focus on your pupils and achieve a healthy work-life balance.
You will find bright and engaging resources that are designed to be picked up and easily taught by anyone.
Each resource is focused on progress, inspired by the Outstanding Teachers Course.
An English Lead who has been teaching for over 10 years, sharing high quality, time saving resources so you can focus on your pupils and achieve a healthy work-life balance.
You will find bright and engaging resources that are designed to be picked up and easily taught by anyone.
Each resource is focused on progress, inspired by the Outstanding Teachers Course.
Use this resource to write Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound year 4 writing targets.
Useful for teachers when assessing so you can narrow down the statements from the National Curriculum into small next steps which the children can understand.
Broken down into targets for punctuation, handwriting, grammar and composition.
You could print out one for each child and use as an assessment tool.
Or just use when marking to save time so you can quickly choose a high quality target personalised for each child.
All reviews welcome.
You might also be interested in these high quality resources for the New Curriculum:
Whole School SMART Targets
Whole School Writing Assessment Sheets
Whole School English Writing Assessment Guidance
Whole School Guided Reading Questions
A week’s KS2 English planning focusing on teaching writing skills through a history theme of WW2. Engaging activities, resources and opportunities for discussion all included. A bright and engaging PowerPoint leads you through the week, with starters, modelled examples and plenaries for every lesson.
Lessons cover these learning objectives:
L.O. I know how to use relative clauses in a recount of building a bomb shelter
L.O. I know how to use subordinating conjunctions in a recount of a woman’s day in the war
L.O. I know how to use brackets in a recount of escaping capture
L.O. I know how to use dashes and commas in a recount of a day in a tank
L.O. I know how to edit and improve my writing
Daily starters focusing on: punctuation, handwriting, verb prefixes and modal verbs.
All lessons are differentiated: support for lower ability and challenges for higher ability.
Detailed plan included.
All reviews welcome.
Could be used alongside a WW2 History unit or on its own.
A target sheet for a year 3 child, includes all of the objectives for this year group in child speak. Children can track their targets in the table and teachers can tick in the columns when these are evidenced and then achieved. The rocket sheet is an extra fun way for children to remember which target they are working on.
Learning Objectives for year 3 in easy to understand short phrases.
Can be stuck in the front of English books so children can refer to this in lessons or kept in a teacher’s file.
Teacher can choose how much evidence needs to be collected before the children achieve the target.
You can show recognition of the target achieved in their work with a sticker/star/symbol.
Encourages responsibility for learning and ensures the children know their targets.
All reviews welcome.
Check out my other resources for teaching and assessing primary English:
Year 3 Writing Assessment Guidance
Year 3 Reading Assessment Questions
Year 4 Writing Assessment Guidance
Year 4 Reading Assessment Questions
Whole School SMART Target Packs
A complete Year 2 grammar pack including an A4 grammar glossary, grammar memory cards, grammar flash cards and an engaging PowerPoint which introduces these technical terms and gives children the opportunity to practice finding each one.
A colourful and useful resource designed to increase your pupil’s progress when learning English with the New Curriculum. Enhance the confidence of every child, parent, TA and Teacher with these clear and up-to-date glossaries.
All the technical vocabulary used in the new curriculum explained for children from year 2. Every word class and sentence type explained with clear helpful examples.
Useful to have as a large display or as a laminated mat for the tables. Very useful stuck in English or SPAG books to encourage independence, revision and confidence during lessons.
Can also be stuck in homework books to support children with explaining these new technical terms to parents and carers at home.
All reviews welcome.
Check out these other popular resources:
Whole School SMART Targets
Whole School Writing Assessment Sheets
Whole School Guided Reading Questions
A colourful and complete word bank for KS2 children studying ‘The Highwayman’ poem by Alfred Noyes. Includes Title, poem features and examples, key vocabulary, images, main characters and themes of the poem.
All that your pupils need to know on one sheet of paper. Can be used in writer’s toolkits, on displays, in books and for support groups printed as A3.
Ensure the children are familiar and confident with the features, characters, themes and vocabulary of the poem.
Prevent any spelling mistakes with the clear vocabulary list.
Use within an English unit on The Highwayman and save time.
Check out other popular KS2 writing resources:
Highwayman Display
Adjective Word Bank
Five complete lessons teaching KS2 children how to ask questions when reading. Includes a teaching PowerPoint, weekly plan, starters, inputs, activities, differentiation, answers and plenaries. Covers question words, questioning grids, types of questions, questions linked to the bigger picture (themes).
Questioning lesson pack provides texts, questions, think, pair share time, written activities, discussion points and progression.
Each lesson builds on the previous to inspire confidence, understanding and success. The week ends with a small assessment style lesson where the children can show off what they have learnt.
All reviews welcome.
