I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
This resource is the perfect introduction to a half termly topic which I have used from years 3-5 to teach children about the human body, skeletons of both humans and animals, food groups and digestion. This particular lessons gets children to brainstorm what they already know about animals and humans, and what they would like to find out, helpfully allowing you to adapt your planning to match their subject knowledge..
Objectives and success criteria include:
1) LI: To be able to produce facts that state my current understanding
1) LI: To be able to ask questions which would develop my understanding
Success Criteria
I can state what I already know about a given topic
I can ask questions linked to a given topic to develop my understanding
I can use a range of question starters (what, who, how, when, do...)
I made this resource to link Year 6’s ICT and Science topics: internet researching and energy.
The objective of the worksheet is to research facts which complete the tables / questions given.
The topic covers a range of different types of energy and examples of how they are used across the world.
The last task gets the children to research facts of their own for one fuel type.
This resource is the perfect ending to this half termly topic which I have used from years 3-5 to teach children about the human body, skeletons of both humans and animals, food groups and digestion. This particular lessons gets children to brainstorm what they have learnt about animals and humans since the start of the topic helpfully allowing you assess their understanding.
The lesson objectives and success criteria include:
LI: To be able to produce facts that state my new understanding
LI: To be able to answer questions to demonstrate my new understanding
Success Criteria
I can state what I have learnt about a given topic
I can try to answer questions I previously asked using my new learning
As an introduction to your Plants topic, get children to brainstorm what they already know about plants. This will help you to direct your future planning more precisely by not repeating old knowledge or allowing you to plug clear gaps in understanding.
Also, this lesson will allow children to brainstorm what they would LIKE to know, which gains you an insight into their interests about plants, helping you to produce engaging and focused lessons to inspire them!
This worksheet allows children to practice converting between cm and m units of measurement by using a real life stimulus; the lengths of various reptiles.
Included on the worksheet is an LO, reminder of the 1m = 100cm conversion, and a table giving the name of each reptile, a photo, and one of the measurements, with a blank space next to it to complete the conversion. Some measurements are given in cm and others in m.
This resource is part of a whole half term of engaging lessons which I have used from years 3-5 to teach children about Animals including Humans. This lesson initially recaps children's understanding of human and animal skeletons, before focusing on developing their knowledge of food groups. It includes questions to stimulate children's ideas and understanding, various interactive links to engage and support, and suggested tasks to allow children to demonstrate and challenge their understanding.
The Lesson Objective and Success Criteria are:
LI: To know the different food groups
Success Criteria
I can explain what animals and humans need to stay healthy
I can name common food groups
I can name example foods in each group
This lesson focuses on teaching children that forces can be transferred from being balanced to unbalanced using pushes and pulls. The activity involves completing a paragraph demonstrating their understanding of forces and identifying examples of balanced/unbalanced forces within the classroom. The success criteria includes:
* I know what forces are measured in
* I know that a force is a push or pull
* I can explain the difference between a balanced and an unbalanced force
* I can place a force on an object
* I can draw and label a diagram explaining what a force looks like
Here is an activity/worksheet I have used to teach children across KS2 to investigate whether shape affects air resistance, using the following success criteria:
• I know forces affect how objects move
• I can explain what air resistance is
• I can explain how air resistance affects real life objects
• I can design objects with good/bad air resistance
The activity involves children filling in the gaps in a paragraph to demonstrate their understanding of air resistance, then identifying what air resistance might be happening in picture scenarios, before being creative and designing two paper aeroplanes; one with bad air resistance, and the other with good - explaining how they can predict what will happen.
This activity would link well with primary teaching of forces, specifically gravity. It is in two parts: the first requires pupils to demonstrate their basic understanding by filling in missing words into a information paragraph about gravity (the missing words being at the bottom to select from). The second part requires children to demonstrate their understanding of gravity from own experiences, drawing pictures of where they have seen the force of gravity in action.
Suitable for a Upper KS1 or Lower KS2 classes. Enjoy - and look out for more of my Science resources in my TES shop!
This activity allows children to demonstrate their understanding of what gravity is, how it is measured, and to practically investigate and compare the weight of different objects.
The objective is to understand that gravity gives us weight, with the following steps to success:
- I know gravity is a force
- I know that gravity affects the weight of objects
- I know that weight is measured in Newtons
- I can measure and record the weight of different objects
Challenge: I can explain the difference between weight and mass
The worksheet involves children being able to explain the difference between weight and mass, to draw a newton meter, and to use one to measure the weight of different classroom objects, recording their results in table form.
This worksheet can easily be adapted for different classes and abilities.
This resource is part of a whole half term of engaging lessons which I have used from years 3-5 to teach children about the Humans including Animals. This lesson recaps children's knowledge of the human skeleton and then moves on to focus on animal skeletons, comparing different types, identifying well known animals by their skeleton and comparing human and animal skeletons. The resource includes questions to stimulate children's ideas and understanding, links to various video clips and interactive websites to engage and support, and both group and independent tasks to allow children to demonstrate and challenge their understanding.
