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.

I made this resource based on the 2019 Waitrose Christmas advert. It is about Edgar, a dragon who is easily excitable about things happening around him, but causes to him breathing fire, and therefore some accidents! He is friends with a young girl, his best friend, who tries to keep him out of trouble, and after one incident which causes the whole village to be angry with Edgar, she buys him a Christmas present which will bring joy to the festive dinner and make everyone happy again. I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing on character description in this lesson. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas, a Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson, and a vocabulary sheet/ screenshots to help children to remember the plot. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group. Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!

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!

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.

I made this resource based on the 2016 John Lewis Christmas advert. It is about a dog called Buster who loves watching his young owner dream of being a professional gymnast, but then as her surprise gift is built on Christmas Eve, Buster appears becomes upset when the garden wildlife get to have a go, unbeknown to the family. The next morning, as the little girl flies out of bed and out into the garden to try her present, the family are lost for words when Buster pushes her aside to leap on to the trampoline first. I wanted to use this advert, not only because John Lewis adverts have become incredibly popular in the run up to Christmas, and therefore children find them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing especially on verbs. Included are two differentiated story plans, a vocabulary sheet with larger screen shots from the film and a Notebook flip chart or Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group. Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by John Lewis Christmas adverts in my TES shop! **UPDATED 05/11/2018 TO INCLUDE POWERPOINT VERSION OF THE LESSON PRESENTATION**

I made this resource based on the 2018 Aldi Christmas advert. It is about Kevin the Carrot, who has previously featured in Aldi adverts. The advert starts as a spoof of the famous Cola Cola ‘Holidays Are Coming’ advert, until the truck hits snowfall on a mountain road and slides off the road, balancing precariously on the cliff edge, ending the advert literally on a cliffhanger. Aldi themselves ask the audience at the end of the advert to help Kevin, so I thought this would be a great opportunity for children to have a go at writing their own version of the end of the story. I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this activity on being able to continue the flow of a story. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group. Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!

I made and taught these Art lessons alongside our class Victorians topic, helping children to understand why silhouette artwork became popular in the Victorian period, how silhouettes are made and identifying everyday objects by their silhouettes. The first lesson is an introduction, as described above. The task gets children to match images of everyday objects with its silhouette. The second lesson gets children to work in small groups to sketch their portrait silhouette outlines using torches and pencils. The third lesson brings a modern twist to the portrait silhouette, by getting children to fill their portrait not with solid black, but with drawings and colour linked to their own personality (which could be linked to Mindfulness in PHSE). UPDATE 27/03/2019 Presentation now available in Powerpoint format.

These two lessons introduce what charcoal is (i.e. where it comes from), why it became a popular art form during the Victorian period and the techniques to sketching using charcoal.

This is a great lesson to introduce a World War II topic. Using a Notebook presentation, it involves a range of discussion and activities helping children to understand what a world war is, why WWII started, what the two main sides were and why these alliances were formed. The lesson follows the objective and criteria: Objective: To be able to locate the Allies and Axis powers * I know the meaning of Allies and Axis * I can use an atlas to locate countries involved in WWII * I can identify which countries were Allied or Axis * I can explain why countries may have formed alliances The main lesson activity involves children using atlases to identify countries in Europe, and then either independently or as a class understanding and marking whether each country was Allied or Axis.

Nelson Boles' 'Little Boat' animation is surprisingly powerful - taking a simple boat through a range of settings which sees it become more and more damaged by human life, storms and war, but with a surprising and heartwarming ending. This Literacy lesson challenges children to image they are the boat themselves and recount it's story in the first person, describing what it can see, but also what happens to it, and its consequential feelings. Lesson pack includes writing plan for children and full lesson notebook! Enjoy!

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!

This activity gets children to compare the UK and Egypt's most important rivers; the Thames and the Nile. Using ICT, they will compare their size and overall importance by researching their length, depth, origin, mouth and major cities that they pass through and how each river has been used historically by their country. This would be a good cross-curricular activity to use if you are studying the Ancient Egyptians or Water/Rivers in your topic work and want to cover lots of skill sets.

