This is a fantastic lesson that I’ve used many times as part of a skill-based curriculum. The topic here is ‘Time’ and this lesson takes students on a journey through time and space, through the ‘Cosmic Calendar’. This topic and the clips included are super engaging and thought-provoking. I’ve had some brilliant lessons following this structure (including tricky classes!) The lesson begins with a clip and brief discussion, relating to how we (the average person) spends our time - e.g. 1 of every 5 minutes on social media. Eeeeek! Students are then given questions for the quiz ahead and have a few moments to look at this as a team - the idea is that they work together to note down and recall specific pieces of information… but I don’t tell them this! We then watch a clip - link included - of Neil DeGrasse Tyson presenting ‘The Cosmic Calendar’ as students jot down notes. Following this, there’s the quiz which they answer in teams. We then peer assess answers, before uncovering how the winning teams managed to remember the info (this is where we discuss team strategies!) After a little discussion - lots of opportunities for SMSC - we have an independent sketching plenary which allows students to demonstrate understanding of this complex concept at its base level. I’ve taught this lesson as a single hour with year 7 students, but I’ve also extended it as a teamwork project in two or three lessons, with students presenting their own alternative version of the Cosmic Calendar. It’s easy to differentiate as low down as year 5 students and as high as year 11, with only a few tweaks! Whether your goal is to learn about Science, Time and Space; to build up note-taking skills in Literacy; or to work on teamwork/retention skills, this lesson is an engaging way of doing them all.

Big write task based on writing recounts, and giving pupils options to choose from, all relating to an imaginary school trip which they’re asked to recall. Planning frame for bullet points before they begin (I usually give 10 minutes for this.) A quick, engaging topic, for any kind of independent writing. Suitable for KS2 students. Works as a baseline assessment or as an end of unit test, to see how students’ writing skills have developed independently.

This is a lesson that I created for all year 7 teachers upon our first meeting with students - it’s a great project to try out with KS2 or KS3 pupils. It will help you to really see who they are, how they think, what their team skills and confidence are like, across different subjects. In a nutshell: there’s a mix of speaking and listening tasks, amidst the introduction of P.M.I (plus, minus and interesting.) At the beginning of the lesson, we model a task, via the example: ‘what if money grew up on trees?’ - Pupils have to really consider the realistic positive, negative and interesting outcomes. This isn’t so much about getting the ‘right’ answers (though one laptop or ipad per group will certainly help with research), but more about engaging students in thought-provoking, curiosity-based discussion. The P.M.I topics here bring up some really interesting ideas and debate, whilst students develop their teamwork, research and presentation skills too. Included here is: ppt. slides for the full lesson, slides to hand out to groups (different scenarios for each group), a blank P.M.I grid to support note-taking and group research/ideas, an assessment grid to judge presentations and a full walkthrough of the lesson.

After many struggles in teaching persuasion and marking ‘persuasive’ writing, I developed this essay based on the need for teachers to have a free chocolate…all the time! The bad example is based on the mistakes that the kids were making. The good example highlights sentence openers etc. that they can use… I’ve used this examples with students at KS2 and KS3 - Modelling the poor example seems to really improve the quality of writing before we even begin.

Here’s a simple task I use with Y7 SEND students to reinforce and consolidate learning based on SPaG terminology. This would work as a pre-SATs revision task for SPAG - Spelling, punctuation and grammar. Children have the option to work in same-ability pairs and research at the computer if needed. I find that this makes follow-up slow writing tasks easier, as pupils can refer back to definitions when asked to include a word type etc. in their sentences.

These slow writing prompt cards provide your KS2/KS3 writers with an opportunity to be independent, whilst also using a scaffolded approach. Children can shuffle and select from the 16 cards before including this in their writing, leading to a much more structured piece of work. Examples are included with each card to support understanding. I’ve used these cards with a range of different topics and I’ve had a lot of success with this approach, particularly with struggling writers, SEND students, and those who just generally lack confidence in their own skills and techniques. Slow Writing does take time and patience, but what students lack in speed, they more than make up for in the quality and progress of writing. See my blog from a while ago discussing successes with the Slow Writing approach and SEND students - https://wordpress.com/post/skillswithfrills.com/1340

A four-week long literacy unit, complete with a few worksheets. The resources we used were photocopies from various books. The Scholastic ‘Hot Topics’ Pirates book proved to be very useful and I recommend spending on that too! Pupils really enjoyed creating their pirate instruction manuals. The topic ensured that they were very engaged, especially the boys.