The lesson objective and success criteria include:
LI: To compare the skeletons of different animals
Success Criteria
I can use first hand observations to find out about skeletons
I can use secondary sources to find out about skeletons
I can use observations to make predictions
I can identify similarities and differences between human/animal skeletons
This resource helps children to understand the concept of inheritance in biology using the following success criteria:
I know that living things produce offspring of the same kind
I know that living things pass down particular characteristics to their offspring
I know that offspring will inherit characteristics from both parents
I know that offspring are not identical to their parents
In the activity they will think about their own characteristics and then compare these with their family's characteristics (parents, siblings). They will then use The Rugrats as an example to show how offspring can be similar to one or both of their parents, but not identical.
Suitable for upper KS2.
This activity gets children to practically investigate the permeability of rocks. To do this, they need to understand what ‘permeable’ and ‘impermeable’ means, predict whether rocks will be permeable or impermeable, support their predictions with explanations, observe rocks closely to investigate their permeability and write a conclusion based on the outcome of the investigation.
The worksheet suggests that 3 rocks are used to test, and includes space to write/draw the rocks and to show their understanding and outcomes from the investigation.
UPDATED 22/11/2016 to include whole lesson presentation flip/notebook! Woo!
This activity worksheet gets children to investigate the importance of photosynthesis in the plant lifecycle.
It involves them planning the investigation (understanding what they want to find out and how they will achieve it), predicting what they think will happen, what equipment they will need, and how they will ensure the investigation is a fair test.
The activity sheet is scaffolded to support different abilities and will support primary teaching of photosynthesis.
These two worksheets can expand to form a Science topic over four to five lessons.
Using their prior knowledge of materials and wind power, children independently design their own boat powered by wind either on paper or in their Science books. Existing examples could be shown.
Then, at the start of the next lesson, children would use the first worksheet in this resource to evaluate each others designs using the following criteria:
• Shape – How will this affect how it moves and balances on the water?
• Size – How will this affect how the boat floats and balances?
• Materials – Are they waterproof? How will you join them securely?
• Sail – How will it steadily stay up and move the boat forwards?
Following this, either in the same or next lesson, groups would then choose the best design or combination of design ideas from those on their table, to form a final group design of a boat with a sail.
On the second sheet in this resource, they would then work together to plan their final design, using the following criteria:
* I can consider the effect of water resistance in my boat design
* I can make a sail that will catch wind
* I can consider suitable materials to make my boat
* I can annotate my design to explain material and shape choices
Each group would draw their final boat design and list the materials needed to make it, before going on to make their boat in the following lesson, and then test them the lesson after that in a suitable outdoor location! (...we used a paddling pool!)
This resource is part of a whole half term of engaging lessons which I have used from years 3-5 to teach children about Humans Including Animals. This resource starts by recapping children's understanding of the different food groups, before focusing on digestion. It includes questions to stimulate children's ideas and understanding, links to various video clips and interactive websites to engage and support, and both group and independent tasks to allow children to demonstrate and challenge their understanding using the engaging resources that I have suggested (the cover picture for this resource being the display made using one of their favourite lesson activities!)
The objective and success criteria for the lesson are:
LI: To understand the human digestive system
Success Criteria
I know what digestion is
I know why humans need to digest what they consume
I can place the digestive parts correctly in the body
I can label the basic parts of the digestive system
I used these lessons at the end of our Rocks topic in Science with my Year 3 class, but they were also used by Year 6 at their end of Evolution and Inheritance, so they are easily adaptable!
The resource consists of a notebook of two lessons; one focusing on fossils, and the other on famous British fossil hunter Mary Anning. I used the latter lesson during a school inspection, and it went down well both with the visitor and the class!
The lessons focus on develop children's understanding of fossils, how they link to rocks, and how fossil hunting is still important today. Luckily, at the time, Tiger stocked cheap fossil digging kits, so I bought some for the class to try in a third lesson and it was brilliant! I've seen them in other shops since and I'm sure they're available on the internet - photos are included of the children delicately chipping and brushing away.
This lesson gets children to investigate rocks practically - either in or outside of the classroom!
It involves them comparing rocks by their size, shape, texture, durability, and many other factors, while also extending to thinking about why rocks are different.
This is a cross-curricular lesson which links nicely with Maths, as it requires children to sort different rocks using a Venn Diagram. Included is a lesson presentation notebook and a worksheet and photographs from when I continued this lesson outside of the classroom on Hampstead Heath!
Easily adaptable for a range of KS2 classes. Enjoy!
When developing my children's comprehension skills, I don't like using photocopies from text books and meaningless expectancy sheets. I prefer to use purposeful, educational and REAL LIFE examples to engage and inform them, while still challenging them and looking for those reading skills.
Therefore a lot of my comprehension challenges are based around interesting newspaper articles. In this example, taken from the BBC News website in April 2017, a village in the South West of England has declared itself as being 'hedgehog-friendly' in a bid to stop numbers falling.
Included in this pack is a copy of the article and linking comprehension questions suitable for KS2.
Enjoy!
These two worksheets allow children to describe (draw, feel, source) and compare (texture, size, durability, colour) different rock samples practically in the lesson.
UPDATE 22/11/16: Resource now includes linking interactive lesson notebook presentation! Woo!