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.

Teaching homophones for an entire lesson is pretty hard work and the children get so overloaded with words that they can’t remember them all. So I created four smaller 10-20 minute activities to use as lesson starters or fillers to give children the words in smaller doses. The first is a powerpoint, which would work best as a whole class with whiteboards. It asks if children know any different spellings for a given word and then uses pictures to support the teacher in giving definitions of the words. The second is a matching activity (matching homophones to their definitions) that pupils could complete in pairs. These words are trickier and may require the children to use dictionaries. The third activity is a gap fill, asking the children to choose the right homophone to complete the sentence. Again, dictionaries could be useful. The final activity asks pupils to write their own sentences to show that they understand the different meanings of homophones. There is a points element that could help make this competitive if that’s the way you class works! All activities meet NEW homophones; they are not repeated from previous activities.

If your children read The Week Junior, get them to read the ‘May declares war on plastic waste’ article on p.10 in the 20th January 2018 edition. Follow it up with this quiz which is based mainly on reading comprehension skills. 10 questions. Great for morning work or guided reading.

If your children read The Week Junior, get them to read the ‘All about Spanish Flu’ article on p.12 in the 13th January 2018 edition. Follow it up with this quiz which is based mainly on reading comprehension skills. 10 questions. Great for morning work or guided reading.

Some basic pictures with words underneath so that children can fill in the correct vowel sound. I had taught ‘ar’ in a recent lesson and er/ir/ur in this lesson, so I wanted something that would practise current learning but also revise previous learning.

This document has ideas for splitting The Highwayman into five sections with a follow up activity for each. These include a character sketch, a news report, a diary entry etc. An example of each of the follow up activities is given, written by one of my students, which you could share as model for your students. There is a basic outline of ideas on the document but you may wish to make your own powerpoints/extra resources.

If your children read The Week Junior, get them to read the ‘Around the world in 2018’ article on p.6 in the 6th January 2018 edition. Follow it up with this quiz which is based mainly on reading comprehension skills. 10 questions. Great for morning work or guided reading.

If your children read The Week Junior, get them to read the President Trump article on p.2 in the 13th January 2018 edition. Follow it up with this quiz which is based on reading comprehension skills. 10 questions. Great for morning work or guided reading.