This is a self and peer assessment marking ladder for use with years 5 and 6. It contains a self assessment grid to use when writing a recount and a marking ladder with prompts to aid quality peer assessment. Hope it helps. Check out our other resources here on TES Resources or find us on facebook at Teaching Rainbows or on instagram at Rainbow Education Services.

This is a set of maths targets for use with Year 2 children in the first half term of the academic year. Suitable for teachers, teaching assistants, parents, home schoolers and trainee teachers. Can be used at home or at school to monitor progress, for homework or as a group activity. The full set of Maths Targets for Y2 and for Years 1 - 6 is available from Teaching Rainbows on TES Resources.

This is a set of maths targets for use with Year 5 children in the first half term of the academic year. Suitable for teachers, teaching assistants, parents, home schoolers and trainee teachers. Can be used at home or at school to monitor progress, for homework or as a group activity. The full set of Maths Targets for Y5 and for Years 1 - 6 is available from Teaching Rainbows on TES Resources.

This is a set of maths targets for use with Year 4 children in the first half term of the academic year. Suitable for teachers, teaching assistants, parents, home schoolers and trainee teachers. Can be used at home or at school to monitor progress, for homework or as a group activity. The full set of Maths Targets for Y1 and for Years 1 - 6 is available from Teaching Rainbows on TES Resources.

This resource is to be used with Year 5 and 6 children working on a story writing unit. Contains success criteria and space for self, peer and teacher assessment.

This is a set of maths targets for use with Year 3 children in the first half term of the academic year. Suitable for teachers, teaching assistants, parents, home schoolers and trainee teachers. Can be used at home or at school to monitor progress, for homework or as a group activity. The full set of Maths Targets for Y3 and for Years 1 - 6 is available from Teaching Rainbows on TES Resources.

This is a single page worksheet to be used with key stage 2 to celebrate each individual as a unique creation. Could be used at the beginning of term to introduce each child to a new class or at the start of a unit of work on relationships education. It was originally designed for a year 6 class to rebuild confidence after the SATs experience!

These 20 games using the numbers and letters on car number plates are suitable for use with children from age 4 – 13, are simple and easy to play and will improve those all-important basic literacy and maths skills. Each game is unique so select the ones you think will appeal or which meet the learning needs of your child. Some require a little recording, but many do not. Some are quite challenging so you may need to have the calculator handy on your phone! The activities are graded from * to ****.

This resource is a series of strategies to build in thinking time in the primary classroom to promote effective, active participation. The strategies suggested are all tried and tested in Key Stage 2 but there are a number of strategies suggested which would work well with younger or older children. This resource is for you if you are working with children in a group setting and want to encourage more children to take an active role in lessons. So often, less confident children will sit back and wait for other children to answer either because they lack confidence or have learned to tale a passive role in lessons. These strategies will ensure that all children have an equal chance to participate.

Wednesday Work was an initiative I introduced with my Year 5/6 Class following a seminar at the Global Leadership Summit led by Patrick Lencioni. He taught a session based on businesses who had increased productivity by allowing their employees 20% of their working week to follow their own lines of enquiry and plan their own time. These goals had to be in line with the companies aims but gave employees ownership of their time and their direction. This had a significant impact on both employee retention, and productivity. In school, we identified 2 hours a week with Years 5 and 6 and within the theme of that half term’s work, gave the children the opportunity to decide what they would like to learn, do or make. The rules were as follows: A full plan had to be submitted showing aims, outline plans, resources, predicted timescales and intended outcomes. This had to be discussed with a member of staff and resources had to have been either collected in school or brought in from home before work could begin. Each child was accountable for working to a high standard and for their progress in each lesson. Once completed, the results had to be shared with the rest of the class. The outcomes were amazing! Children who usually couldn’t wait for break time were asking to stay in to complete their work! The children displayed a variety of skills and talents and their general confidence grew as a result. Children who struggled with academic learning became experts in their own strength zones and were looked up to by the other children. The highlight of these sessions was a termly open afternoon where the children displayed their work and we invited parents into school for the children to present their work. These afternoons were great confidence builders and really showcased the children’s talents. Give it a try – you won’t regret it!

