Read the information and legend about St. Nicholas to your class and and then ask them to sort the facts into true and false. Wonderful Christmas listening skills activity! Great group work! Then ask your class to sequence the true facts into a logical order (the order they appear here) and write them up in their books. I have included an image of St. Nicholas and Father Christmas to add to the page so students can see where Father Christmas came from. The Father Christmas can be coloured in as an extension activity. Included in this resource are: The Story to Read True Facts False Facts True Place-mat False Place-mat Images to decorate page. This is all ready to laminate and use year after year.

A minibeast venn diagram to form a structure for writing, making a comparison between the two insects.

A minibeast venn diagram to form a structure for writing, making a comparison between the two insects.

A minibeast venn diagram to form a structure for writing, making a comparison between the two insects.

A minibeast venn diagram to form a structure for writing, making a comparison between the two insects.

An exciting 'Exciting Words' starter. Get your students into small groups. Lay out the 'boring words' on each table. (e.g. said, little, sad) Give the groups 5 minutes to write as many exciting words as they can, which they could use instead of the boring word, around each boring word. e.g. around 'said' they could write 'exclaimed' 'whispered' 'gasped'. Next ask the groups to move to a new boring word and see if they can add any more words. I usually ask them to move once more. Next ask a student from each group to read out the exciting words. This could be an activity where they use a thesaurus. This resource includes a 'teachers notes' sheet which has lots of good examples for each word. Display this work to inform the next piece of writing.