This fun and informative lesson helps students to understand the descriptive language techniques used by Roald Dahl in his descriptions of Boggis, Bunce, and Bean in ‘Fantastic Mr Fox.’ In particular, students analyse how Dahl's language is used to create imagery, before designing and describing their very own mean farmers! The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through: -Completing a card-sorting activity to define and exemplify each of the descriptive devices; - Reading and understanding extracts from the opening of Fantastic Mr Fox, in which the farmers are described; - Identifying and analysing Dahl's use of language devices throughout the description of the farmers; - Writing their own language device-filled descriptions of their farmers, with support from a clear template; - Self assessing their own learning attempts. Included is: - Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive; - Language Analysis Worksheet (and answer sheet); - Selected extracts - Fantastic Mr Fox; - Cards for Sorting Activity; - Planning Template (Word and PDF); - Comprehensive lesson plan. There are also opportunities for group learning, speaking and listening, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. I originally used these resources with a mixed-ability year 3 class, however colleagues have used them for between years 1 and 8 with some adaptations. All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.

This fun and informative lesson helps students to understand the narrative structure used by Roald Dahl throughout ‘Fantastic Mr Fox.’ In particular, students identify the features of each stage of the narrative structure within the story, before recreating sections of the structure themselves! The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through: - Taking part in a fun group quiz to recap on the key elements of the plot leading up to the ending; - Reading and understanding extracts from the ending of Fantastic Mr Fox, answering comprehension questions to demonstrate their understanding; -Understanding features of narrative structure and applying the plot of Fantastic Mr Fox to the individual elements; -Recreating elements of the plot, using their understanding of the stages of narrative structure; - Self assessing their own learning attempts. Included is: - Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive; - Storyboard Template (and PDF version); - Selected extracts - Fantastic Mr Fox; - Recreations Template (and PDF version); - Comprehensive lesson plan. There are also opportunities for group learning, speaking and listening, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. I originally used these resources with a mixed-ability year 3 class, however colleagues have used them for between years 1 and 8 with some adaptations. All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.

Based on the popular game show 'Pointless', this resource is perfect for use as a whole lesson resource, enrichment option, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. (I've also added a blank template so that you can make your own games from scratch). 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 or revisit knowledge of characters, plot, and themes in 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.' Round 1. The characters in Much Ado About Nothing Round 2. Quotations from the text Round 3. Settings, Themes, and Objects Round 4. Shakespearean Comedies The nature of this game ensures that the resource can challenge students of all levels. A blank template has also been added, so that you can create your own games!

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Roald Dahl’s ‘The BFG.’ 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 new 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: - ‘An Interview with Sophie’ - 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;’ - ‘Dahl’s Description’ - 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;’ - ‘The Giant’ - 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;’ - ‘Figurative Language’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Discuss and evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language, to create an impact on the reader.’ Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is around 20 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).

Based on the popular game show ‘Pointless’, this resource is perfect for use as a whole lesson resource, enrichment option, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. (I’ve also added a blank template so that you can make your own games from scratch). Containing almost 30 slides of sound clips, interesting tasks, and suitably challenging questions, this resource is effective at both promoting engagement and enhancing learning. There are several full rounds of questions to build or revisit knowledge of characters, plot, and themes in ‘Holes.’ Round 1. The characters in Holes Round 2. Quotations from the text Round 3. Settings and Objects Round 4. Themes in Holes The nature of this game ensures that the resource can challenge students of all levels. A blank template has also been added, so that you can create your own games!

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of the context of the of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Some of the primary topics that are addressed are William Shakespeare himself, James I and superstition, witches and witchcraft, religion, mortality rates, and the theatre. This knowledge should enable students to make convincing links between the play and the events of the time. It is a vital lesson in any Macbeth theme that can be taught before, during, or after reading. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to be visual and interactive learners. It follows this learning journey: - Understanding who William Shakespeare was, and remembering key details about his life; - Identifying words and phrases that he coined that are still in use today; - Taking part in a quiz about the some of the more basic key events and ideas of the time; - Researching the key events of the time (e.g. witch-hunts and the ascension of James I as King) and understanding which ideas were prominent. (e.g. divine right and religion) - Utilising speaking and listening skills in order to communicate gathered knowledge, and obtain knowledge from others. - Evaluating the learning in the lesson. All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation.