Developing Effective Group Work This simple resource is designed for key stage 2 teachers looking to promote effective group work in their classrooms. In life, people need to be able to work together but these group working skills need to be carefully developed to ensure that they are effective and positive. Much has been said already about the positive impact of working in groups, but this isn’t always the case. For some children, working in a group can be daunting as they are either over-powered by a more confident person or demotivated because their ideas are not valued. Structuring group work by allocating distinct roles within the group is a means of valuing each child and ensuring that they play an equal part in the decision making. The six roles are as follows: - The Leader The Leader is responsible for managing the group and ensuring that everyone has a chance to speak. They draw the discussions together and summarise what has been said or decided. Scribe The scribe is responsible for keeping a record of what has been discussed and what has been decided. Timekeeper The timekeeper is responsible for keeping time. They remind the leader when time is running out and suggest to the leader that the group move on if they feel that the group are not going to complete the task. Spokesperson The spokesperson is responsible for feeding back to the class at the end of the group task. Encourager The encourager is responsible for offering support to other group members to encourage them to speak and to celebrate good contributions. At the end of the task the encourager should nominate the person they think made the most significant contributions to the task. Challenger The challenger is responsible for challenging ideas. They should be asking the ‘hard’ questions to ensure that ideas are well thought through. Each session the children swap roles so that each child has the opportunity to take on each role. Some will be more of a challenge than others, but each child has a part to play.

This resource is aimed at children in upper Key Stage 2 and Lower Key Stage 3 who need to extend and develop vocabulary - a vital skill for success in both reading and writing. The task involves looking up a range different words and finding synonyms and antonyms. It is great for both teachers and parents interested in developing in children, a love of vocabulary.

This is a full term’s literacy planning for Year 6 based on the book - Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson. I taught this with my year 5/6 class and it was a great favourite. The book is an adventure story, set in the Amazon with a boy and a girl as the key characters. The resource contains fourteen full weeks of literacy lesson plans (five lessons per week), together with all resource masters (including 6 full reading comprehension activities and mark schemes) - an answer booklet and full powerpoint slide shows to accompany each lesson. The lesson plans contain learning objectives and success criteria, key learning to be established, an outline of each lesson content, links to related resources and links to the grammar curriculum for Year 6. My hope is that this saves newly qualified and experienced teachers alike hours of your precious time and enables you to enjoy your well earned summer holiday! Please do leave a review and let me know what you think.

5 x 15 minute literacy and maths activities for Year 4. Are you… Struggling to get your children to practice their basic literacy and maths skills during the half term holiday? Looking for some short, age appropriate resources to send home with the children to complete each day? Searching for something with answers included? I’ve been a class teacher just like you, and spent hours designing suitable resources to encourage my pupils to keep working on their maths and literacy skills through the holidays. That’s why I created these resources to support you. Attached, you will find extracts from some of the activities included in the pack. Each pack contains 5, 15 minute activities for your pupils to do at home - one for each day of the half term holiday - including number and word activities, reading comprehensions and maths puzzles - all with answer sheets included.

5 x 15 minute literacy and maths activities for Year 3 to do at home. Are you… Struggling to get your children to practice their basic literacy and maths skills during the half term holiday? Looking for some short, age appropriate resources to send home with the children to complete each day? Searching for something with answers included? I’ve been a class teacher just like you, and spent hours designing suitable resources to encourage my pupils to keep working on their maths and literacy skills through the holidays. That’s why I created these resources to support you. Each pack contains 5, 15 minute activities for your pupils to do at home - one for each day of the half term holiday - including number and word activities, reading comprehension and maths puzzles - all with answer sheets included.

