I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
This lesson (or two lessons if you want to make it really well!) allows your class to make an engaging and stimulating display about their Plants topic.
Included is photographs of the display I completed with my Year 3 class, a flip of different group activities and clip art which can optionally be used.
This lesson links with others in my resource shop, as a whole topic bundle about Plants.
This lesson uses brainstorming, questioning, exploration and matching to challenge the objective: To understand how the soil helps plants to grow
The Success Criteria is:
I know the function of plant roots
I know why soil is a good place for plants to grow
I can describe the nutrients found in soils
Included is extensive flip pages helping children to understand the photosynthesis process and lesson activities to display their understanding.
This lesson links with others in my resource shop, as a whole topic bundle about Plants.
I made this resource based on the 2017 John Lewis Christmas advert. It is about a little boy who struggles to sleep at night, scared that in the dark, a monster lives under his bed. Eventually, the boy becomes friend with the monster, but it continues to affect his sleeping, leaving him tired during the day. For Christmas, he gets a special present to help him sleep well at night, content that his monster friend, Moz, will be sleeping too.
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 a Notebook 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!
13/11/17 - UPDATE to include a direct link to the video in the presentation
Planet Unknown is a brilliant futuristic animation about a two Space Rovers, sent to find potential inhabitable planets using 'nSeed' pods to detect the possibility of growing plants. In the story, the two Rovers are undertaking their mission, but suddenly find themselves battling through an asteroid shower.
This resource is two lessons; the first gets children to brainstorm descriptive language for the two characters and the setting, while the second is the writing recount of events from the film. The two objectives are as follows:
1) To describe a film setting and its characters
2) To be able to recount a film as a written story
These are each supported by specific success criteria to aid children's writing.
This pack includes a Smartboard presentation with detailed slides for both lessons, a planning worksheet for lesson one, and screenshots JPEGs of the characters and the setting
It can easily be adapted for different KS2 year groups and a particular skill focus, e.g. tense, sentence starters, grammar or vocab. I have kept it as a general recount focus involving all skills.
This is a five-lesson half-term resource on the cross-curricular topic, Earth Matters. Containing a Notebook flip and a worksheet, the KS2-suitable resource develops children's understanding of biomes and eco-systems in a range of engaging lessons, including research project, making a poster, making a 'dome biome' and making group powerpoint presentations which could then be used in a class assembly.
The Learning Intentions/Objectives over the five lessons are:
1) To understand the features of biomes
2) To understand the interdependency of organisms in a biome
3) + 4) To understand that eco-systems are delicate / To know about global environmental problems and solutions
5) To know about global environmental problems and solutions / To prepare a presentation about a topic
This resource can form a lesson, informing children about the importance of General Elections (like 2017) and why we have them.
This Powerpoint presentation allows children to learn about what 'government' is, how it is structured, what different major parties form our current government and what their current policies are (which I have sourced as independently as possible using various news outlets and party pages, barring any U-turns!) This then goes on to allow children to discuss the policies presented to them and to think about what matters / appeals to them the most, with the aim of encouraging freedom of independent thought and debate. Due to the complex wording of some policies, this resource would be most appropriate for UKS2 and KS3, and possibly LKS2 with detailed supporting verbal explanation of key issues provided by teaching staff, such as Brexit.
The class can then go on to hold a Polling Station to vote, with polling cards included in the resource pack, before votes being counted and the results being displayed on the slide in both percentage and pie chart form.
These three lessons, designed for KS2, help children to understand sound, how it travels, how sound can be different and what materials can block sound. The objectives are as follows:
Lesson 1 - Objective: To understand that sounds are made when objects vibrate
Success Criteria:
I can understand that sounds are made when objects vibrate.
I can compare how sounds travel through gases, liquids and solids
I can investigate how sounds travel through different objects
I can explain the results of my investigation using scientific diagrams/language
The lesson poses various questions to children throughout the notebook presentation about what sound is, how we hear, how sound might travel differently, to allow them to demonstrate their prior knowledge or ideas. It also includes useful links which help to embed given facts, mini tasks to engage the class, and best of all, a creative main activity where children investigate whether sound travels through string telephones! The differentiated plenary is a 'fill-the-gaps' activity which assesses children's understanding from the lesson.
Lesson 2 - Objective: To investigate how the pitch and volume of instruments can be changed
Success Criteria:
I can understand that sounds are made when objects vibrate.
I can explain what is meant by the 'pitch' of sound
I can explain what is meant by the 'volume' of sound
I can make predictions
I can alter the pitch and volume of various musical instruments
Children meet this objective by first recapping what they have already learnt about sound, by learning the difference between 'pitch' and 'volume' using different links in the notebook and then by investigating pitch and volume using an online BBC Bitesize activity, noting their predictions and conclusions in their books. Musical instruments could be used in the lesson as well!
Lesson 3 - LI: To investigate whether materials effect the movement of soundwaves
SC:
I can identify the properties of different materials
I understand how sound travels through solids, liquids and gases
I can make predictions
I can identify whether an experiment is a fair test
I can explain the results of an experiment
The lesson starts by recapping previous learning, before brainstorming in what scenarios we might want sound to be blocked. Children then conduct an experiment, comparing which materials would be best to block sound.
A range of lessons that will bring your class’ WWII topic to life, learning about everything from why the war started and who was involved, to evacuation and how events were broadcast, to the social changes brought into effect from the conflict, from the role of women to economic and industrial changes.
This resource covers a whole half term of engaging lessons which I have used from years 3-5 to teach children about the human body, skeletons of both humans and animals, food groups and digestion. It includes questions to stimulate children’s ideas and understanding, links to various video clips and interactive websites to engage and support, and both group and independent tasks to allow children to demonstrate and challenge their understanding using the engaging resources that I have suggested (the cover picture for this resource being the display made using one of their favourite lesson activities!)
A pack of engaging Science lessons (made by a school Science co-ordinator) put together in one handy bundle linking to forces and motion.
I love making Science as interesting, informative and hands-on as possible for children in order to develop their understanding of various concepts.
These seven lessons cover a fun and engaging half-term topic on Plants.
Learning objectives cover:
The parts of a plant
Photosynthesis
Plant lifecycle
Plant growth (soil)
Seed dispersal (reproduction)
The resource pack also includes ideas for an interactive and engaging classroom or corridor display!
A collection of six reading comprehension activities using real life newspaper articles. Each contains a copy of a newspaper article suitable for KS2 (new species of spider / Pangaea / blizzard / Remembrance Day / St Andrews Day/ Hedgehog preservation / Fifa Poppies) and questions that I have made myself to test their comprehension of the articles.
03/07/16 - UPDATED TO INCLUDE MOUNTAIN REPTILE ARTICLE
In this bundle are 11 of my favourite individual recount themes that I’ve used in my teaching career to develop children’s writing skills.
Each uses a brilliant animation or film resource to engage the children and each has a particular writing skill focus (e.g. description, tense, sentence structure).
I hope you enjoy using them as much as I do!
A bundle of Literacy recount lessons based on famous Christmas adverts from the last few years (e.g. John Lewis, Sainsburys).
Children really engage with these as they have seen them at home, because they are emotive or funny, and because they are so well made - like a mini film!
UPDATED 05/11/2020 TO INCLUDE THE 2019 WAITROSE JOHN LEWIS ADVERT