This lesson adopts a hands-on approach to creative writing, encouraging students to engage with a stimulus that they can actively experience and explore. By immersing themselves in a suspenseful environment, students can draw inspiration from their firsthand experiences. I used this lesson with my year 3 students at the start of our mystery writing topic, they loved it and it acted as a good foundation to build their skills on from. Additionally, the pieces of writing they produced were useful to compare to the pieces produced at the end of the mystery writing unit.

Zombie Apocalypse: Place Value Survival! In this fun, engaging lesson activity, students use their maths knowledge to survive a zombie apocalypse! This lesson is designed for Key Stage 2 (I’ve used it successfully with both Year 3 and Year 6). It has a range of problem solving questions and word problems to support and test student’s reasoning skills. You can set this online for students to complete or print this out as booklets. This version is aimed at upper KS2 but you can edit it to suit your class’ age range/abilities. It can be used as a fun alternative to formal assessment, for observations, or simply as a celebratory activity at the end of the place value topic. It can also be easily tweaked to suit different maths topics and age ranges!