This resource is a class assembly that I did with my Year 3 and 4 classes about our cross-curricular topic for the term: Light. To make the script I split the class into five groups, and gave each group a question to research with helpful bullet points. They went away and did this over a lesson, making the notes from which I made a class assembly script! The script can easily be adapted to change children's names or to add or take away parts. The script also includes visual activities or objects that groups can be showing to support their part of the assembly. Group topics include: What is light? Sources of light Darkness Shadows Reflections It is designed to be an informative assembly, but fun and easily for an audience to follow. Enjoy!

This lesson explains to children the importance of women during WWII - how they kept the country running while men were away fighting, taking on jobs in industries that women previously did not work in and therefore changing their role and status in society. The notebook presentation explores how women's roles changed, their pay and what that would compare to today, and how the government used posters to encourage women into industrial work in factories and on farms. The lesson activity is in three parts: 1) studying the posters and annotating observations towards use of colour, illustrations and text 2) Answering questions based on class discussion about women's role during WWII 3) Using the internet to explore given articles about women in WWII, understanding how it is still celebrated today

Oktapodi is the story of two in-love octopi who are suddenly separated (the female to be sold as food) leading to the male to endure a fast paced and exciting quest to rescue her. The objective of the writing task is: To be able to write a narrative using descriptive language Success Criteria: *I can give my narrative a beginning, middle and an end. *I can write in simple, compound and complex sentences. *I can use adjectives and similes to describe. *I can use powerful verbs and describe them using adverbs. *I can include my characters' viewpoint (how they feel). The resource pack includes a presentation for the two days of activities (day one, writing; day two; editing, improving and re-writing), a planning sheet for children to make notes on before completing their narrative.

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 lesson models to children how to convert times between the 12 and 24 hour clocks using the following Success Criteria: * I know that there are 24 hours in a day * I know morning = am / afternoon = pm * I label an analogue clock using 24 hour times * I can use my clock to tell the time across 24 hours Challenge: I can tell the time to the nearest minute It is contains a balanced mixture of partner talk questions, teacher modelling and independent activities, along with helpful links to resources to support the objective. It even has a challenge plenary at the end, asking pupils to write 24 hour times on a blank analogue clock. I've included a short lesson activity for this lesson, but I cannot include worksheets for this lesson as I would be copyrighting other people's resources, but I have included links on one page to analogue clock resources. Enjoy!

These three lessons, designed for KS2, help children to understand sound, how it travels, how sound can be different and what materials can block sound. The objectives are as follows: Lesson 1 - Objective: To understand that sounds are made when objects vibrate Success Criteria: I can understand that sounds are made when objects vibrate. I can compare how sounds travel through gases, liquids and solids I can investigate how sounds travel through different objects I can explain the results of my investigation using scientific diagrams/language The lesson poses various questions to children throughout the notebook presentation about what sound is, how we hear, how sound might travel differently, to allow them to demonstrate their prior knowledge or ideas. It also includes useful links which help to embed given facts, mini tasks to engage the class, and best of all, a creative main activity where children investigate whether sound travels through string telephones! The differentiated plenary is a 'fill-the-gaps' activity which assesses children's understanding from the lesson. Lesson 2 - Objective: To investigate how the pitch and volume of instruments can be changed Success Criteria: I can understand that sounds are made when objects vibrate. I can explain what is meant by the 'pitch' of sound I can explain what is meant by the 'volume' of sound I can make predictions I can alter the pitch and volume of various musical instruments Children meet this objective by first recapping what they have already learnt about sound, by learning the difference between 'pitch' and 'volume' using different links in the notebook and then by investigating pitch and volume using an online BBC Bitesize activity, noting their predictions and conclusions in their books. Musical instruments could be used in the lesson as well! Lesson 3 - LI: To investigate whether materials effect the movement of soundwaves SC: I can identify the properties of different materials I understand how sound travels through solids, liquids and gases I can make predictions I can identify whether an experiment is a fair test I can explain the results of an experiment The lesson starts by recapping previous learning, before brainstorming in what scenarios we might want sound to be blocked. Children then conduct an experiment, comparing which materials would be best to block sound.

A brief lesson showing art created by Henry Moore, using sketches to bring some of the events of the war to life.

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!