This resource is designed to use in reading lessons when reading the brilliant Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. For each chapter, there are images to support some of the unfamiliar places and objects that the children may not have come across before. There are also easy translations of some of the tricky vocabulary (words and phrases) used throughout each chapter to support children’s understanding of the text. Hope it helps!

This resource is aimed at Year 4 and is based on the first 6 chapters of the brilliant Varjak Paw by SF Said. Each lesson begins with some reading tasks that use Jane Considine’s Book Talk approach, before exploring the chapters further with some oracy-lead learning that follows the tasks and recommendations from Voice 21. Most of the slides have notes underneath for guidance and explanations, I think it is all pretty self explanatory… hopefully. I hope you find this useful if you choose to use it. Please leave any questions in the comment section below and I will try to get back with an answer as soon as. Hope it helps.

This resource is designed to help children with new and unfamiliar vocabulary to help deepen their understand the excellent Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. When teaching this book in the past, I have noticed that there was a lot of vocabulary and idioms that some of the children were struggling to access because either they had not heard or seen the words or phrases before, or had seen or heard of them but were unsure of what they meant. When reading this book, I would have the images displayed on the board for the children to see as we read each chapter and I would print and chop up the idioms and hand them out to some of the children in the class. Those with the idiom would need to pay extra attention and, when their phrase is read out, they would stand up and read the meaning out loud. The other children may wish to record this new vocabulary for future use as these phrases could be useful in their written work. Or you would use it in a different way to suit your class, whatever works!

I have made this resource for my Year 5 class to use to support their reading skills. All of the questions relate to the reading domains (2a-2h), I have tried to make them look similar to what they might be seeing in their SATs. The questions relate to four page chunks of the book to give them time to read and answer the questions in a guided reading session. Hope you find it useful, some of the questions may not link directly to the strands (I'm by no means an expert!) so if anything needs changing please comment.

This is a three-ish week plan for the wonderful video clip Taking Flight which can be found on the equally as wonderful Literacy Shed and YouTube. The plans start with a short unit on diary writing where the children will write from the point of view of the boy in the story reflecting on his adventures with his Grandpa. The planning then progresses to the children creating a new adventure for the child and his Grandpa to go on and writing the narrative for it. At the time of posting this I have not taught it so I have no idea if this will be good or a total flop! Some of the ideas in the planning are taken from The Writing Revolution, well worth a read. If you want to use the plans then great! I have slides and resources to go with it but the slides are on a file type which is currently not supported by TES (Lynx). However, if you want them I can always convert them into Smart Notebook slides and attach to this file. I can’t be bothered to do it now, its been a long day.!

This resource is a guided reading activity I have prepared for my year 5 class to support our WW2 topic. Each page has a series of questions that link into the guided reading standards (2a-2h) in an attempt to find a simple, measurable way to find out what the children doing the activity can do well and need support with. I have tried to make the questions look and sound similar to the type of questions they will have in a SATs paper. Some of the pages have questions on the left and answers on the right, but not all of them; they are fairly straight forward though. I think I have made the questions relevant to each strand but feel free to comment if any need changing. Hope this helps.

Literacy Planning I am using with my Year 5 class based on the animated film clip ‘Replay’ which can be found on YouTube and the Literacy Shed. There are a million ways that this clip can be used but this planning is based on turning the film clip into narrative. Inspired to give this a go after reading Modelling Exciting Writing, a brilliant book full of fab ideas!

5 Weeks of Athletics planning, does exactly what it says on the tin! Mixture of Track and Field events.

This is a short set of plans for a setting description based on the wonderful POG by Padraig Kenny. The unit is aimed at Year 5 children but can be easily adapted for any Key Stage 2 learners. The children will write from the point of view of Penny or David to describe their new house on the first day that they moved into it just like they do in the book. This planning pulls on resources from Descriptosaurus and the Literacy Shed (because they’re great) and is hopefully useful to anyone wishing to use this book to inspire some creative writing. Hope it helps!

A short descriptive unit of work based on the water colour masterpiece ‘The River’ by Alessandro Sanna. This unit of work was used to fill a spare week but turned out to be one that the kids liked (mainly because they got to do art in literacy, scandalous!) . This was also taught along side our class reader ‘The Explorer’ for a Rivers and Mountains topic. This unit pulls on resources such as Descriptosaurus which is an excellent resource to develop children’s descriptive vocabulary if used in the right way. Hope its of use!

