A handy resource to aid your students when they are writing to describe. It can be blown up to A2/A3 and used as a poster, given to the students as a prompt sheet when they complete writing tasks, or laminated and used as a writing mat. The resource gives students a range of information, including: - How do I write like this? - What am I aiming to do? - A short example of writing in this style; - Key language, words, and sentence starters; - A challenge task. A resource bundle is also available from TandLGuru that contains sheets in this style for writing to: inform, explain, persuade, argue, instruct, evaluate, and analyse.

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Michael Morpurgo’s ‘Private Peaceful.’ Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the KS3 expectations within the new National Curriculum framework. Children have found these resources extremely engaging, and for teachers there is explicit information within each task regarding which comprehension strands the task is designed to demonstrate. They also relate to key extracts, characters, and themes from the story, ensuring that children gain a deep understanding of the text. Activities within the booklet include: - ‘Context: World War One’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Know the purpose, audience and context of the writing and drawing on this knowledge to support comprehension.’ - ‘Morpurgo’s Description’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Know how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, present meaning.’ - ‘Horrible Hanley’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Study setting, plot, and characterisation, and the effects of these.’ - ‘Vocabulary Inspector’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Learn new vocabulary, relating it explicitly to known vocabulary and understanding it with the help of context and dictionaries.’ Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is 21 pages in length!) I’ve also added it as a PDF in case the formatting differs on your computer. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on a separate document (included).

This 16-page resource booklet contains a wide range of challenging and engaging comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Wilfred Owen’s World War I poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est.’ Teachers have found the activities particularly useful throughout teaching, or for exam revision or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of students towards meeting the key English Literature assessment objectives - suitable for all examining bodies. Students have found these resources extremely engaging, and it is clearly highlighted within each task regarding which assessment strands the task is designed to demonstrate. It is provided in both Word (to allow for easy editing) and PDF (to ensure for consistency of formatting between computers). Activities within the booklet include (amongst many others): ‘Analysing Context’ - helping students to ‘Show understanding of the relationships between texts and the contexts in which they were written.’ ‘Analysing Subject Matter, Language and Structure’ - to help students to ‘Analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.’ ‘Diary Entry’ - to help students to ‘Use a range of vocabulary and sentence structures for clarity, purpose and effect, with accurate spelling and punctuation. Make an informed personal response, recognising that other responses to a text are possible and evaluating these.’ ‘The Speaker’ - to help students to ‘Read, understand and respond to texts. Students should be able to: maintain a critical style and develop an informed personal response use textual references, including quotations, to support and illustrate interpretations.’

This engaging and thought-provoking double-lesson resource aids students in developing a secure understanding of chapters 12 and 13 of Roald Dahl’s ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine.’ The chapters covered in these lessons are ‘Marvellous Medicine Number Two’ and ‘Marvellous Medicine Number 3.’ The lessons are guided by a comprehensive and colourful PowerPoint presentation, and enables students to understand the text through: -Retrieving information; -Inferring hidden meanings; -Making predictions. The sessions include a range of retrieval, vocabulary, inference, explanation and deeper thinking activities. A clear, colourful and comprehensive PowerPoint presentation guides students through the learning. There’s a lot in the session (17 slides in total) so I would recommend breaking into two lessons. The lessons are most suitable for children in upper key stage 1 or lower key stage 2, (they have been used in the past with children in years 2 and 3) but they could also be adapted for slightly older and younger year groups.

This engaging and thought-provoking double-lesson resource aids students in developing a secure understanding of chapters 14 and 15 of Roald Dahl’s ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine.’ The chapters covered in these lessons are ‘Marvellous Medicine Number Four’ and ‘Goodbye Grandma.’ The lessons are guided by a comprehensive and colourful PowerPoint presentation, and enables students to understand the text through: -Retrieving information; -Inferring hidden meanings; -Summarising events. The sessions include a range of retrieval, vocabulary, inference, explanation and deeper thinking activities. A clear, colourful and comprehensive PowerPoint presentation guides students through the learning. A storyboard template is also provided for the creative activity (in both Word and PDF). There’s a lot in the session (18 slides in total) so I would recommend breaking into two lessons. The lessons are most suitable for children in upper key stage 1 or lower key stage 2, (they have been used in the past with children in years 2 and 3) but they could also be adapted for slightly older and younger year groups.

