This stimulating and informative lesson aims to improve students’ ability to adapt the style of their writing to suit their audience and purpose. In particular, they attempt to meet the purpose of writing diary entries. Students follow a clear and logical learning journey, in which they: -Define diaries and their key content features; -Read extracts of diaries, and explain which content features different writers employ; -Work collaboratively to ascertain the language and structure features of diary entries; -Create a success criteria for effective diary writing (although a ready-made success criteria is included) -Write a diary entry for a famous character from their favourite movie, using the techniques that they have learnt; -Peer/self-assess their diary writing attempts. There are enough resources here really for two lessons, including: -Visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint; -Diary extracts x 4 (Adian Mole, Anne Frank, etc.) -What's in a Diary Entry worksheet; -Success Criteria; -Step-by-step lesson plan. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final page of the slide.

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Susan Hill's 'The Woman in Black.' 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: The Rural North' - 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.' - 'Hill's Description - The Horse and Trap' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Know how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, present meaning.' - 'Mr Jerome' and 'The Woman in Black' - 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 detailed and engaging lesson enables students to gain an understanding of simple, compound and complex sentences, and to use a variation of sentence types in their own writing for clarity and effect. Students learn through a number of fun and interactive tasks, which enable them to: - Define and exemplify simple, compound, and complex sentences; - Identify them in writing; - Understand and analyse how different types of sentences can be used for clarity and effect; - Create a written piece using a variety of sentence structures for clarity and effect; - Evaluate their use of different sentence structures. The resources include: -Visually engaging and comprehensive whole-lesson presentation; -Resources for the card-sorting activity; -A model example and analysis worksheet; -A success criteria; -Step-by-step lesson plan. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final page of the slide.

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Mark Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.’ 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: Asperger’s Syndrome’ - 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.’ - ‘Haddon’s Description - The Police Station’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Know how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, present meaning.’ - ‘Ed Boone’ - 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 detailed and engaging lesson enables students to gain an understanding of what synonyms and antonyms are, and why knowledge of them is important when writing. Students also learn to use a variation of synonyms and antonyms in their own writing, for both clarity and effect. Students learn through a number of fun and interactive tasks, which enable them to: - Define and exemplify synonyms and antonyms; - Identify the synonyms and antonyms for a range of different words; - Understand and analyse how synonyms and antonyms can be used for clarity and effect; - Create a written piece using a variety of synonyms and antonyms for clarity and effect; - Evaluate their use of different synonyms and antonyms. The resources include: -Visually engaging and comprehensive whole-lesson presentation; -Resources for the card-sorting activity; -A model example and analysis worksheet; -Step-by-step lesson plan. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final page of the slide.

This informative, engaging CPD session is intended to offer a valuable introduction to phonics for teachers and support staff. It aims to enable participants to: -To understand what phonics are and understand why they are widely used; -To grasp key phonics terminology and apply it in different contexts; -To break down the key phonics stages, comprehending how skills develop. The session is aimed at those who are new to phonics. I myself moved from secondary to primary, and can understand how daunting phonics schemes can appear! These resources, whilst detailed, present ideas in a simple way, helping to make key ideas understandable. Included is: A 27-slide colourful, clear PowerPoint presentation, including post-CPD quiz; Resources for an optional card-sorting activity, to learn appropriate phonics terminology; A comprehensive phonics helpsheet, detailing most of the main points from the session. I hope that you find these resources helpful. Many thanks!

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of the main themes (Dreams and Loneliness) in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, understanding the writer’s ideas and opinions, and making precise and confident interpretations about texts. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interactive skills. It follows this learning journey: - Understanding what dreams and loneliness are, and how we each experience them; - Defining themes and understanding how writers use them; - Understanding how and why themes are used in other famous texts; - Retrieving evidence from the text to demonstrate where the characters experience dreams and loneliness; - Analysing how the themes are used to help get across John Steinbeck’s ideas about 1930s America; - Evaluating each others’ analytical attempts. The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet for recording the retrieved quotations, a helpful template for the main task, and a lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet. All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

Based on the popular game show ‘Pointless’, this resource is perfect for use as a starter activity, plenary, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. Containing almost 30 slides of sound clips, engaging visuals, and suitably challenging questions, this resource is effective at both promoting engagement and enhancing learning. There are several full rounds of questions to build learning of Persuasive Writing: 1. Emotive Language 2. Definitions of Persuasive Devices 3. Adding and Contrasting Connectives 4. Remembering Persuasive Devices The nature of the game ensures that this resource can challenge students of all levels. A blank template is now included, so that you can create your own Pointless games!

This is the perfect resource for teachers looking to build students writing skills across the curriculum. Aiding students in the four key areas of their writing (Openers, Vocabulary, Connectives, and Punctuation) and also addressing a few common writing mistakes, my students now ask for this whenever they are asked to complete writing tasks, in any of their subjects. It is extremely visually engaging, and can also be used as a poster. Nothing needs to be done to this resource. It is already in A3. Simply print off and laminate. Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £4.

I have recently taught a descriptive writing unit, and devised this assessment to gauge how students descriptive skills have progressed over the term. It includes the question paper, the mark scheme, and the reading insert. Formal enough to ensure that the students took the assessment seriously, but engaging enough to ensure that all students wanted to complete all of the tasks, (they hate some of the practice exam questions that exam boards provide on the past papers) all of my students seemed to enjoy completing this more than they normally enjoy assessments! The assessment is designed to gauge students' skill in: - Defining and giving examples of descriptive devices; - Identifying descriptive devices in texts; - Analysing the effect of descriptive writing in a vivid description of a 'Nightmare World.' - Creating their own descriptive piece about a their own nightmare world. This lesson can either be bought individually, or as part of the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (which works out cheaper.)

This engaging and informative lesson enhances students’ skills in understanding the significant meanings in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and in particular the influence of the deceitful and mysterious weird sisters. Students gain an understanding of some of the attitudes towards witches in Shakespeare’s times, and attempt to link this knowledge to the events of the text. They also engage with Shakespeare’s intentions in utilising dramatic elements to reveal the witches use of the supernatural and deceit. The lesson follows a clear and logical learning journey, involving progressively more challenging tasks in which students: - Portray their understanding of witches and witchcraft; - Learn more about witches in a historical context through a fun ‘true or false’ game; - Define, identify, and understand dramatic irony; - Read sections of Macbeth and complete tasks to demonstrate their understanding; - Answer key questions about the witches that test their knowledge in relation to each of the English assessment outcomes; - Evaluate a modelled example of an analytical paragraph in relation to the witches; - Analyse the witches’ characteristics in their own responses; - Evaluate each others’ analytical responses. All images are cited on the final slide of the presentation, and 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 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).