This resource is three weeks worth of poetry planning for Free Verse Poetry aimed at Year 4 but, as always, its can be easily adapted to suit different year groups. In a nut shell, the children look at a few examples of free verse poems, write a shared poem as a class, break the poems down and look at the skills, build a bank of vocabulary, look at how to write poetically and write their own Christmas Eve themed free verse poem. The third week gives the children the opportunity to write Christmas themed Kennings, List Poems and Limericks. Loads fir them to do! I decided to put the Kennings etc as the last week as I will be teaching this in the last week of the Autumn Term and I don’t want the children trying to write an assessed piece in the whirlwind of chaos that is the last week before Christmas. The third week could easily be moved to the first week if you wanted it to. Hope this helps! P.S. I have the PowerPoints available but they will need editing! My school uses Lynx and you can’t upload them to TES, sad times. Comment if you want them, happy to share.

This is a resource designed to help children remember how to spell those lovely words that they need to have mastered by the end of Lower Key Stage 2 (Year 3-4) and Upper Key Stage 2 (Year 5-6). They might not be the best at teaching children the meaning of the words or the context they can be used in but used just as a spelling tool, I have found them to be great. The children will need to look at each word carefully, say the word aloud (but not too loud) and perhaps say each letter at a time, cover the word so they can no longer see it, write it down in the box and then check to see if it is right. The last step can be done by the child, in partners or by the teacher (although the last step can be time consuming!). I have found that these are good early bitrd tasks, lesson starters, revision guides, homeworks, all sorts of stuff really. Also, I by no way invented these but they help me massively so might help you too. They are set up to last about a full term if one sheet is done per week consecutively. Enjoy!

A short guided reading resources based on Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. The resource is a fictional advert for the Peggy Sue (renamed the Seggy Pue because it is funny) which covers a range of Reading Domains for KS2.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a great book with engaging stories that children, regardless of their attitude to Harry Potter, really enjoy. This 2/3 week planning unit looks at three of the tales (Wizard and the Hopping Pot, The Fountain of Fair Fortune and the Tale of the Three Brothers) before the children choose their favourite and innovate it to create their own story. Hope this is of some use!

Here are plans and slides for a biography unit for KS2. The lessons in this resources are themed around architects Norman Foster and Christopher Wren but can easily be adjusted for other significant people. The lessons include shared writing, skills lesson, SPaG games and starters and planning time. The final layout of the biography is themed around the amazing book ‘Fantastically Great Women WHo Changed The World’. This was taught to a Year 4 class but the skills and also be adjusted to suit any KS2 year group. Hope this helps.

Just So Stories are brilliant and also really fun to teach (IMO). The children will read some examples of Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling and then have a go at writing their own based on how an animal got its distinct feature. I have used this with my Year 5 Class but it could be easily differentiated to suit any KS2 class. Favourite lesson is using emoji’s to create the speech, any excuse! Hope this helps.

This resource is some writing planning based on the wonderful short film The Lucky Dip. The slides are split into Input slides where the teacher works closely and models to the children and writes with them. On the Independent slides, the lesson patterns are very similar but there is no modeling from the teacher. There are notes on some of the slides to explain what to do but I think it is fairly self explanatory. I used this with my class this year and they not only loved the clip but produced some decent work too. Hopefully you find the same. Any questions, please feel free to get in touch and I hope this helps/saves you some time. Some of the ideas for this unit were taken from the CPD provided by the lovely Jane Considine’s Write Stuff Sessions which took place during lockdown. Do yourself a favour and check out Jane Considine Education and The Training Space YouTube Channel for some excellent examples of planning and resources.

This resource is intended to be used for guided reading lessons when studying the wonderful Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. Each lesson is made up of some quick fire questions (retrieval and inference) and then a longer written question (inspired by the Book Talk reading scheme by Jane Considine) and each chapter is consolidated with VIPERS questions from Literacy Shed Plus (subscription required but very worth it). The last slide provides guidance for how to use the resource. If it us useful then I will be happy to make and share the same for Chapters 1-4. Hope it helps!