This resource seeks to highlight the fact that many children rely too heavily on speech when they are writing conversations. It gives an example of a speech relay (to-ing and fro-ing with speech line after line), which children so often fall into the trap of writing. It then shows how adding some narrative and description in amongst the speech can help the reader picture what's going on better. With two examples of classic children's novels, the children are encouraged to assess the balance of speech and narrative for themselves. Finally the children are given a speech relay which they are asked to 'flesh out' with some narrative to make a good balance for a more mature piece of writing.

This resource shows a story (with a moral a bit like a fable) which has ten words highlighted within the story. These could be used as the initial focus for vocabulary for the lesson. There are also ten blank lines in the story and ten words at the bottom of the page. Children need to insert the words in the correct places in the story. With dictionary work, this could take a whole lesson or be good for a homework activity. The twenty words are: contradict companion endangered lingering significance imitate curious immobile gracious robust wander dubious sombre benefit ample despair sufficient resemble significance flawless tribute.

These three games are a good introduction to algebraic terms and expressions and are designed for two players. In two of the games, the question cards will have something like b + b + a + a and the players need to see if they have the simplified answer 2b + 2a on their grid. In the third game, the question card might show yz + z and the pupil needs to expand it to y x z + z to see if they have it on their grid.

This resource is designed for groups who are in the early stages of column addition. It is used a bit like a smartboard (although it's in word) as its examples need to be worked through with the children. Visually, the questions are shown with arrow cards to help show that adding 2 and 6 in the tens column is the same as adding 20 and 60. This also helps if you are then able to provide this resource children to use 'hands on' in the lesson. For questions that require carrying, the appropriate 10 or 100 is available at the bottom of the page to drag up in to the questions. The first questions are TU + TU with no carrying, reaching HTU + HTU with carrying by the end.

Here we have three resources. The first is a number line from -20 to +20 which will help pupils to complete the two activities. The first activity asks pupils to increase or decrease a temperature by a given amount of degrees. Blue and red are used to help colour co-ordinate the questions depending on whether the temperature rises or drops. Later questions involve a temperature that first goes up and then comes down a bit, providing a basic two-stage question. The second activity requires the pupils to do multiple increases or decreases (or both) to get a final temperature. For example: It's 11 degrees and the temperature drops by 2 degrees every night for six nights. It them increases by 3 degrees for one further night. What's the final temperature?

The main activity in this lesson begins with asking children to make some true statements about a group of shapes (where the statement will be true for ALL shapes in that group). From here the activity moves on to looking at a statement about a shape and seeing if children can find an example of a shape which proves this statement and another shape that disproves the statement. A sheet of shapes has been provided so children don't always have to draw shapes but can cut and stick instead. This resource also comes with 3 introduction or follow up activities linked to shapes and their properties. There are instructions for drawing shapes with given properties; a Carroll diagram for sorting right angles and curved sides, and a table looking for the basic sides and corners of well-known 2D shapes.

This resource allows for work on eight sentences of similes, using 'like', 'as' and 'as if'. It is a cut, match and stick activity. The first five sentences require the children to match the starts and ends of sentences, with pictures to try and help them see the connections. The last three sentences have the starts of the sentences and blank boxes for them to create their own endings, with enough room to draw a picture to help show the comparison. Images have been labelled as appropriate for reuse via the advanced search of Google images.

I used this for homework for more able Year 5 and Year 6 pupils. The first page is about taking ordinary sentences and making them more interesting by looking at word order for creating tension or excitement, and then following them with shorter sentences for contrast and drama. The second page looks at the uses of colons and semi-colons, modelling examples before asking the children to write their own.

This resource, over two pages, has four activities increasing in difficulty. The first two give the pupils sentences in which they need to identify and circle the actual spoken words. Having done this, they can attempt to write out the sentences in their books with the correct punctuation. A modeled example is given. The third activity asks the children to insert the punctuation on the sheet for a five-line conversation. The final activity is a conversation between two characters. The one character has all of his lines already written on the sheet. The second character's responses need to be written by the pupils.

In this activity, the pupil is challenged to act as the teacher and mark a piece of work. The text is a well-spaced A4 recount with a number of spelling and punctuation errors, including commas for lists and clauses, capital letters and homophone spelling mistakes. There is an answer sheet too.

This resource provides pupils with equations of lines (e.g. y = 8, y = 4...) that will form a basic shape on a grid. Questions then ask for the perimeter of the shape or the co-ordinates at the centre of the shape. It is good to encourage pupils to find a way of answering these questions without drawing accurate graphs every time but perhaps just little sketches or by looking at the appropriate numbers. The fourth and final question uses the equations of straight lines to form a triangle with questions asking about the type of triangle and a new co-ordinate if the shape were reflected in the axis.