A matching activity teaching the vocabulary from the poem 'Twas The Night Before Christmas. Includes a teaching PowerPoint with 18 slides, 24 word and picture cards, 2 extension activities and all the answers.
Clear, colourful pictures and a large school-friendly font so the children can become confident with the old fashioned language.
Simply print the word cards and picture cards and hand out. The children can cut them out, as they are already jumbled up. Answer sheets are included as well.
Each page has 4 words and 4 images, so one group could work on them together.
A detailed week covering the imitate phase of learning about discussion texts. Includes open questions, higher order thinking, engaging texts, video links, differentiation, 5 teaching PowerPoints, all resources, worksheets and answers.
Every day starts with an engaging starter focusing on SPAG skills, such as KS2 spellings, parenthesis, conjunctions and handwriting. Extra for experts activities for further challenge and modelled texts to support the lower ability.
Learning Objectives:
To understand a discussion text and identify its features
To identify facts and opinions
To use conjunctions to link ideas in a for or against argument
To write an introduction and conclusion
To plan a discussion text on ‘Is Homework Necessary?’
Main activities differentiated by colour:
Green - LA
Yellow and blue - MA
Red - HA
Highlights:
Ready to teach
All printables provided
KS2 appropriate
Cross curricular links
Differentiated
Check out the follow up week for this unit here.
A complete KS2 English story writing lesson with a Halloween theme. Includes starter, interactive planning activity, input, differentiation, all resources and plenary. Download and be ready for a spooky morning of writing fun.
Engage your class and see improvements in their writing by using the modelled sentences, editing practice, challenge cards and peer assessment extension.
Highlights:
high quality vocabulary
open questions
punctuation and grammar
editing
differentiation
dice activity
Complete with spooky images and animations appropriate for KS2, create a buzz in your classroom. Children will enjoy rolling a dice to plan their story on their planning sheet, before writing. The mini plenaries will help keep them on task and achieving.
Scaffold their learning using word banks, modelled sentences and peer assessment and see results.
You might also like to check out my other popular Halloween resource:
Halloween Fractions
A complete pack for a Halloween quiz lesson including a 31 slide teaching and quiz PowerPoint, video link, fact card, class quiz, worksheets, answers and extensions.
When finished there are 6 differentiated word searches and 3 extension tasks.
Engage your class with Halloween, expand vocabulary, teach history and improve spelling, all in one mighty pack.
Use the animated, colourful PowerPoint to lead the lesson and ensure understanding and success.
Easily mark the quiz and word searches with the resources provided, through self and peer assessment.
A complete KS2 reading comprehension lesson with the theme of Halloween poems. Includes a complete teaching input, starter, modelling, scaffolding, 5 differentiated poems, questions for each poem and plenary.
Download to inspire and extend your pupil’s learning around Halloween.
Highlights:
Colourful engaging teaching PowerPoint
Printable resources
Challenge activity
Each poem comprehension focuses on these key reading skills:
Rhyming words
Alliteration
Identifying themes
Summarising
Engage your pupils this Halloween whilst strengthening and enhancing reading outcomes.
Check out my other popular Halloween resources:
Halloween Fractions
Halloween Story Writing
A complete set of 5 English lessons for National Storytelling Week written for KS2. Includes a 53 slide PowerPoint for the week, differentiated worksheets, starter and challenge activities, word banks and modelled sentences.
Enjoy a sequenced week of teaching which develops language, confidence and understanding of story. Each lesson takes about an hour to teach, including the input, interactive elements, written tasks and plenary.
Highlights:
Ready-to-go
Differentiated
Scaffolded
Higher level questions
Challenge
Written for year 3/4, easily adaptable for yrs 5/6 classes.
Explore, imitates and adapts the story of the ‘Lion and The Mouse’, at a deeper level, prepares the children for performing the story at the end of the week.
Covers these English teaching points:
Synonyms
Adjectives
Sentence openers
Place prepositions
Adverbs
Emotions
Develop reading and writing skills and enjoy a week of storytelling.
All reviews welcome.
Check out my popular assembly on National Storytelling Week
A complete assembly on storytelling, including a 24 slide PowerPoint, video links, interactive questions, extension tasks, reflection time and song to finish.
Use as an inspiring start to National Storytelling Week, 29th January - 4th February 2024.
Cover:
What is a story?
What types of story are there?
How is storytelling different to reading a story?
Where do stories come from?
Storytelling - The Frog Prince
What do all stories have?
Plot
Characters
Setting
Can you copy stories?
Reflection
Song
Video links provided for children to go back into class and become familiar with a classic fairy tale or story and retell it, before adapting it to make it their own.
