'Hunted' is a short animation film which starts with a young, naive, native tribesman wandering into a hunter's campsite. The comedy and animation effects really draw in children and I have found it a brilliant resource to use to develop their writing description. This resource contains a full lesson and planning worksheet for the children. It focuses on developing the children's description of the setting, characters and their feelings as events progress. It can easily be adapted to challenge a different Literacy skill or to suit your class. Enjoy!

This is a five-lesson half-term resource on the cross-curricular topic, Earth Matters. Containing a Notebook flip and a worksheet, the KS2-suitable resource develops children's understanding of biomes and eco-systems in a range of engaging lessons, including research project, making a poster, making a 'dome biome' and making group powerpoint presentations which could then be used in a class assembly. The Learning Intentions/Objectives over the five lessons are: 1) To understand the features of biomes 2) To understand the interdependency of organisms in a biome 3) + 4) To understand that eco-systems are delicate / To know about global environmental problems and solutions 5) To know about global environmental problems and solutions / To prepare a presentation about a topic

I made this resource based on the 2018 Barbour Christmas advert. It is about a girl who appears to have loved watching and reading The Snowman; the famous Christmas animation short film, 40 years since it was first released; and wants the story to come to life for herself. It’s got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children can relate to. 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 instant on character emotions. 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!

Here is a lesson presentation and writing plan based on Teacher's TV 'spooky graveyard' short film. I enjoyed using this English/Literacy across all KS2 classes to develop children's descriptive writing (setting, atmosphere) in the form of a recount. This is especially good to use around Halloween time! Resource includes lesson presentation (Notebook) and planning sheet.

Monkey Spoon is a hilarious animation about two monkeys who find a spoon and proceed to mess around with it. I have used this resource over and over to promote various writing skills, the most successful of which I have found to be adopting one of the character's points of view in a recount of events. Included in this resource is the whole lesson notebook and a plan for children to make notes on before writing their recount.

I made this lesson to help my class develop their variation of sentence starters. My lesson notebook models different examples using the helpful poster (which can be made into a dice) and then gets children to apply their understanding by recounting the animation of George and The Dragon (as our Literacy topic at that time was Myths and Legends). This can easily be adapted to link with a particular theme or year group.

I used this lesson to revisit time connectives to improve the flow of my class' writing. The lesson itself starts with a recap of what time connectives are, why writers use them, and the brainstorming of different examples. It then moves on to challenging the children to use time connectives when recounting the events from the funny short film, 'The Black Hole', before they go on to independently complete a piece of writing - either recounting the events of the film or by writing their own story featuring a mysterious black hole.

These four lessons, designed for KS2, help children to understand light; different types, how it travels, what it is used for and its relationship with different materials. It involves a range of questions for children to brainstorm concepts and practical activities to test them. The objectives are as follows: LI: To understand what light is and how it allows us to see SC I know what light is / how light is formed I can identify whether a source of light is natural or man-made I understand how movement of light into our eyes allows us to see LI: To understand how light travels SC I can explain how light allows us to see I can create an investigation to test a theory I can predict the outcome of an investigation with reasoning I can explain the steps of an investigation, including annotated diagrams I can evaluate an investigation I can use scientific vocabulary LI: To sort and classify materials based on their transparency SC I can explain how shadows are formed I can identify the properties of different materials I can create an investigation to test a theory I can predict the outcome of an investigation with reasoning I can explain the steps of an investigation, including using annotated diagrams I can evaluate an investigation I can use scientific vocabulary LI: To understand the properties of reflective materials SC I can identify the properties of materials I can sort materials based on their reflective properties I know different examples of where reflective materials are used in every day life I can use clear diagrams and annotation to explain my ideas I can use scientific language

This is one of my FAVOURITE lessons that can be taught across KS2; a short burst Literacy lesson to develop children's understanding of instruction texts using a chocolatey Easter theme! I would always bring in a few small Easter eggs to this lesson. Using one in my modelling, I would play dumb and be an alien who had never seen an Easter egg before. I would ask the children what to do with it (i.e. to open and eat it) but did everything LITERALLY as they said, to make them appreciate the detail they needed to include in their instructions. Therefore, if they said "pull open the flaps" I would pull really hard and rip the box!! This would encourage them to include adverbs, like 'carefully', in their instructions. The other Easter eggs would be on each table to help the children think through the different steps of opening and eating it, with the promise that they would be shared at lunch time of course! This again helps to bring a purpose to the skill activity and engages children into the learning. Included is a flip notebook guiding you and the children through the lesson, and differentiated planning sheets. Appropriate for all KS2 and easily adapted for your own class' needs. Enjoy!

This resource can form a lesson, informing children about the importance of General Elections (like 2017) and why we have them. This Powerpoint presentation allows children to learn about what 'government' is, how it is structured, what different major parties form our current government and what their current policies are (which I have sourced as independently as possible using various news outlets and party pages, barring any U-turns!) This then goes on to allow children to discuss the policies presented to them and to think about what matters / appeals to them the most, with the aim of encouraging freedom of independent thought and debate. Due to the complex wording of some policies, this resource would be most appropriate for UKS2 and KS3, and possibly LKS2 with detailed supporting verbal explanation of key issues provided by teaching staff, such as Brexit. The class can then go on to hold a Polling Station to vote, with polling cards included in the resource pack, before votes being counted and the results being displayed on the slide in both percentage and pie chart form.

Through my career I found it easier for children to understand the difference between area and perimeter by linking perimeter with addition practice and area with multiplication practice. Therefore this resource consists of four lessons: Day 1 - Revising multiplication (my lesson focuses on the array method with HA being challenged to try grid method) Day 2 - Understanding 'area' by learning that it is the space inside a 2D shape, it is a form of measure, that area can be found by counting cm squares with appropriate unit of measure in the answer. Day 3 - Linking day 2's learning by introducing the concept of length x width to calculate area, but still using cm square paper to make the transition easily differentiable Day 4 - Calculating area using length x width by being able to identify the length and width of a quadrilateral, showing their calculations linking back to Day 1 and including appropriate unit of measurement in their answer. HA can be challenged with compound shapes. I used this lesson with a mixed ability Year 3 class, but it can be easily adaptable for higher KS1 or KS2. I cannot include downloadable worksheets in the resource pack due to copyright, but I have included small screenshots of the resources I used for different abilities on each task page so you get an idea of appropriate resources for each day. Most are easily findable using a simple search on Google images or good education websites.

'The Playground' starts with the opening line: Everything stopped, everything a statue all around me. Frozen in time. This lesson resource gets children to brainstorm and write the rest of the story using their own imagination, using the above opening line and a playground photograph as stimuli. The objective and success criteria are: To write a complete story Success Criteria: * My story has a beginning, middle and end * The events of my story flow and make sense * I can engage the reader using description / feelings / varied sentences The lesson presentation is in Smartboard format with detailed, engaging slides which promote talk partner discussion, teacher modelling, an independent white board task, clear objectives and plenary. It can easily be adapted for different KS2 year groups and a different writing focus other than story structure, e.g. tense, sentence starters, grammar or vocabulary.

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!

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.