FOR 8-year-old and above: These are 5 BBC articles that I used with my class to boost my pupils’ retrieval skills as well as to improve their speed with vocabulary questions. There are 5 articles with questions & answer sheets. My children found these articles extremely engaging and amazing to work with during whole class reading sessions because they are relevant and interesting. The first text is about the UK’s plastic waste export to Turkey and other countries. The second text is all about how microplastics are effecting life in Indonesia. The third text is all about Indonesian’s fight against plastic. The forth text is about the plastic pollution in seas. The last text is all about deforestation in Kenya and how a man is trying to fight it all by himself with an extremely creative idea! If you are trying to get your class SATs ready, or improve their timing with retrieval or vocabulary questions, or even trying to make them more confident with inference questions, also check my other comprehension unit based on Oscar Wilde’s The Star-Child here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-13006256

These are various written activities to be used as homework or in lessons. They are based on Bloom’s Taxonomy question styles, which encourage deeper thinking, thus understanding of the text studied. There are 43 different activities. First 10 activities can be used by just reading the first 56 pages of the book. The first few can even be used within the first 14 pages! On top of each page, it indicates what pages must be read in order to be able to work with that activity. The majority are whole book activities. You will receive a PDF file with 43 different activities. Second half of the PDF file (page 45+) repeats the same activities in a white background (see screenshots). I have used these with my more able readers and writers to great effects. I have also used them as assessments and/or homework with some year groups. You can either encourage using the lines provided within the worksheets or just cut/trim the white boxes to be stuck in pupil books. I hope you find them as useful as I have for your writing sessions.

25 x A4 David Walliams Quote Posters (coloured version as well as plain background ones). Each page is a new quote from a book along with an accompanying picture. You can edit its print size and/or cut off the pictures if you’d like to make them smaller. I use them around the classroom for children (especially for my Greater Depth writers) to adapt and use in their writing (stories, character / setting descriptions etc).

25 x A4 Shakespeare Quote Posters (colour versions) Each page is a new quote from a play along with an accompanying picture. You can edit its print size and/or cut off the pictures if you’d like to make them smaller. I use them around the classroom for children (especially for my Greater Depth writers) to adapt and use in their writing (stories, character / setting descriptions etc). They do the trick indeed! Please leave a review after purchase and get in touch if you have any questions!

Improve reading comprehension with “The Star-Child Comprehension Workbook”! This engaging workbook, available in dyslexia-friendly, plain background, and printer-friendly versions, is based on Oscar Wilde’s timeless story. Designed to enhance inference, vocabulary, and retrieval skills, it’s perfect for students. Dive into the captivating narrative, master key reading strategies, and expand literary knowledge. Ideal for teachers and homeschooling parents, this comprehensive resource ignites a love for reading while accommodating different needs. Go green with the printer-friendly version and elevate learning with this must-have workbook today! It has 7 chapters (with inference, vocabulary and retrieval questions). The whole file has 188 pages, with four versions of the same workbook: Dyslexia-friendly, Dyslexia-friendly with pictures, White background with pictures Printer-friendly (using smaller fonts on less pages with no pictures) I have used this texts over the years with my 9-10-11 and 12 year old pupils, boosting the engagement of reluctant readers (thanks to many twists in the text!) as well as drastically improving inference and vocabulary skills in preparation to SATs. Their speed and accuracy have always greatly improved with retrieval and vocabulary questions!

These are quotes that I highlighted while reading various Kiran Millwood Hargrave books because I wanted to use them with my Year 5 class in order to aid their writing (especially greater depth), however, everyone benefited from them. This resource would work Year 5+ including secondary. Quotes are mostly descriptive and unedited. They are extremely useful for setting and character descriptions, as well as inner voices of characters in narratives, which increases the quality of writing immensely. There are a couple of examples below. This one is from our writing in response to Hamlet. We were writing a monologue as Hamlet to reflect his inner thoughts after he was told that his father had been murdered. — As soon as my father’s ghost revealed the unfortunate news, my head was spinning. The threads of problems dangled in front of me, and I tried to think of a plan to weave them into a solution, so that I could prove that my uncle was a devious murderer. He wasn’t worthy of the sinful crown that he carried. — This one below is from our work with ‘Macbeth’. It is a diary entry where Macbeth is talking about Lady Macbeth’s dark side. — I never expected these evil thoughts to be injected in me by my wife! It is hard, isn’t it? Describing a person in words, when they can hold a whole different universe of wickedness in them! — There are 11 posters in total. There are two A4 PDF versions of the same pages: one with colour background and the other is plain. I attached some samples in the previews.

These are quotes that I highlighted while reading David Copperfield and The Old Curiosity Shop because I wanted to use them with my Year 5 and 6 class in order to aid their writing (especially greater depth), however, everyone benefited from them. This resource would work Year 5+ including secondary. I edited only a couple of the quotes in order to highlight the areas we were learning (i.e. colons) or to make it slightly easier to process (i.e. breaking them into two sentences rather than one). Most of them are unabridged. They are extremely useful for setting and character descriptions, as well as inner voices of characters in narratives, which increases the quality of writing immensely. Here are a couple of examples from our class work in Y5: (Writing a Diary Entry as Liam in the book ‘Cosmic’ – after Liam receives the phone call that invites him on a father & daughter adventure). You can see how the child adapted the quote from Charles Dickens to fit in her writing. — When I received the phone call from Dr Drax, all the cogs in my brain started turning. New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind. This was my only opportunity to go on the greatest adventure: all the colours of my life were about the change. All I needed was a daughter! — This one below is a narrative (flashback) as the ‘Foreigner’ in the book ‘The Island’. It is a character who is a refugee arriving at an unfamiliar island. The children were asked to describe their background/past lives using flashbacks throughout the narrative they were writing. — My childhood wasn’t very exciting as we didn’t have as much as other people did. As a child of the poor, I knew but few pleasures: even the cheap delights of my childhood had to be bought and paid for. Since my family didn’t have much to spend on these childhood ‘delights’, I didn’t get to experience many of them. In fact, I had to sit and watch other children and their simple delights of their fortunate lives. These are works of more able writers in my class who adapted the author’s style in their work. Many of the other children used quotes as they are in their writing, which immediately challenged their thinking as they needed to adapt their work to make it coherent. There are 19 pages in total. There are two A4 PDF versions of the same pages: one with colour background and the other is plain. I attached some samples in the previews.

Punctuation Posters for displays to aid memory and act as a reference point when writing in class. I find that it is useful to direct pupils to displays as first point of call when they are unsure as it encourages independency. Mostly suitable for KS2.