I put this resource together as part of a package that I have created for the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. If you like this, and want more like it (with answers), then please take a look in my store. A BIT ABOUT ME Before teaching, I was a journalist. I still work as a freelance writer, and like nothing more than writing engaging texts to challenge and inspire children and young people. I choose subjects that may not be on the curriculum but are still of great importance for students to know about. Everything I write has been comprehensively researched from a number of sources and been written by myself. No plagiarism here! This is all original material. My questions are pitched at a high level, but with a bit of patience and persistence (and some adult help if necessary) most students will have great fun as they learn, especially as the penny drops I am aware of the impact of printed resources on our environment so try to condense my reading activities into as compact a space as possible. Hopefully this will help you save time in printing, and keep the bills down! Check out my store if you enjoy this – you’re sure to find more. Thanks!

This is the story of the Chilean miners who spent more than two months trapped underground. It is part of my ‘Stories of Survival’ guided reading series, available on TES. I hope you and the children find it of use.

This set of language flashcards explores key greetings in the 26 most commonly spoken languages in the world. The greetings that they teach are: Hello Goodbye Thank you Please Sorry Yes No Including on the flashcards are flags of countries where each language is spoken and facts about that language. The languages are: English Spanish Portuguese German French Mandarin Hindi Bengali Punjabi Urdu Persian Marathi Vietnamese Cantonese Korean Malay Swahili Japanese Javanese Russian Tamil Turkish Arabic Italian Hausa Telugu There are many uses for this with your students. My students enjoy taking a card each week and answering the register with a greeting in their chosen tongue. They could also be used as a class ‘language of the week’; as a multi-cultural display; or as part of a geography project. I hope you find them helpful!

January 2017 Everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, but few people know the name of the last. In January 2017, Eugene Cernan passed away. He was the last man to set foot on the surface of the Moon in the final Apollo mission, 1972. In this comprehension, your students will learn about the life and of this US hero. They will answer questions on a timeline; look through facts, stats and records from his remarkable career; and read tributes paid to him. Students will use inference and deduction skills as well as fact retrieval. They will be given a chance to choose key facts about his life and justify why they are so important. They will also make a judgment on whether humans will ever walk on the Moon again, based on what they have read. Questions and answers are provided, with an indication of how many marks are on offer at the end of each question. This is particularly helpful for children preparing for reading tests and exams, encouraging them to give fuller answers where required. As with all of my reading exercises, I try to write content that is interesting and engaging - stories that may not be on the curriculum, but are important for children to know. I hope you enjoy this activity on the life of a remarkable astronaut and United States hero.

Here is a reading pack on Cinderella for grades 1 and 2. It includes a number of activities that encourage children to develop close reading skills, including a wordsearch and spot the difference (which are building blocks to help children find information in texts), as well as comprehension questions and a sequencing activity. As with all of my products, I aim to make them enjoyable for children to engage with reading, helping them to develop a love for literature. This is the first product I have produced like this. I will await feedback on this before developing similar packs on other fairy tales and nursery rhymes. My aim is to create a bundle that explores traditional tales, before moving children on to writing creative stories of their own.

Here is a reading pack on Cinderella for grades 1 and 2. It includes a number of activities that encourage children to develop close reading skills, including a wordsearch and spot the difference (which are building blocks to help children find information in texts), as well as comprehension questions and a sequencing activity. As with all of my products, I aim to make them enjoyable for children to engage with reading, helping them to develop a love for literature. This is the first product I have produced like this. I will await feedback on this before developing similar packs on other fairy tales and nursery rhymes. My aim is to create a bundle that explores traditional tales, before moving children on to writing creative stories of their own.

Find out about the mysteries of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster. Discover the heartbreak of the tsunami and the sinking of the Titanic. Revisit the shooting of JFK and Apollo 13. Marvel at the miraculous escape of the miners in Chile. Find out why we have Christmas trees. Learn about soldiers stories from World War One…and much much more! This collection of reading activities are a selection of some of my favourites. I have put them together as a bigger collection to allow teachers to plan a whole year’s worth of reading comprehensions for their children. Each activity contains a range of challenging questions which test inference, deduction and retrieval skills – ideal preparation for reading assessments. Children are also given an indication of marks on offer for each question, and teachers are provided with answers. As with all of my reading activities, I try to make the subject matter informative as well as engaging. Children get the chance to find out about a whole range of interesting stories and topics that may not be covered in the curriculum. CONTENTS: 2 - 10 Stories of Survival 11 - 22 Mysteries of the World 23 - 30 Soldier’s Stories – World War One 31 - 36 The Queen and the Royal Family 37 – 42 Christmas 43 – 50 Days that made the world stop 51 – 74 Answers I have received excellent feedback, for which I am very grateful. This should give you confidence in the products I offer. Hope you enjoy these!

These comprehensions are taken from real newspaper reports of major news events that made the world stop in its tracks. These are important stories for your children to understand, as they play a significant part in recent world history. The comprehensions focus on: The sinking of the Titanic 9/11 The Asian tsunami and The assassination of JFK There are a variety of questions styles, testing skills in retrieval, inference and deduction. Answers are provided, and children are given an indication of marks on offer so this is good preparation for reading tests and assessments. As with all of my work, I try to make the subject matter interesting and exciting for the children to engage with. As these stories may be familiar, I have made some of the questions particularly challenging, focussing on the parts of the story that your cohort won’t know about.