Based on a GCSE exam question, this worksheet has four examples of tables that need filling in. Answers are provided and a helpful hints box at the bottom helps pupils to get started if needed.

This is a good resource for pupils beginning in algebra, especially those who like to know exactly what's going on and why. The left hand column of the resource gives written examples showing that, for example, 3 x a x a can be written as 3a(squared). It proves this by working the same example through with numbers. 3 x 4 x 4 = 3 x 4(squared) = 48. The right hand column requires the pupil to have a go at writing a simplified algebraic expression based on the pattern in the left column. There is room to do a 'numbers version' if that helps. At the bottom, there is a challenge to work the idea backwards, expanding expressions such as 6fg to find out what's really going on inside that expression.

This resource comprises two sheets. The first shows a model answer about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's descriptive writing skills in The Hound of the Baskervilles, beginning with a simple answer, moving to a more detailed answer and finishing with some extra detailed analysis. The second sheet is made up of prompts for sentence starters on making a point, introducing evidence from the text and beginning to explain what it means.

In this activity, pupils need a fiction book to hunt for examples of authors using writing skills. Writing skills needed include those such as short sentences for drama, starting sentences in different ways and using different words for 'said'. It also asks them to find examples of ellipsis, exclamation marks, proper nouns, hyphenated words and commas in lists, among other things. For each of the skills/examples required, there is an example given on the sheet to act as a model and to remind the pupils in case they have forgotten.

This four page booklet begins with an explanation of the terms ‘edges’, ‘faces’ and ‘vertices’ and then tests this knowledge using three basic 3D shapes. The inside of the booklet has two tables and images of prisms and pyramids. It requires the pupil to find the number of edges, faces and vertices for ten of these shapes. It also asks them for the number of sides of the base shape on the pyramid and the number of sides of the cross-sectional shape on the prism. This is to help with the investigation on the final page. The last page asks pupils to look at the numbers in the tables and spot patterns/rules. It encourages them to express their thoughts in algebra if possible. Then, to test their theories, there are another two shapes to work with on this final page. Aimed at Year 6 - Year 9 pupils.

I made this resource when working with some weaker Year 6s who got in a massive muddle with converting cm, m and km. They couldn’t remember what to times and divide by, whether they were shifting the digits or decimal point (because different teachers had taught them differently!) or which way they were shifting things. So this powerpoint/lesson avoids that method and uses the lining up method where they need to write down the conversion, then the question underneath and spot where 0s and decimal points need to go. E.g.: 1000m = 1.000km 0751m = 0.751km The lesson starts with some warming up of place value and lining up decimal numbers. It then moves on to look at units of measure and asks children to estimate some lengths, weights and volumes. (It seemed that my group had no idea what a ‘reasonable’ answer was, as they had no context of distance or weight.) The powerpoint explains how to line up to find the answer. Questions are provided and slides 26-29 should be printed for the independent worksheet. All answers provided. I appreciate children need to know the multiplying and dividing method for converting measure (see my other resources). This was a much-needed ‘quick-fix’ for SATs preparation. Please do make sure you go over the standard method with your class at a later date!

I used this resource over two lessons. In the first lesson we used the colour coded question cards to teach indices with increasing degrees of difficulty. The cards are coloured red, orange, yellow, green, blue and dark blue. With red having positive integer indices and orange having negative integer indices. As it works down through the colours, it introduces 1/2, -1/2, 3/4 and -3/4. There are five questions in each colour and the answers are available if you want to do it more as a matching exercise. In the second lesson, I provided pupils with the prompt sheet of the 6 processes covered last lesson. With this as support (no exercise books allowed), we used the same question cards again to complete a board game in pairs. Instructions for the game are included, with suggestions for differentiation too. It went down very well, hence listing it here.

Lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs to be sorted into the correct boxes in a table. Use one column of words each time for a SPAG starter activity.

This quiz is made up of 5 rounds with ten slides of questions per round plus a bonus question (usually a harder challenge). Answers are provided so that the quiz could be left for a supply teacher/covering TA. Play with the whole class working independently, or in teams (it is set up to be played by 2 teams which are indicated by shapes in top corner of each slide). Each slide also has colour coding for level of difficulty and an option for winning points on each question. Each round has a particular theme or topic: tenses, phrases and clauses, punctuation, types of words and making words (including root words, suffixes and antonyms).