This is a simple activity, which involves children rolling a dice to create fantastic sentences.

Provided in this publisher document are 8 pieces of figurative language based on the novel ‘Trash’. The children are to order these in effectiveness in the diamon 9, from most effective at the top, to least effective at the bottom. There is the opportunity for them to write their own fantastic piece of figurative language, as there are only 8. They then can explain their reasoning and justify their choices.

Included in this activity is a zone of relevance and 6 banks of adjectives to describe characteristics. Children are to look at the words and rate their effectiveness of description. This may be a character in a novel they’re reading. They can make up their own, I usually give the word banks to the basic domain children. They are to place the most effective words in the centre of the circle and the least effective on the outside. Higher domain children can usually explain why they have chosen the words and why they have put them in the place that they have. I have found this a really effective lesson and promotes higher level language use.

Lesson plan included in this resource.

Included are two different activities. The first two pages are the first activity. They will need chopping and mixing up. The children need to match the sentences and join them together appropriately with a colon. The coloured resources are for more basic domain children, to match them and place the colons in the correct place. They are coloured so that they know which one must come first. These will also need chopping and mixing up. My deep domain children, I just gave them either the first or second page and asked them to create new sentences with colons to seperate clauses.

Three seperate activities on simple, compound and complex sentences designed to use with the book ‘Trash’, but can be used for any novel if adapted.

A worksheet asking for different examples of proper nouns, giving a common noun theme eg. days of the week.

This is a booklet that I start before reading the book. It includes comparing and contrasting front covers and blurbs and making predictions. I then complete the last page on the costumes when I have started reading.

These resources are based on the book ‘Trash’. The children have a copy of the table, then I chopped the phrases and clauses up and stuck them in the playground. They had to find them and decide whether they were phrases or clauses. Extension: The children can explain how they know.