This amazing short film by Aidan Gibbons 'The Piano', will really tug on the heartstrings of you and your class and produce some brilliant emotive writing. Included in this pack is two Literacy lessons (planning/writing recount and edit/improve), a planning sheet for the first lesson and a worksheet to make notes using stills from the film. The writing activity takes the form of a first person recount (also easily adaptable to third person) which challenges the class to infer the main character's thoughts and feelings as he is playing the piano and recalling key memories from his life.

Monkey Spoon is a hilarious animation about two monkeys who find a spoon and proceed to mess around with it. I have used this resource over and over to promote various writing skills, the most successful of which I have found to be adopting one of the character's points of view in a recount of events. Included in this resource is the whole lesson notebook and a plan for children to make notes on before writing their recount.

Helping children to practise their dictionary skills in order to support their spelling, this lesson and worksheet gives a selection of purposely mis-spelt words and their dictionary definitions. Children use their dictionary to find the correct spelling. They can also challenge themselves by thinking about words they know they commonly mis-spell in their writing. Used successfully during an OFSTED inspection. Suitable for KS2.

Football report made from a Bolton Wanderers v Blackpool Town game. Used as an example when studying chronological reports in KS2.

Here's a resource I've enjoyed using over and over, as it gets the kids to do most of the learning! The best way for children to understand the features of different Literacy texts is for them to explore and compare different examples. This worksheet focuses on the features of persuasive texts, which children would look out for in different examples, tick or cross whether they could spot them, and evidence by including an extract (e.g. if they have ticked that a text uses a rhetorical question, they need to note it on the sheet). This task promotes clear investigative, reading and literacy skills which could be completed independently, in partners or even together as a group!

Suitable for Y3-5, and differentiated, this resource allows children to put into practise their understanding of synonyms and the skills of using a thesaurus by up-levelling words in a given sentence.

Here is a lesson presentation and writing plan based on Teacher's TV 'spooky graveyard' short film. I enjoyed using this English/Literacy across all KS2 classes to develop children's descriptive writing (setting, atmosphere) in the form of a recount. This is especially good to use around Halloween time! Resource includes lesson presentation (Notebook) and planning sheet.

When developing my children's comprehension skills, I don't like using photocopies from text books and meaningless expectancy sheets. I prefer to use purposeful, educational and REAL LIFE examples to engage and inform them, while still challenging them and looking for those reading skills. Therefore a lot of my comprehension challenges are based around interesting newspaper articles. In this example, taken from the BBC News website in April 2017, a new species of reptile is discovered in Spain, linking to crocodiles and the dinosaurs. Included in this pack is a copy of the article and linking comprehension questions suitable for KS2. Enjoy!

'The Playground' starts with the opening line: Everything stopped, everything a statue all around me. Frozen in time. This lesson resource gets children to brainstorm and write the rest of the story using their own imagination, using the above opening line and a playground photograph as stimuli. The objective and success criteria are: To write a complete story Success Criteria: * My story has a beginning, middle and end * The events of my story flow and make sense * I can engage the reader using description / feelings / varied sentences The lesson presentation is in Smartboard format with detailed, engaging slides which promote talk partner discussion, teacher modelling, an independent white board task, clear objectives and plenary. It can easily be adapted for different KS2 year groups and a different writing focus other than story structure, e.g. tense, sentence starters, grammar or vocabulary.

I made this resource based on the 2018 Barbour Christmas advert. It is about a girl who appears to have loved watching and reading The Snowman; the famous Christmas animation short film, 40 years since it was first released; and wants the story to come to life for herself. It’s got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children can relate to. I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this instant on character emotions. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group. Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!

I made this resource based on the 2018 Aldi Christmas advert. It is about Kevin the Carrot, who has previously featured in Aldi adverts. The advert starts as a spoof of the famous Cola Cola ‘Holidays Are Coming’ advert, until the truck hits snowfall on a mountain road and slides off the road, balancing precariously on the cliff edge, ending the advert literally on a cliffhanger. Aldi themselves ask the audience at the end of the advert to help Kevin, so I thought this would be a great opportunity for children to have a go at writing their own version of the end of the story. I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this activity on being able to continue the flow of a story. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group. Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!

I made this resource based on the 2019 Waitrose Christmas advert. It is about Edgar, a dragon who is easily excitable about things happening around him, but causes to him breathing fire, and therefore some accidents! He is friends with a young girl, his best friend, who tries to keep him out of trouble, and after one incident which causes the whole village to be angry with Edgar, she buys him a Christmas present which will bring joy to the festive dinner and make everyone happy again. I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing on character description in this lesson. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas, a Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson, and a vocabulary sheet/ screenshots to help children to remember the plot. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group. Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!

Oktapodi is the story of two in-love octopi who are suddenly separated (the female to be sold as food) leading to the male to endure a fast paced and exciting quest to rescue her. The objective of the writing task is: To be able to write a narrative using descriptive language Success Criteria: *I can give my narrative a beginning, middle and an end. *I can write in simple, compound and complex sentences. *I can use adjectives and similes to describe. *I can use powerful verbs and describe them using adverbs. *I can include my characters' viewpoint (how they feel). The resource pack includes a presentation for the two days of activities (day one, writing; day two; editing, improving and re-writing), a planning sheet for children to make notes on before completing their narrative.