This engaging and thought-provoking double-lesson resource aids students in developing a secure understanding of chapters 10 and 11 of Roald Dahl’s ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine.’ The chapters covered in these lessons are ‘A Crane for Grandma’ and 'Mr Kranky’s Great Idea.’ The lessons are guided by a comprehensive and colourful PowerPoint presentation, and enables students to understand the text through: -Retrieving information; -Inferring hidden meanings; -Empathising with characters. The sessions include a range of retrieval, vocabulary, inference, explanation and deeper thinking activities. A clear, colourful and comprehensive PowerPoint presentation guides students through the learning. There’s a lot in the session (19 slides in total) so I would recommend breaking into two lessons. The lessons are most suitable for children in upper key stage 1 or lower key stage 2, (they have been used in the past with children in years 2 and 3) but they could also be adapted for slightly older and younger year groups.

This interesting and highly-stimulating lesson enables students to make clear and sustained interpretations about the final chapters of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Students engage analytically with the key events, characters, and quotations in the closing stages of the novel, and interpret patterns in the development of their behaviour from earlier sections of the text. The lesson follows a clear, logical, bite-size learning journey, which guides students towards differentiated learning objectives. Over the course of this journey, they become able to: - Sort key events from earlier chapters to re-familiarise themselves with the events of the text; - Think creatively about how different objects, ideas, and characters are represented throughout different sections of the text; - Read and understand Chapters Eleven and Twelve of the play, with a particular focus upon how the behaviour of the key characters has developed over time; - Chart the balance between civilization and savagery over the course of the novel, justifying decisions based upon relevant textual evidence; - Analyse the how the behaviour of the key characters alters over the course of the novel, through answering a structured exam-style question; -Peer assess each other’s learning attempts. This resource pack includes: - A visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint presentation; - Plot Cards for the card-sorting activity; - Links to the extracts of the text needed for the lesson (Chapters Eleven and Twelve in this case); - Graph template with justification boxes for the development activity; - A logically scaffolded essay template; - A detailed lesson plan, complete with what the teacher and students should aim to achieve at each stage of the lesson. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the PowerPoint.

This interesting and highly-stimulating lesson enables students to gain a clear understanding of how the characters of Simon and Roger are introduced and developed in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Students learn to compare and contrast the two characters, with particular reference to their respective propensities for kindness and savagery. The lesson follows a clear, logical, bite-size learning journey, which guides students towards differentiated learning objectives. Over the course of this journey, they become able to: - Use illustrations to explain what they already know about each of the characters; - Understand how each of the characters are introduced, and demonstrate an awareness of the role that they play on the island; - Read and understand Chapters Eight, Nine, and Ten of the play, with a particular focus upon how the characters of Simon and Roger can be compared, and how they develop over time; - Analyse key quotations about/by each of the characters,interpreting what this shows the readers about their characters; - Complete a comparison between the two characters, in response to an essay-style question; -Peer assess each other’s learning attempts. This resource pack includes: - A visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint presentation; - Detailed worksheets, with answer sheets where necessary; - Links to the extracts of the text needed for the lesson (Chapters Eight, Nine and Ten in this case); - Original images for students to complete their annotations; - A logically scaffolded essay template; - A detailed lesson plan, complete with what the teacher and students should aim to achieve at each stage of the lesson. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the PowerPoint.

This whole class reading session aims to develop children’s comprehension skills through a reading of the opening chapter of Gary Northfield’s ‘Julius Zebra: Entangled with the Egyptians!’ The resource pack includes the extract and all of the activities for the session, which the class are guided through via a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation. The reading is followed by a series of activities aiming to develop children’s retrieval, explanation, inference, prediction and summarising skills. It also contains a vocabulary check immediately after the extract is read to clarify any unfamiliar/ difficult language. The tasks are comprised of quick-check questions, solo thinking, pair/ group discussions and deeper thinking activities. The session is best suited for children in Year 3 and 4, but it could feasibly be used with slightly younger and older year groups. The session is also suitable for home/ remote learning.

These creative writing structure strips are designed to help children with formulating creative writing pieces based on 10 different Greek Myths. They include content to include in each paragraph, questions to consider, and key language techniques. They are tried and tested in the classroom - they are loved by teachers and students, and have helped to enable some incredible compositions! Included are structure strips for aiding students’ creative writing about: -Daedalus and Icarus -Echo and Narcissus -Hades and Persephone -Hercules’ Labours -Hermes and Apollo -Odysseus and Cyclops -Pandora’s Box -Perseus and Medusa -Theseus and the Minotaur -The template to create your own structure strips! These structure strips were initially designed for KS2 children, however (perhaps with a tweak here and there) they could be used for lower KS3 or upper KS1. Provided in both PDF (to prevent formatting issues between computers) and Word (to allow for easy editing). Each A4 page contains 4 structure strips. Hope that they prove useful for you too - Enjoy!