AMUSING, ENTERTAINING AND EDUCATIONAL! These reading comprehensions will test your students’ reading skills as they explore the four greatest April Fools of all time, as ranked by the Museum of Hoaxes. Using research skills and their reporter’s notebooks, the young journalists will find out about: Spaghetti growing on trees in Switzerland A fake volcanic eruption in Alaska Instant Colour TV in Sweden An iceberg in Sydney Harbour Each story comes with questions and answers, and will require students to check dictionaries; summarise stories; think critically; retrieve facts; and prioritise statements. They will also generate lively and fun classroom discussion. Would your students fall for these pranks? Can they come up with anything better? A template for a news story is also provided so children can write them up for themselves. A scaffold is included to show them how to fill in the boxes. Finally, posters are enclosed if you want to make the students’ work into a simple, effective display. As a journalist and teacher, it’s my passion that children should have an awareness of what is going on in the world through engaging reading material. Contents: 3: SWISS SPAGHETTI HARVEST 4: INSTANT COLOUR TV 5: ERUPTION OF MOUNT EDGECUMBE 6: THE SYDNEY ICEBERG 7-10: Questions 11-14: Answers 15: How to write a newspaper article 16: Newspaper template 17-20: Posters for display

How does Donald Trump compare to Kim Jong-Un? Should we be worried about North Korea? Or how about Queen Victoria and JFK? Who exactly are Rex Tillerson and Mike Pence? This versatile set of 32 biography cards can be used in numerous ways. Firstly, they will test your students in their Common Core reading skills. Secondly, they will enable them to structure and write biographies of their own. Thirdly, they provide a platform for you as a teacher to critically evaluate your students’ writing with feedback which they will find engaging; encouraging them to write to their very best ability. Fourthly, they provide an insight into Donald Trump’s top team; US presidents of the past; prominent world leaders of today; and influential leaders through history. Fifthly, as a game, this will be a tremendous amount of fun! This is perfect all year round but is especially good as a Presidents Day activity. +++++ THE BIOGRAPHY CARDS ARE SPLIT INTO FOUR SECTIONS: Trump’s Team Trump, Preibus, Spicer, Devos, Conway, Tillerson, Pence, Mattis. US Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Kennedy, Nixon, Lincoln, Roosevelt. World Leaders 2017 May, Nieto, Netanyahu, Putin, Trudeau, Merkel, Jong-un, Rouhani World Leaders 2017 Mandela, Malala, Mother Teresa, Luther King Jr., Ghandi, Queen Victoria, Princess Diana, Peron. +++++ HERE ARE SOME IDEAS FOR HOW THE BIOGRAPHY CARDS CAN BE USED: Reading skills Each biography comes with three questions. RETRIEVE: Students will find this answer in the text. REVIEW: They will need to use summarising skills to answer the questions. Answers can be quoted from the text. The question will make this clear. RESEARCH: Students can use the internet to answer a question. The information cannot be found within the text. Compare and contrast Students can take any two cards. Their task is to find three differences and three similarities about the characters they have chosen. Highlight the text Referring to the scores under each image, students can color code the text that applies to each category with a highlighter or colored crayon.

This guided reading activity, aimed at 9 and 13 year olds, tests children’s comprehension, retrieval, inference and deduction skills. It will also promote lively and engaging classroom discussion as children decide for themselves who will win the World Cup in 2022! The activity has questions and answers, with an indication of how many marks are on offer at the end of each question. This is particularly helpful for children preparing for reading tests and exams, encouraging them to give fuller answers where required.

This writing aid will help your students develop creative vocabulary in their work through the use of synonyms. It can be used in a variety of ways. The engaging word clouds can be used as posters for a display, or on an interactive whiteboard during a vocabulary focused lesson. They can be used in small groups as table centres, or by individual students as a set of bookmarks. This is saved as a PDF and is supplemented by a separate customisable Powerpoint file. As this is a PowerPoint file, it can be shared directly with students to use on their own devices. The hyperlinked contents page will take them to the page they are looking for. At the end of the resource are the bookmarks. These can be printed, laminated and attached together so students can keep them and refer to them in all aspects of their writing. There are blank bookmarks so you can make your own synonym bookmarks to add to your sets in the customisable file. You can also edit the whole file as you see fit to suit your own needs. Finally, there is some bunting banner to help you make this into a display. I hope you and your students find this useful! The synonyms featured are: happy sad big small good young old house move walk talk warm cold

Relevant, topical and engaging. This reading comprehension will test your students’ reading skills as they explore an engaging news story from February 2017. Using research skills and their reporter’s notebook, the young journalists will find out about the sad story of the pilot whales that got stranded on Farewell Spit, New Zealand in February 2017. It was one of the largest whale strandings in recorded history, and hundreds of people tried in vain to help. Your students will establish the facts of the story; find out all about pilot whales and work out why it might have happened. This is part of a bigger pack of news stories, which can be found in my store. IN THE NEWS, February 2017 This pack includes the story about the Australian farmer, Dan Miller, who survived for five hours with his nose above the surface of the water after being trapped beneath a digger in Australia; and the story about the discovery of a World War Two bomb in Thesalonica, Greece, which led to the evacuation of 75,000 people. Each story comes with questions and answers, and will require students to check dictionaries; summarise stories; think critically; retrieve facts; and prioritise statements. A template for a news story is also provided so children can write them up for themselves. A scaffold is included to show them how to fill in the boxes. Finally, posters are enclosed if you want to make the students’ work into a simple, effective display. As a journalist and teacher, it’s my passion that children should have an awareness of what is going on in the world through engaging reading material.