This resource is useful to use either at the start of a new term or in the middle of the academic year, to allow children to demonstrate what they believe to be their own personal academic achievements so far, and their targets. It is presented using comic-book style speech bubbles to make it engaging. The top bubble is entitled: 'What I've Done Well So Far This Year' and the bottom: 'What I Would Like More Help With...' I have used these in every year of my teaching, as it gives children the opportunity to demonstrate their pride, their aspirations, and the wording of 'help' rather than 'target' correctly implies that support will be given, rather than a goal being an independent task (and therefore to many, very difficult to achieve). The resource is available in Pages, Microsoft Word and PDF format and in black and white for ease of printing and gives the children the opportunity to decorate if time allows! Enjoy!

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 village in the South West of England has declared itself as being 'hedgehog-friendly' in a bid to stop numbers falling. Included in this pack is a copy of the article and linking comprehension questions suitable for KS2. Enjoy!

I’ve used this lesson every Autumn to engage children into the Literacy skills needed to write a good instruction text, by linking it to how to use sparklers safely on bonfire night. This pack includes a Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for one lesson, and differentiated worksheets for pupils to plan their instructions before independently writing them up into their books. Suitable for KS2 - and do get a health and safety check before demonstrating with a real life sparkler. I did, and it amazed the kids and really energised their writing! UPDATE 02/11/2018 - RESOURCE NOW INCLUDES PRESENTATION IN POWERPOINT FORMAT!

Going to a museum to as part of your Ancient Greeks topic? Here is a simple, print-friendly worksheet that I've used many times (at places like the British Museum) for children to pick and sketch their favourite artefact.

This is one of my FAVOURITE lessons that can be taught across KS2; a short burst Literacy lesson to develop children's understanding of instruction texts using a chocolatey Easter theme! I would always bring in a few small Easter eggs to this lesson. Using one in my modelling, I would play dumb and be an alien who had never seen an Easter egg before. I would ask the children what to do with it (i.e. to open and eat it) but did everything LITERALLY as they said, to make them appreciate the detail they needed to include in their instructions. Therefore, if they said "pull open the flaps" I would pull really hard and rip the box!! This would encourage them to include adverbs, like 'carefully', in their instructions. The other Easter eggs would be on each table to help the children think through the different steps of opening and eating it, with the promise that they would be shared at lunch time of course! This again helps to bring a purpose to the skill activity and engages children into the learning. Included is a flip notebook guiding you and the children through the lesson, and differentiated planning sheets. Appropriate for all KS2 and easily adapted for your own class' needs. Enjoy!

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.

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.

As part of the children's cross-curricular studies about the Black Death, I linked my Art by learning about Masks. The class had previously studied the Egyptians, so this linked well with their knowledge from that. This is a simple presentation which will allow you as a class to discuss what masks are, who wears them and why, and to compare different examples from cultures around the world. I haven't included a specific activity, but from this we went on compare/contrast the examples, and then over future lessons focus specifically on Death Masks before the class designed and made their own. Can easily be adapted for a different topic which features masks!

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.

This lesson models to children how to read the time on an analogue clock using the following Success Criteria: * I know how many minutes are in an hour * I know the minutes that each number on a clock face represents * I know when the time is at quarter past / half past / quarter to the hour * I can identify what hour the time is currently in Challenge: I can say times according to the approaching hour (e.g. ten mins to six = 5:50) It is contains a balanced mixture of partner talk questions, teacher modelling and independent activities, along with helpful links to resources to support the objective. It even has a challenge plenary at the end, asking pupils what is wrong with the given analogue time (answer: the small hand is too close to the next hour when the minute hand is only on quarter past). I cannot include worksheets for this lesson as I would be copyrighting other people's resources, but I have included links on one page to analogue clock resources. Or you could just Google it - plenty of free ones come up! Enjoy!

The objective for this lesson is to understand the measurement of time and comes in two parts. The first gauges children's prior understanding of the following success criteria: * I know how many seconds are in 1 minute * I know how many minutes are in 1 hour * I know how many hours are in 1 day * I know how many days are in a week and year Included is a worksheet for children to complete, with extra challenges on the notebook board for your higher abilities to be extended. In the second part of the lesson I wanted to challenge and extend children's knowledge of time, so I linked in a TED animation about how time is linked to both Maths and Science. It explains the concept of time measurement using flip book animation, which children can relate to. From this, I challenged children to make a short flip book of their own, using one of the two examples modelled in the video. My kids absolutely loved this lesson, and even made longer and more detailed flip books at home afterwards using different time criteria!

Simple but fun Christmas-themed word search and crossword to entertain children in the run up to Christmas. Available in PDF, Pages and Word formats! The words to be searched are: BAUBLE BELLS CHRISTMAS ELF HOLLY MINCE PIES PRESENTS REINDEER ROBIN SANTA SLEIGH SNOWFLAKE TINSEL TREE The crossword clues are: ACROSS 2) These three people followed the star to Bethlehem 3) Vegetable used to make a snowman’s nose 5) Noise that bells make 7) Decorations made by folding and cutting paper 10) Gold items from the fifth day of Christmas 11) Breed of bird associated with winter 12) Traditional Christmas tree decoration DOWN Type of pies eaten at Christmas Species of animal that Rudolph is Abbreviation of ‘Christmas’ Animal swimming on the seventh day of Christmas Area where Santa lives Green, spiky plant used in Christmas decorations

This resource gets children to independently research information about Celtic traditions using ICT. The worksheet gets the children to visit a BBC website and research the answers to nine questions (three examples shown) with space below each to make notes: 1. How many years before Jesus Christ did the Celts live in Britain? 2. Where do the Celts live today in Europe? 3. What were Celtic roundhouses made of?

This lesson uses brainstorming, questioning, exploration and matching to challenge the objective: To understand that plants make food in their leaves The Success Criteria is: I know the seven life processes I can explain why plants have leaves I know what the leaves of a plant need to make food I can label a diagram to explain this process 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.

This lesson uses brainstorming, questioning, exploration and matching to follow the objective: To understand the different parts of plants The Success Criteria is as follows: I can name the main parts of a plant I can label the main parts of a plant I can describe the functions of plant parts Included is a page listing different accessible and engaging activity ideas (as the items I used are copyrighted). This lesson links with others in my resource shop, as a topic bundle about Plants.

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.