Lesson presentation introducing acrostic poetry. Can be used as a theme opening lesson or as a stand-alone lesson. I made a cross-curricular link with our 'pirates' topic theme, but this can be easily adapted to suit a particular class theme or year group. Also included in this pack is a worksheet for your class to brainstorm their vocabulary ideas and practise writing their poem before writing it up neatly into their books. Enjoy!

I made this resource based on Sainsburys' 2015 Christmas advert. Judith Kerr's 'Mog The Cat' is brilliantly brought back to life in animation form. He is found having a bad dream in his family home, which caused a series of unfortunate events, ultimately causing the fire brigade to arrive! Christmas seemed like it was ruined for the family, but the village quickly came together to help and to make Christmas a happy and united occasion. My class last year loved this recount. In the first of the two lessons provided, the focus was on recounting the events from the animation, with use of adverbs to describe, but this can easily be adapted if you have a different Literacy skill that you want your class to develop! The second lesson in the pack gets children to edit and improve their writing. Look out for my other Christmas-themed Literacy resources!

Pigeon Impossible is a hilarious animation easily available on YouTube. It is about a detective, Walter, who, despite his top-level job, becomes amusingly thwarted by a....pigeon! Children love describing Walter, especially his traits which lack expected 'detective-qualities', and the mischievous pigeon, who only has an eye on getting one thing. This pack includes a full lesson presentation and planning worksheet. It can easily be adapted for different year groups and a particular Literacy focus, e.g. tense, person, grammar or vocab.

I made this resource based on John Lewis' 2012 Christmas advert. It is about a snowman and snowwoman who are made by some children in their garden, but overnight, the snowman disappears. He is seen making an epic journey across mountains, rivers, city centres, and eventually he returns...with the little girl finding that he had bought his snowwoman some christmas presents. I wanted to use it to develop children's inference skills and to develop their description; both of the characters and the various settings that the snowman travelled through. Each KS2 class I've taught have loved this recount. Look out for other Literacy resources I am uploading based on the other John Lewis adverts!

I made this resource based on John Lewis' 2011 Christmas advert. It is about a boy who shows his frustration of having to wait for Christmas Day throughout the video, which most children can emphasise with, until you learn at the end that he was desperate to GIVE his parents their Christmas present! I wanted to use it to develop children's inference skills and to convert the recount of an event into first person; showing their understanding of the character; with of course the description you would expect to bring the story to life. Each KS2 class I've taught have loved this recount. Look out for other Literacy resources I am uploading based on the other John Lewis adverts! UPDATE: The lesson presentation is now available in both Notebook and Powerpoint format in this download.

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 2013, a new map of Pangaea, the supercontinent from 300 million years ago, shows where modern day countries would have been located in the ancient land mass. Included in this pack is a copy of the article and linking comprehension questions suitable for KS2. Enjoy!

I made this lesson to help my class develop their variation of sentence starters. My lesson notebook models different examples using the helpful poster (which can be made into a dice) and then gets children to apply their understanding by recounting the animation of George and The Dragon (as our Literacy topic at that time was Myths and Legends). This can easily be adapted to link with a particular theme or year group.

As it is hot topic in the news at the moment, I took one of the articles about the poppy / FIFA debate from the BBC and made it into a reading comprehension exercise to give children a purposeful activity in their reading time and something that could later be discussed in PHSE/circle time. In this pack is a PDF copy of the article (which is still available online) and linked questions suitable and easily adaptable for all KS2.

This is a fun lesson which allows children to learn and appreciate other social aspects of life during World War II. It starts by questioning children’s current understanding and enjoyment of entertainment via the radio, and informs them of its importance in the 1930s. It includes example radio clips from the war, asking children to discuss their features, and then goes on to compare those with clips from present day news broadcasting (both radio and television). The lesson objective and success criteria are as follows: Objective: To be able to write and broadcast a World War Two radio news bulletin Success Criteria: I can select key information about an event I can bias my report in favour of the Allied war effort I can use emotive language to engage the listener I can speak clearly I can use intonation and expression in my voice In my lesson I gave children facts about a particular bombing raid in London and asked them to report it as if they were a 1930s broadcaster. It was brilliant to see them dramatising their pronunciation and tone, and how they took different perspectives about the same event. I’ve left it open in the resource presentation as to what resource you would want to use for the children to complete this task. There are lots more WWII resources in my shop too if you want to link further lessons. Enjoy!

A simple but fun Macbeth-themed word search and crossword puzzles to help children to embed their knowledge of the Shakespeare tragedy. Available in PDF, Pages and Word formats! All words link to the plot, including characters names, themes and places. 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!

I’ve used this lesson every Autumn to engage children into the Literacy skills needed to write a good instruction text, by linking it to how to use sparklers safely on bonfire night. This pack includes a Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for one lesson, and differentiated worksheets for pupils to plan their instructions before independently writing them up into their books. Suitable for KS2 - and do get a health and safety check before demonstrating with a real life sparkler. I did, and it amazed the kids and really energised their writing! UPDATE 02/11/2018 - RESOURCE NOW INCLUDES PRESENTATION IN POWERPOINT FORMAT!

This is one of my FAVOURITE lessons that can be taught across KS2; a short burst Literacy lesson to develop children's understanding of instruction texts using a chocolatey Easter theme! I would always bring in a few small Easter eggs to this lesson. Using one in my modelling, I would play dumb and be an alien who had never seen an Easter egg before. I would ask the children what to do with it (i.e. to open and eat it) but did everything LITERALLY as they said, to make them appreciate the detail they needed to include in their instructions. Therefore, if they said "pull open the flaps" I would pull really hard and rip the box!! This would encourage them to include adverbs, like 'carefully', in their instructions. The other Easter eggs would be on each table to help the children think through the different steps of opening and eating it, with the promise that they would be shared at lunch time of course! This again helps to bring a purpose to the skill activity and engages children into the learning. Included is a flip notebook guiding you and the children through the lesson, and differentiated planning sheets. Appropriate for all KS2 and easily adapted for your own class' needs. Enjoy!

This amazing short film by Aidan Gibbons 'The Piano', will really tug on the heartstrings of you and your class and produce some brilliant emotive writing. Included in this pack is two Literacy lessons (planning/writing recount and edit/improve), a planning sheet for the first lesson and a worksheet to make notes using stills from the film. The writing activity takes the form of a first person recount (also easily adaptable to third person) which challenges the class to infer the main character's thoughts and feelings as he is playing the piano and recalling key memories from his life.

I made this resource using a BBC article about Captain Tom’s achievements and subsequent recognition. I made up the questions based on the article, so it is more of a comprehension - but the children don’t need to know this!

Carrot Crazy is a fun animation widely available on Youtube. This resource is made up of two worksheets; screenshots ordering events from the animation to guide children, and a planning sheet to help children recount the events of Carrot Crazy using lots of description.