Highlights:
Ready-to-go
Perfect for KS2 primary age
Colourful, engaging, animated
Inclusive
Perfect for all learning styles
After the reflection time where children can connect to themselves and discover what stories mean to them, there is a story song (The Lion Inside) for children to watch and listen to as they quietly leave the assembly.
All reviews welcome.
Check out my other assemblies on special occasions, linked to English:
Book Day
World Poetry Day
National Speech and Debate Day
Inspire your school with an assembly designed for Book Day on a 26 slide PowerPoint. Includes higher order questions, interactive activities, inspiring video link, many classic books, author quotes, follow up activities and much more.
Covers:
What is Book Day?
What famous people like to read? Video
What can we read?
Where can we read?
When is reading useful?
Who is the funniest author? Vote
Match the author to the book
Top Tips for choosing a new book
What book has this as the opening line? Guessing game
Favourite Characters - Optional Fashion Show
Looking Forward
Written for KS2. This assembly takes about 20 minutes to complete.
Follow the engaging and colourful PowerPoint for a ready-to-go assembly. Animations, images, video and more will inspire every child to keep reading.
Highlights:
Interactive
Inspiring
Involving
Use the range of activities to structure the assembly and share some high quality books that are recommended for children of KS2.
Could also be used as a lesson, as it includes 3 differentiated writing tasks:
Draw and describe your favourite character
Write a book review of your favourite book
Use 3 favourite characters to write a new story
Printable templates included.
Enjoy and celebrate this important day.
Check out my other popular assemblies on special occasions:
World Poetry Day
National Speech and Debate Day
National Storytelling Week
5 complete English lessons responding to and exploring the powerful video clip ‘The Piano’ by Aidan Gibbons, found on the Literacy Shed. Inlcudes 5 PowerPoints, paired and group work, modelled texts, new vocabulary, editing activities, complete inputs, starters and plenaries and differentiation.
Higher order questioning probes deep into this interesting short movie inspiring descriptive writing and progress of writing skills. Engaging and complete Powerpoints provide many opportunities for productive paired, individual and group work.
A range of modelled texts are provided so children can magpie new vocabulary whilst developing their editing, writing and publishing techniques.
Written for KS2 it covers many relevant teaching points: relative clauses, expanded noun phrases, editing and improving language, parenthesis, creating an atmosphere, showing change within characters, describing settings, building suspense, summarising, identifying word classes and complex sentences.
Starters include: spellings, synonyms, identifying verbs and adverbs, relative clauses and handwriting.
Lesson 1 - Write a review of the clip responding to an email sent to the class.
Lesson 2 - How to write about playing an instrument on your own - description and atmosphere.
Lesson 3 - How to write about memories in stories, building suspense.
Lesson 4 - Showing change in story characters.
Lesson 5 - Planning your own memory story.
All resources, a detailed plan and 5 PowerPoints are included, just download, print a few documents and your week of English lessons are ready to go. There are writing frames to support the lower ability and daily challenges for the higher ability.
All reviews welcome.
You can also download this as part of a bundle to save money: 2 Weeks of Planning Resources PowerPoints and a Display for The Piano
Visit My Shop to find all the planning, Powerpoints and resources that you need to survive a teaching life.
10 engaging and ready-to-go English lessons responding to and exploring the powerful video clip ‘The Piano’ by Aidan Gibbons found on the Literacy Shed.
Lots of high level questioning to probe deeper into this interesting clip and opportunities for paired, individual and group work.
Week 1 - Explore and respond to the story whilst developing writing skills (Talk for Writing -Imitate and Innovate).
Written for KS2 it covers many relevant teaching points:
relative clauses,
expanded noun phrases,
editing and improving language,
parenthesis,
creating an atmosphere,
showing change within characters,
describing settings,
building suspense,
summarising,
identifying word classes,
complex sentences.
Week 2 - Children write their own version of this story using and building on the writing skills learnt in the first week (Talk for Writing - Invent).
The week takes the children through writing the opening, middle and end of their memory story, then editing and publishing it.
Starters include: spellings, adding description, handwriting, editing punctuation and improving words.
Many more teaching points covered:
types of sentence openers,
how to start a story,
building suspense,
writing effective phrases to show change,
using synonyms
using a thesaurus
peer assessment
editing punctuation
editing for sense
editing to improve
Mixture of starters covering key SPAG elements from the New Curriculum.
There are resources to support the lower ability and daily challenges for the higher ability.
Ability groups in plan:
Green - Low ability
Yellow - Mid/low ability
Blue - Mid ability
Red - High ability.
All reviews welcome.
All resources, plans, PowerPoints and display included.
Display includes:
Title
Short explanation of the movie
Images from the movie
Powerful descriptive vocabulary cards
Features list of this genre
Sentence Opener ideas
Paragraph Opener ideas
Key events of movie on arrows for ordering
Modelled examples of creating an atmosphere
Modelled examples of expanded noun phrases
Modelled examples of relative clauses
Higher level thinking questions
Includes 30 lessons, displays, engaging activities, dictations, all answers and all resources needed.