5 x 15 minute literacy and maths activities for Year 3. Are you… Struggling to get your children to practice their basic literacy and maths skills during the half term holiday? Looking for some short, age appropriate resources to send home with the children to complete each day? Searching for something with answers included? I’ve been a class teacher just like you, and spent hours designing suitable resources to encourage my pupils to keep working on their maths and literacy skills through the holidays. That’s why I created these resources to support you. Attached, you will find extracts from some of the activities included in the pack. Each pack contains 5, 15 minute activities for your pupils to do at home - one for each day of the half term holiday - including number and word activities, reading comprehensions and maths puzzles - all with answer sheets included.

In just ten minutes per day, this resource is proven to improve a child’s speed and accuracy with multiplication facts to support all areas of calculation in mathematics. In order to access the Year 5 and 6 maths curricula, children benefit greatly from the ability to rapidly recall their times tables facts. Without this skill, children spend valuable time having to ‘work out’ their times tables facts and this has a negative impact on accuracy, efficiency and most importantly confidence, in mathematics. This Resource contains… Five sheets of multiplication questions. Five sheets of division questions. Three recording charts to monitor progress. How this resource works The Question Sheets. Each times-table sheet contains seventy-five questions arranged in three columns. The aim is to complete as many of these questions as possible in ten minutes without missing any of the questions out! For younger children, or children who are less confident with their times tables, the sheets could be divided into three separate columns so that they are only faced with twenty-five questions at a time! How to record progress Which Recording Chart to use. At the end of the ten-minute session, choose one of the Recording Charts included in the pack. • If a child is not confident with their tables and is only working on one column, use Recording Chart 1. This will record a maximum of 18 questions so will build confidence in the early stages of proficiency. • If the children are moving onto the second column , choose the Recording Chart 2 • If the children are completing over 36 questions in 10 minutes, choose Recording Chart 3. Completing the Recording Chart. It is recommended that the children complete the Recording Chart of their scores so that they can see how they improve over time. The Recording Chart is divided into columns. Complete one column on the Recording Chart for each ten-minute session. Record the number of questions answered in one colour. Use the answer sheet to mark the questions. Criss cross over the column already completed to show the number of questions that were correctly answered. (This will help the child see how accurate they are as well as how speedy they are. If a child is getting all their questions right, their challenge is to do more in the time available. If a child is completing many more questions than they are answering correctly, the next challenge is to slow down and aim for greater accuracy.) Challenge and Extension. Use the Division Sheets in place of the multiplication questions. Reduce the time limit allowed to complete the questions. Focus on the time taken to complete the whole sheet. How quickly can you complete the seventy-five questions?

This is a set of tips for teachers and parents to help develop a good, strong pencil grip in their pupils and children. Unless children learn how to hold a pencil correctly, it is difficult to develop a clear, fluent and legible style of handwriting. Children with poor pencil grips tend to have greater problems writing neatly at speed and may end up with wrist pain.

5 x 15 minute literacy and maths activities for Year 3. Are you… Struggling to get your children to practice their basic literacy and maths skills during the half term holiday? Looking for some short, age appropriate resources to send home with the children to complete each day? Searching for something with answers included? I’ve been a class teacher just like you, and spent hours designing suitable resources to encourage my pupils to keep working on their maths and literacy skills through the holidays. That’s why I created these resources to support you. Attached, you will find extracts from some of the activities included in the pack. Each pack contains 5, 15 minute activities for your pupils to do at home - one for each day of the half term holiday - including number and word activities, reading comprehensions and maths puzzles - all with answer sheets included.

A set of 10 literacy and maths activities to help children keep their basic skills active during the school Christmas holidays. Designed to take only fifteen minutes a day, this pack of activities covers reading, vocabulary development, word puzzles, calculation, times-tables and word problems complete with answer sheets and a self assessment tracking grid. All the activities are written by an experienced primary school teacher.