This is a guide on how to describe a picture. It's useful for mainstream teachers to use as an exercise or wall chart and also as a hand out to students. I love the picture! Who are they? What were they doing?

This is a short passage in the past simple about a nervous teacher's first lesson. Cloze and match up exercises provided.

This makes a good starter or filler activity. The first slide explains the activity and the second models it. Then, give each group a picture and ask them to mind map it. For extension, have them compare any two pictures.

I am making this into a wall display as I think it looks great! Adjectives can be added as you go along. Here, it is presented as a worksheet.

Short story based on five images with a twist in the tale. A good model for third person narrative controlled assessment practice, (audience young readers). I get my students to mind map the images first. Some exercises provided.

A reading passage with language activities, about the wonderfully heart-warming rescue by the Yorkshire Wildlife Safari Park of 13 lions who had been living in cramped cages in Romania. I did this as part of a project on lions and am still trying to arrange to take my students to the safari park. One day! There are plenty of youtube clips about this.

A great picture, with two pages of activities: counting, follow the instructions to colour in, rearrange the letters to make the words, true and false and answer the questions.

A series of inkblots - what can the students see in them? There is an example on the first slide. This makes a great starter.

This is a very basic worksheet about Eva Smith for EAL students who are new to English.

This is a great set of typical British things, and the words for a match-up activity. It makes a great starter, but not beyond year 7. I played Splat! with my students. (Two students come up to the board, then I say an item and the first to touch it is the winner.) Then, I put them in groups and gave each group three images to mind map. Next, the groups moved round to see if anything could be added. We discussed which things they had seen/experienced and which things were a bit old-fashioned or out of date. Thanks to YourJigsawPuzzles for permission to use the montage.

A bit of colouring in fun for younger pupils.

A multiple choice quiz for students to complete. Then they make their resolutions for 2017.

This is a worksheet about the Do’s and Don’ts for going back to school. Having read the guidelines, it looks like these will be the recommendations for students. They match up image and description, then consider the questions. A chance to explore how they feel about the return to school and to think about how they will need to behave. I have prepared this for EAL but it might be useful in the mainstream classroom. The font I have used is comic sans and it is so popular, it shocks me that TES can’t preview it in comic sans!

This is a worksheet to get them thinking about adaptations we have to make during the pandemic. They match up the image and greeting. I have prepared this for EAL, but it may be useful in mainstream teaching to get them thinking and for a fun starter.

The resource consists of a power point and two handouts. This was part of a topic we did as a department entitled ‘It’s a man’s world.’ The powerpoint looks at the Brontes in terms of the struggles they had as women, rather than looking at any specific writings of theirs. The ppt starts with the famous clip of Kate Bush as Cathy. My students’ reactions to this (a class of year 9 girls) were very interesting. Links are drawn between Kate Bush and her heroine. The two handouts are : ‘Kate Bush chose Wuthering Heights’ - they read and answer the questions on the handout and ‘The Brontes as feminists’ - they answer the questions on the ppt. I hope it will be useful.

Thirty slides with various different exercises: replace mundane verbs with exciting verbs, RC with questions, true or false activities, match-up, unscramble.

This is a ppt of 57 slides, with activities that students can complete themselves. My students have their English work, but these activities are extra. They are fun, although some lend themselves to writing tasks and where possible, a writing task has been suggested. I’m sending this to my students, in years 8 and 9. I have taken my Fifty Fun Activities ppt on here, which I uploaded for use in PHSC , adapted it and added to it quite significantly. I hope it will be useful. I would love some positive feedback; wouldn’t we all in these miserable times? Some of these activities are sourced from the net.

This is a ‘for and against’ worksheet to get them thinking in a constructive way at this very restrictive time. They read the sheet, compete the questions and carry out the four research topics. It looks a bit awry on the preview, but it is fine on download.

This power point looks at various topics that may crop up in language paper 2, section B. It focuses on the actual content (pros and cons), rather than language techniques. It is intended to make students think about where they stand on important issues. Each slide has a list of pros and cons, and a language task. I have put this ppt together bearing in mind that students are at home. It is easy for them to work through it without teacher guidance.

This is a worksheet, to get them thinking about what the ‘new normal’ will be like. I prepared this for EAL, but it might be useful elsewhere.