Save time and download these six detailed and useful PowerPoints leading you through a term of daily spelling lessons.
All words are from the year 5/6 new curriculum spelling list.
Monday - Covers the word class of each spelling, patterns, rules and definitions.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - Short easy to resource spelling activities to enable children to learn these spellings in an engaging and successful way.
Friday - Includes a dictation containing the spelling words covered in the week. Shows how many words there are and how many spellings.
A helpful resource so that you can easily fit spellings into a busy week.
Lessons could be completed on white boards, draft books or English books.
Also includes a simple display of the spelling words so you can keep referring to them throughout the day.
All reviews welcome.
A visual and ready-to-go PowerPoint leading you through a week of exciting and memorable spelling lessons.
All words are homophones from the year 5/6 new curriculum spelling lists.
Monday - Covers the word class of each spelling, patterns, rules and definitions.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - Short easy to resource spelling activities to enable children to learn these spellings in an engaging and successful way.
Friday - Includes a dictation containing the spelling words covered in the week. Shows how many words there are and how many spellings.
A helpful resource so that you can easily fit spellings into a busy week.
Lessons could be completed on white boards, draft books or English books.
Also includes a simple display of the spelling words so you can keep referring to them throughout the day.
All reviews welcome.
4 Engaging and animated assemblies, explaining and bringing to life 4 important days in our year. Each one full of information, video links, fun facts, higher level reasoning questions, interactive elements and discussion opportunities.
World Poetry Day - 21st March
Celebrate famous poets from around the world, amaze your pupils with their culture, story and achievements. Share some thought provoking poetry and inspire them to write their own poetry.
World Kindness Day - 13th November
Celebrate this day or use on Random Acts of Kindness Day (17th February) or Random Acts of Kindness Week (February).
Enthuse children to be kind by sharing how it is celebrated around the world, what is kindness, who is the kindest person you know, famous influential kind people, why it is difficult to be kind sometimes, how to overcome this, ideas for being kind and how to pledge for kindness.
Includes activities to use in the classroom.
National Speech and Debate Day - 1st March
This animated presentation takes the pupils through how to debate, the purposes of public speaking, famous speeches, famous speakers, famous debaters and famous debates.
International Day for the Abolition of Slavery
This thought provoking and interesting assembly explains the history of slavery, how it has changed and what we know of slavery today. Discuss some famous quotes about this subject and encourage pupils to think about how their generation could make positive changes to the world.
Relax in March and use these fantastic assemblies to enthuse your pupils about learning. 4 complete engaging assemblies for the month of March. Includes video links, writing activities, inspirational role models, healthy eating tips, fun facts and much more.
All within a science theme they build on each other effectively and enhance your pupil’s enthusiasm and love of science.
KS2 British Science Week Assembly 9th-17th March
This is a detailed 28 slide PowerPoint ideal for an assembly or lesson or both for this special week. Could also be a useful PSHE lesson on scientific careers and role models.
Takes the children through key questions covering there understanding of science, its impact on our lives, how to be a scientist and what scientists are like including famous scientists and their achievements.
Download the 3 compelling activities to extend the pupil’s interest in the subject of science.
Albert Einstein’s Birthday Assembly - 14th March
Celebrate a great scientist with this detailed and interesting 30 slide PowerPoint on the inspirational scientist Albert Einstein.
Covering:
Themes of the assembly
A memory game
Young life
Family life
Working life
Fun facts
Images of his life
Scientific Research
Einstein quotes to inspire
Why was he such a great scientist?
Summary
Farmhouse Breakfast Week Assembly 4th-8th March
Download this engaging primary assembly to enthuse your pupils and increase their achievements. Explain through fun farm animals the many reasons why breakfast is good for you.
Many stimulating activities inspire the children to want to eat breakfast, including choosing their favourite breakfast plate and discussing which one is the best, healthiest and the most balanced.
Teaching Points Covered about Breakfast:
What Farmhouse Breakfast Week is all about
Local UK farms involved
Why breakfast is so good for us
What we can eat for breakfast and why
How to make a balanced breakfast
How we can be organised in the morning
This assembly also explains classic options for breakfast and tasty new ideas to try. There are many discussion opportunities for children so they are involved in the assembly and accept responsibility for making a change, eating a better breakfast and doing well in school.
Print the high quality resources and use the fun video link to ensure all the children enjoy learning about breakfast and are able to explain their understanding to others.
World Poetry Day - 21st March
Celebrate famous poets from around the world, amaze your pupils with their culture, story and achievements. Share some thought provoking poetry and inspire them to write their own poetry.
