Pigeon Impossible is a hilarious animation easily available on YouTube. It is about a detective, Walter, who, despite his top-level job, becomes amusingly thwarted by a....pigeon! Children love describing Walter, especially his traits which lack expected 'detective-qualities', and the mischievous pigeon, who only has an eye on getting one thing. This pack includes a full lesson presentation and planning worksheet. It can easily be adapted for different year groups and a particular Literacy focus, e.g. tense, person, grammar or vocab.

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!

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!

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.

When it came to teaching Roman Numerals in Year 5, it was daunting. I didn't know them up to 1000 when the curriculum change came in, never mind having the subject knowledge to teach them to children! And although there are good worksheets and powerpoint presentations out there, I wanted my class to KNOW each of the key symbols so they could apply it to any 4 digit values So I spent a long time making these lessons - especially day one - where I thought of a (slightly cheesy) way of how the children could remember them. BUT IT WORKED! And even I know all the Roman Numerals up to 10,000. So I hope these 3 days worth of lesson presentations help you too!

As part of the children's cross-curricular studies about the Black Death, I linked my Art by learning about Masks. The class had previously studied the Egyptians, so this linked well with their knowledge from that. This is a simple presentation which will allow you as a class to discuss what masks are, who wears them and why, and to compare different examples from cultures around the world. I haven't included a specific activity, but from this we went on compare/contrast the examples, and then over future lessons focus specifically on Death Masks before the class designed and made their own. Can easily be adapted for a different topic which features masks!

Two lessons worth of worksheets, getting children to study examples of Ancient Greek clothing, before going on to design their own Ancient Greek top (which in my class we made using cheap white t-shirts!)

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!

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.

This amazing short film by Aidan Gibbons 'The Piano', will really tug on the heartstrings of you and your class and produce some brilliant emotive writing. Included in this pack is two Literacy lessons (planning/writing recount and edit/improve), a planning sheet for the first lesson and a worksheet to make notes using stills from the film. The writing activity takes the form of a first person recount (also easily adaptable to third person) which challenges the class to infer the main character's thoughts and feelings as he is playing the piano and recalling key memories from his life.

Is your next topic about adverts, specifically TV adverts? Then here is a worksheet which involves children watching 3 different adverts and then analysing/comparing their effectiveness, use of language, use of effects and how each could be improved to draw in/entertain the reader more.

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.

I have used Pixar's brilliant 'Lifted' animation for two short-burst English/Literacy lessons - one as a general recount and the other as a first person recount from one character's point of view. The latter is the resource that I have shared, as I found it to be the most useful out of the two in my teaching practise. I requires children to infer a character's thoughts and feelings and to convert a given narrative into the first person, therefore allowing teachers to test a range of writing skills in one lesson, which the children themselves love because of the engaging resource!

Are your class studying the Ancient Greeks? Here's a lesson activity, focusing on Ancient Greek architecture, which gets children to research various facts about different buildings (e.g. stadiums, housing). This would be a great cross-curricular activity, as children could use ICT to research the answers. Worksheet could be completed in pairs, or for a shorter lesson, different groups could each focus on a particular architecture type.

Here's a resource I've enjoyed using over and over, as it gets the kids to do most of the learning! The best way for children to understand the features of different Literacy texts is for them to explore and compare different examples. This worksheet focuses on the features of persuasive texts, which children would look out for in different examples, tick or cross whether they could spot them, and evidence by including an extract (e.g. if they have ticked that a text uses a rhetorical question, they need to note it on the sheet). This task promotes clear investigative, reading and literacy skills which could be completed independently, in partners or even together as a group!

This task, linked to Ancient Greek topic work, gets children to study different examples of Ancient Greek pottery, before they design their own pot shape outline in their books. They would then use this as a plan for when they make their pot from clay, following the instructions on the sheet.

Is your current English topic focusing on persuasive texts/adverts? Here's a handy plan for children to brainstorm/note their ideas before they do their final design! It gets children to think about different vocabulary they will use, and includes LO/SC to make skill targets clear.

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!