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of John Steinbeck’s key messages in his novella Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, considering the outcomes about the characters, and making precise and confident interpretations about Steinbeck’s intentions. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interpersonal skills. It follows this learning journey: - Investigating the life of John Steinbeck, including his influences, experiences, and beliefs; - Finding relevant quotations to ascertain which characters fulfilled their dreams, and what this could tell us about Steinbeck’s message; - Completing analysis paragraphs on how Steinbeck reveals his message through the final chapters of the text, using a template and a success criteria; - Evaluating each others’ argumentative attempts. The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet to decipher which characters achieved their dreams, a template and success criteria 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!

This stimulating and informative double lesson aims to improve students’ ability to understand the features of various story genres, and analyse the conventional language features within them. In particular students focus upon the vocabulary, sentence, and descriptive device choices made by writers across each of the genres, and begin to comprehend the effect of these techniques upon the reader. Students follow a clear and logical learning journey, in which they: -Define the different story genres and understand their key content features; -Understand the key features of different genres through interesting movie clips ; -Work collaboratively using the jigsaw method to ascertain the language features (vocabulary, sentences, descriptive devices) of different genres; -Engage with a number of interesting story extracts (Louis Sachar - Holes, JK Rowling - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Darren Shan - The Vampire's Assistant, Jeff Kinney - Diary of a Wimpy Kid.) -Write an analytical piece on some of the language features used by the writer of their chosen genre; -Peer/self-assess their analytical attempts. There are enough resources here really for two lessons, including: -Visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint; -Story extracts x 4 (Harry Potter, Holes, etc.) -Learning Objective cut out; -Analytical Paragraphs Template; -Jigsaw method worksheet -Step-by-step lesson plan. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final page of the slide.

This writing assessment framework has been designed to allow to teachers to accurately assess student attainment against the writing expectations within the new National Curriculum. They are perfect for use when gauging the standard of extended writing pieces. These are to be used when assessing writing for Years R-2, progressing towards the end of Key Stage 1 expectations. The expectations for each year group are split into four subcategories: Spelling, Handwriting, Composition, and VGP (Vocabulary, Grammar, and Punctuation). Within each subcategory are statements relating to the expectations for the year group. Teachers simply mark the extent to which the statement has been achieved (utilising the key at the bottom of the page) and then use best fit to determine the overall standard of the writing. In addition to the Word documents (allowing you to edit if you need to) I've also added the documents as a PDF, in case the formatting differs on your computer.

Welcome to Jargon Hunt! This engaging and exciting activity is perfect for building students' literacy skills; helping them to understand key vocabulary through cryptic rhyming riddles and teamwork. Once the game is introduced and the rules are shared (on the presentation) students are given a riddle card and an answer card. The only catch is that their answer card does not match their riddle! Through reading their riddle to others, and allowing others to read their riddles to them, students learn the English vocabulary as prescribed for teaching at KS2 in the new National Curriculum. Provided in this pack are: - 30+ slide presentation, hosted by David Dictionary-son, who walks students through the game in a step-by-step fashion. -Class-size pack of riddle cards and answer cards. They simply need to printed on card, or printed on paper and laminated. This resource is a valuable tool for helping students to comprehend the words that they will need to understand in the New Curriculum, build valuable speaking and listening skills, and also have lots of fun! This resource can be bought alone. or as a part of a Jargon Hunt KS2 bundle (English, Maths, and Science) for just £1 more!