This interesting and highly-stimulating lesson enables students to gain a clear understanding of key information regarding the historical and cultural context of Ancient Greece. They also learn to logically organise the key information that they gather, and make clear links between Greek myths and their newly-gained understanding of context. This lesson enables them to construct a solid foundation of contextual understanding for future deeper learning of Greek myths. The lesson follows a clear, logical, bite-size learning journey, which guides students towards differentiated learning objectives. Over the course of this journey, they become able to: - Read and interpret key information regarding Ancient Greek gods, geography, culture, and landmarks; - Share their understanding through engagement in a jigsaw model task; -Order key events in Ancient Greek History through the creation of a dated timeline; - Link their understanding of historical and cultural context to an independently-researched Greek Myth; -Peer assess each other’s learning attempts. This resource pack includes: - A visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint presentation; - Key information sheets on Ancient Greek gods, geography, culture, and landmarks; - Ancient Greece Timeline Events Cards (and answer sheet for teachers); - A detailed lesson plan, complete with what the teacher and students should aim to achieve at each stage of the lesson. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the PowerPoint. Note: The final two tasks work best with access to ICT/internet resources.

This whole class reading session aims to develop children’s comprehension skills through a reading of the opening extract of ‘Frankenstein’ (originally written by Mary Shelley, adapted by Gill Tavner). The resource pack includes the extract and all of the activities for the session, which the class are guided through via a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation. The reading is followed by a series of activities aiming to develop children’s retrieval, explanation, inference, prediction and summarising skills. It also contains a vocabulary check immediately after the extract is read to clarify any unfamiliar/ difficult language. The tasks are comprised of quick-check questions, solo thinking, pair/ group discussions and deeper thinking activities. The session is best suited for children in years 5-8, although with minor adaptations it could feasibly be used with slightly younger and older year groups. The session is suitable for home/ remote learning. The resources are suitable for home/ remote learning.

This engaging and thought-provoking lesson is the first in a sequence of lessons designed to accompany the reading and promote children’s comprehension of Roald Dahl’s ‘Esio Trot.’ This lesson covers the beginning of the story (up to the end of page 15 in the Puffin version of the text). The lessons are guided by a comprehensive and colourful PowerPoint presentation, and enables students to understand the text through: -Making predictions about the story; -Retrieving information about the events and characters in the story opening; -Inferring and deducing hidden meanings, including what they have learnt about Mr Hoppy’s character from the opening section of the text. The sessions include a range of retrieval, vocabulary, inference, explanation and deeper thinking activities. A clear, colourful and comprehensive PowerPoint presentation guides students through the learning. A worksheet/ template is also provided for the creative character profile activity (in both Word and PDF format). The lessons are most suitable for children in upper KS1 or lower KS2, depending upon the individual context of the class - they have been tried and tested in the classroom with both year 2 and year 3 children.

This engaging and thought-provoking double-lesson resource aids students in developing a secure understanding of the chapter 1 of Anne Holm’s ‘I Am David.’ In this section of the text, David escapes the camp, makes a vast journey by foot, van and boat, and then observes the beauty of the world for the first time. The comprehensive and colourful PowerPoint presentation enables students to understand the text through: -Making predictions; -Retrieving information; -Inferring and deducing hidden meanings. The sessions include a range of retrieval, vocabulary, inference, explanation and deeper thinking activities. A clear, colourful and comprehensive PowerPoint presentation guides students through the learning. The lesson also includes an answer key for the retrieval questions, and model answer ideas for the more detailed responses. There’s a lot here (17 slides filled with questions and activities) so I would recommend breaking into two lessons. The lessons are suitable for students in either upper KS2 or lower KS3, depending upon the individual context of the school and students. I originally used them with year 6 children.

This lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of plot and characterisation in Mary Shelley’s gothic horror novel ‘Frankenstein,’ through critical engagement with the monster’s justification for murder. The lesson places a particular focus upon the hardship and suffering experienced by the monster, in addition to the discrimination and loneliness that he experiences. The lesson concludes with students completing a highly-informed argumentative piece, detailing whether they feel the monster was justified or not. The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through: - Recalling and understanding who, when, and why the monster kills individuals throughout the text; - Reading and understanding key extracts from the text, which include third-person narration from the monster discussing his actions; - Comprehending the key elements of plot development and character, through interpreting and inferring the key meanings in extracts; - Listing opposite sides of an argument in regarding the monster’s justification, in order to build a stronger case; - Using the features of writing to argue in order to contend whether the monster was justified in his actions or not; - Peer assessing each other’s learning attempts. Included is: - Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and substantial; (including an animated Frankenstein’s monster to guide them through the lesson); - Comprehension worksheet (and a teacher answer sheet); - Extracts from Chapters 16 and 24; - Card-sorting resources for the introduction task; - Writing to Argue Help-sheet; - Analysis template with success criteria for creating well-structured responses; - Comprehensive lesson plan. There are also opportunities for group learning, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. This was originally taught to middle-ability year 9/10 groups, but can easily be differentiated for groups of different ages and abilities. All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.

This engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of the various narrative perspectives used to develop the plot and characters in Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein.’ The lesson places a particular focus upon the reporting of William’s death from different narrative points-of-view, focusing on the accounts of Alphonse, Victor, and the Monster. By the end of the lesson, students demonstrate an ability to make sustained and original interpretations of Shelley’s structural choices. The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through: - Defining the key terms ‘author’, ‘narrator’, and ‘narrative point of view;’ - Identifying the different narrators within the text; - Reading and understanding key extracts from chapters 7 and 16 - extracts that detail the same event (William’s murder) from multiple perspectives; - Inferring, interpreting, and analysing the effect of Shelley’s structural choices in altering the narrative viewpoints; - Imagining and describing the events surrounding William’s murder from another perspective; - Peer assessing each other’s learning attempts. Included is: - Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and substantial; (including an animated Frankenstein’s monster to guide them through the lesson); - Descriptive devices worksheet (and a teacher answer sheet); - Extract from the beginning of Chapter 5; - Inferring and Interpreting worksheet; - Analysis template with success criteria for creating well-structured responses; - Comprehensive lesson plan. There are also opportunities for group learning, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. This was originally taught to middle-ability year 9/10 groups, but can easily be differentiated for groups of different ages and abilities. All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.

This clear, detailed and visually-appealing resource offers a complete reference point for children learning about William Wordsworth, particularly those studying his works in English or completing a history study of ‘Significant Individuals.’ It contains comprehensive sections entitled: Overview; Times in His Life; Important Vocabulary; William Wordsworth Timeline; Answers to the Important Questions; Top Ten Facts. The resource is designed to be printed onto either A4 or A3, and is provided as both a PDF and a Word version (so that you can edit if you want to). All images are licensed for commercial use.

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Anne Holm’s 'I am David.’ Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the KS2 expectations within the National Curriculum framework. Children love learning from these resources, whilst they are also of great use to teachers, as there is explicit information within each task regarding which comprehension strands the task is designed to demonstrate. They also relate to key extracts, characters, and themes from the story, ensuring that children gain a deep understanding of the text. Activities within the booklet include: ‘Holm’s Language Techniques’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Explain meanings of words that they know and ask the meaning of new words. Link the meaning of new words to words that they already know;’ ‘Character Analysis of David and Maria’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Understand what is read by drawing on information from more than one paragraph, identifying key details that support the main ideas, and using quotations for illustration;’ ‘An Interview with Sophie Bang’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Understand what is read by drawing on information from more than one paragraph, identifying key details that support the main ideas, and using quotations for illustration;’ ‘Storyboarders’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Read books that are structured in different ways and for a range of purposes.’ Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is over 20 pages in length!) I’ve also added it as a PDF in case the formatting differs on your computer. The resource is suitable for home/ remote learning.

This whole class reading session aims to develop students’ comprehension skills through reading and interpreting chapters 1-2 of 'Black Beauty.’ The resource pack includes the extract needed (as a PDF) and a clear and well-presented PowerPoint, guiding the teacher and learners through the various activities. The reading is followed by a series of activities aiming to develop students’ retrieval, explanation, inference, sequencing and summarising skills. A vocabulary check helps to secure students’ understanding of any new or unfamiliar language. The tasks are comprised of quick-check questions, solo thinking, pair/ group discussions and deeper thinking activities. There is everything here needed to teach one (selecting some of the activities) or two (using all of the activities) comprehension lessons. The resources are tried and tested with learners upper KS2, although with minor adaptations they could feasibly be used with slightly younger and older year groups.