I created this as a homework sheet for SEND pupils in secondary, who were working at KS1/2 level. We had been working on different sentence types and adjectives/adverbs, so this allowed them to put this into practise and gave them examples also so they had a really clear structure to follow. As this group had issues with retaining information and skills, I also made the home learning helper sheet, just to provide more scaffolding. This could be used with lower ability/SEND pupils in KS3 or pupils at KS1/2. It can be used as home learning task, as a lesson, or as a scaffolded assessment at the end a unit incorporating these skills.

I used this with my SEND group who were in year 8, but working at KS1/2 level. We watched a clip from Youtube (Just search: Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire: Hungarian Horntail Task.) Then we worked in pairs to put the pictures in order at first, and then match the correct sentence below and stick this in. One higher ability pair had to change their sentences as an extra challenge. This became the plan of our Harry Potter diary - we were completing a topic about Dragons - so students had all the events and information, and only needed to transform this into a diary style. This topic is suitable for KS2 and KS3 pupils and is easily adapted for different ages, abilities and needs. It’s very simple just to take out the sentences either in part or altogether and ask students to create their own from scratch.

A creative writing task, based on the XBox/Playstation game, Ark: Evolution. I've found this is a great task for KS2 students, though it's definitely suitable for KS3 English also. Great for inspiring those uninspired students (especially boys) by bringing their love of gaming into literacy lessons. See my blog - link at the bottom - for more details as to how I've used this in the past. https://skillswithfrills.com/2018/02/07/teaching-students-with-an-xbox-imagination-bring-the-game-to-them/

In celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, here’s the play script from my class assembly whereby pupils perform a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Nice and easy to understand, and it worked a treat!

My groups range from Cyclops(LA - ranging from 2B to 3C) to Dragons (HA - around 4A-4B.) They have 5 20 minute sessions per week and each group does a different activity every day. They use these questions in a couple of the sessions- they’re based on the APP grid reading assessment and help me when I’m assessing levels at the end of each half term.

I cut up this worksheet into sections and blue tack it at points around the classroom. I then split the class into the same number of teams. Each team must send one envoy to learn as many facts about that question as they can and then report back to their team, who complete the team question sheet (last page.) Envoys are disqualified if they go more than once. A great, fast paced lesson and pupils are often so competitive that they completely forget they are learning! Builds on team skills, speaking and listening too! I go through the information at the end and award points per key piece of information. Winner gets housepoints/prize.

This is a literacy unit, lasting one week, based on balanced argument. Pupils spend the first part of the week reading/evaluating sources and then put together their own balanced argument. Normally, the week would end with a big write to test the children’s skills but we had a random observation on Friday so we joint-planned the Goldilocks lesson - see extra notebook file. All three year 6 teachers received ‘outstanding’ observation feedback for Goldilocks :-) The unit mixes English and Literacy with History source skills through our Henry VIII topic. I’ve used elements of this when teaching Tudors to Year 8 pupils in History lessons.

This is a slow writing task that I set as homework for SEND students in year 7 and 8, after they have completed similar slow writing activities. Great for reinforcing a range of skills, punctuation, grammar, sentence and word types and creative writing techniques. Suitable for KS2 and KS3 students, including struggling writers, LA pupils and SEND. Great as a structured end of unit piece of writing/Big Write or general independent writing. Easily differentiated further.

At the end of a unit of work based on various Mr. Bean clips, my KS3 SEND students watch the clip from youtube of Mr. Bean, waking up late for the dentist. Here’s the link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VumrpkL6RS0 Firstly, they cut out the pictures and in pairs, put these in order and discuss the events of the clip and how we might describe this to someone who hadn’t seen it. We split the clip in half and I show them my own slow writing from the first half of the clip. Then, their independent writing task is to complete the slow write for the second half of the clip. I’ve taught this to whole classes in year 5 and 6, and to small SEND groups in year 7 and 8. It’s always a hit, and I’ve found that the slow writing technique has made a big difference to the quality of writing that we’re producing.