This visual and highly engaging set of resources is designed to enable students to use imaginative and original persuasive devices in their own writing. Through following the interesting learning journey, students are given the opportunity to: - Define each persuasive device; - Identify these in existing persuasive texts; - Analyse their effect in a longer persuasive text; - Create their own persuasive device-filled piece, using a jointly-created success criteria based upon their analysis task; - Peer assess each other's persuasive writing attempts. All resources are provided, including: - Visual PowerPoint presentation; - Definitions cards (they just need printing and cutting out) - Analysis worksheet; - Lesson outline for teachers and learning support to follow. Note: All pictures licensed for creative use - authors and sources labelled on the final slide of the presentation.

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 the questions/answers. 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 students' understanding of verbs, including: 1. Finding synonyms of dull verbs 2. Defining verbs 3. Unscrambling anagrams of verbs 4. Finding the most complex and interesting verbs The nature of the game ensures that this resource can challenge students of all levels.

This highly engaging and informative lesson helps students to use appropriate, sophisticated, and original techniques in creating writing that can hold their readers' attention. Students learn: - How to use their five senses in writing; - How to relate the senses to the descriptive devices; - How to create a 'hook' in their writing; - How to create mystery in their writing; - How to analyse and evaluate existing examples of descriptive writing; Included are all worksheets, and detailed and visual PowerPoint presentation, which explains each concept clearly, cards for the interactive 'senses' game, and a lesson plan for teacher guidance. 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 £6 All images are licensed for commercial use, and authors are cited on the final slide.

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 the questions/answers. 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 students' understanding of adjectives, including: 1. Finding synonyms of dull adjectives 2. Defining adjectives 3. Unscrambling anagrams of adjectives 4. Finding the most complex and interesting adjectives. The nature of the game ensures that this resource can challenge students of all levels. NOTE: You can buy this resource alone, or in a bundle of 8 Pointless games, for only £1 more!

Perfect for English lessons, or as part of a literacy across the curriculum scheme, the VCOP lessons aim to build students' fundamental writing skills. Engaging, differentiated, and easily adaptable, this lesson aims to improve students' skills at using varied and appropriate sentence openers, following a logical learning journey to ensure that students learn in bite-size steps: - Defining the different words that they can use to vary how they open sentences; - Identifying varied openers in humorous writing examples; - Analysing varied openings in an interesting descriptive passage; - Creating a descriptive piece, using varied sentence openers; - Peer or self evaluating the effectiveness of their varied sentence openers. Resources, worksheets, and a lesson plan are provided. This resource can either be bought alone, or as part of a VCOP bundle (see resource VCOP - All lessons & scheme - vocabulary, connectives, openers, punctuation) for just £1 more.

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Lemony Snicket's 'A Series of Unfortunate Events - The Bad Beginning.' Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the upper KS2 expectations within the new 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: - 'An Interview with Violet' - 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;' - 'Snicket's Description' - 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;' - 'Count Olaf' - 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;' - 'Figurative Language in 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Discuss and evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language, to create an impact on the reader.' 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 resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Roald Dahl's 'The Witches.' 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 new 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: - 'An Interview with The Grand Head Witch' - 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;' - 'Dahl's Description' - 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;' - 'Description of the Grand Head Witch' - 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;' - 'Figurative Language' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Discuss and evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language, to create an impact on the reader.' Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is around 20 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 interesting and engaging lesson enables students to know what reviews are and why people read them, understand the features that make effective reviews, and write their own interesting and appropriate reviews. In particular, students learn to use a range of appropriate features in writing their own magazine reviews, including facts and opinions, jargon, connectives, and statistics. There are easily enough resources here for 2-3 lessons on this topic. Over the course of their learning journey, students: - Define and exemplify what reviews are; - Understand why people read reviews; - Understand and categorise the different techniques used by reviewers; - Identify the features of reviews in model examples; - Analyse the effect of techniques in reviews upon the reader; - Use a wide-range of techniques in writing their own reviews; - Peer and self assess each other's review attempts. The resources include: -Visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint; -A colourful and helpful 'Writing Reviews' Help-Sheet; -Pointless Jargon Game; -Techniques cards for defining the key key features of reviews; -Connectives worksheet; -Blank book review template and film review template; -A model example (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone); -Helpful and comprehensive step-by-step lesson plan. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final page of the slide.