A set of nine mini-investigations that can be set up at different stations for pupils to move around and experiment. Idea for use: Laminate the instruction cards and set them up on tables with the required equipment. Provide groups with an A3 print out of the recording sheet to jot down notes as they carousel around the activities, or provide individual sheets at A4 size either during or after carrying out the mini-investigations. Files are provided in Word format as well as PDF for easy editing if necessary. The tasks are designed to link really well with the Year 4 Programme of Study for Science, but I did this with a Y3/4/5/6 mix class (!) and they all seemed to get a lot out of it. There was lots of discussion in the room and it was great to hear pupils practising the vocabulary of sound (e.g. vibrate, medium, volume, source). Would work well as a revision activity, baseline assessment for starting the topic, or as a Science Week activity. Year 4 ScienceProgramme of Study Sound Pupils should be taught to: • identify how sounds are made, associating some of them with something vibrating • recognise that vibrations from sounds travel through a medium to the ear • find patterns between the pitch of a sound and features of the object that produced it • find patterns between the volume of a sound and the strength of the vibrations that produced it • recognise that sounds get fainter as the distance from the sound source increases

Ready-to-go PowerPoint with 12 different activities based on the area of measures. These are activities that I have used with my class of Y6 pupils and I have collated them onto one PowerPoint for ease. Really helpful as starter activities, homework, revision, mental maths lessons, morning task and early finishers’ task. Some of the activities could also be used as a main lesson activity whilst you are working with a guided group as there are quite a few questions on some of the slides. The mathematical ideas covered include: - Converting units (mass, length and capacity). - Worded problems involving measure. - Time. - Imperial measures.

This is a power point I made for a presentation I did to a group of Y6 Parents at the start of the year. The aim was to education the parents on the kind of questions they should be asking their children when reading with them at home and the kind of comments they should encourage their children to write in their reading journals. The model of reading on, between, behind and beyond the lines is used to link to the reading AFs and make them more accessible. The Powerpoint also includes examples of past Y6 SATs paper questions to give parents an idea of what their children will be faced with. There are activities throughout, which giving parents the opportunity to try asking, answering and marking reading comprehension questions. It also gives an example of a film clip to demonstrate to parents that they can help develop their child's reading comprehension skills when watching a film or TV programme, not just when reading. I worked through the powerpoint with my Y6 class and this was a great idea as both the Parents and children were then 'reading from the same page' (pardon the pun!). This powerpoint would work well with Parents of pupils from age 7-11. It could also be used equally well as a staff CPD session.

This effective interactive display was used in a Year 4 classroom for assessment to save marking! I used it as a baseline assessment and again at the end of the unit of work and simply took a photograph of each pupil’s effort as evidence and noted down anything they may have said whilst doing the activity. Unfortunately I don’t have a photograph of this display, but here is a rough description of how I arranged it: Headings ‘soluble’ and ‘insoluble’ for pupils to organise substances such as flour, salt, rice & sand underneath. Headings ‘Reversible’ and ‘Irreversible’ for pupils to organise descriptions of different changes under, e.g. ‘freezing orange juice to make lollies’. Matching the vocabulary to the correct definition (these could also be used as flash cards as another form of assessment), e.g. dissolve, filter, sieving. Gas, solid and liquid with their properties and a simple particle diagram. I also provided the children with post-it notes and they added their own examples of gases, solids and liquids; irreversible and reversible changes; and soluble and insoluble materials to the display as the unit progressed. I mounted the text on black card and laminated it as I knew they would be handled a lot. I just put blu-tac on the back, but Velcro would be another option. My display is quite plain as I didn’t want to distract pupils when assessing them, but the display is provided in Word format as well as PDF so it can be glammed up with colour if you like. There are many ways that this display could be used. One activity that I did later on in the year was to bring out the cards and use them as headings on a giant Carroll Diagram (the assessment was for maths data handling but it was good to revise the vocabulary). Pupils placed items under headings ‘soluble’ and ‘insoluble’ and other criteria such as ‘edible’ or ‘inedible’. I also used a Venn diagram for solids and liquids and children placed food items and other items in two qiant PE hoops with an overlap in the middle. I hope you enjoy using this resource and I hope that it saves you some time!

This resource is comprised of 22 ready-to-go 'Always, sometimes, never?' investigations. A really easy option for lesson starters, morning tasks mental maths sessions, revision, homework, displays, or early finishers' task. Pupils are presented with a statements and have to determine whether it is true all of the time, some of the time or never. Most importantly, they need to support their decision with enough examples to convince others. This is great revision of lots of mathematical ideas, including properties of shape, properties of number and algebra and develops pupils ability to reason and justify. All of the activities have been tried and tested with my Y6 class and some Y4 pupils too. I would say they are most useful for upper KS2 pupils but could be used lower down. I found them particularly helpful as quick revision activities for SATs.

A mixture of geometry starter and revision activities that I have used with my Y6 pupils over the years. Ideal for easy starter activities, mental maths lessons, morning task, early finishers’ task, or even homework. I have also used some of the activities for focus groups, baseline assessments and quick revision to keep this area of maths fresh in pupils’ minds. There are 26 activities that cover the following mathematical ideas: - Properties of 2D shapes: symmetry, angles, vertices etc. - Area of compound shapes. - Surface area of 3D shapes. - Perimeter. - Finding missing angles. - Co-ordinates. There is a mixture of closed-questions, as open-ended investigations and mysteries to develop pupils’ ability to reason and make rich links between different areas of mathematics. There are also several ‘Always, sometimes, never?’ investigations, which can also be found on my ‘Always, sometimes, never?’ PowerPoint.

A ready to go resource with six activities based on algebra. Perfect for starter activities, homework, extension task for early finishers or morning task. Although I have labelled this as a starter, several of the activities could easily keep pupils busy for a whole lesson - particularly finding the 10th, 100th and nth term of sequences and the ‘Always, sometimes never’ activity based on four different expressions. Mathematical ideas covered include substituting numbers into algebraic expressions and finding the nth term of sequences. Some of the activities are closed questions, but most require pupils to investigate and use the higher level skills of reasoning and justification. I used this activities with my Year 6 pupils as various points of the year and have collated them on one PowerPoint for ease. I would say they are suitable for able Y6s and could also be used in Key Stage 3.

Ready to go activities that I have used throughout the year with my Y6 pupils and collated onto one power-point. Ideal for starter activities, morning-task, early finishers’ task, mental maths sessions, revision, homework or even display. The resource is comprised of 16 activities and the mathematical ideas covered include: - Averages: mean, mode, median and range. - Interpreting graphs, tables and pie-charts. - Probability. I have also included some pictures that may be helpful if you would like to take the mean exploration further. I have found these particularly useful for my Y6 pupils to keep refreshing them on this area of maths, but I think that they could also be used in Y5. There is a mixture of closed-questions, open-ended investigations and mysteries.

This was a PowerPoint presentation and handout that I put together for a staff meeting in my role as subject-leader. It introduces ideas from the Mathematics Specialist Teacher programme and aims to develop mathematical reasoning. It discusses the importance of reasoning, outlines the mathematical skills required to develop reasoning and provides ideas for activities to develop reasoning. The activities can be adapted to suit any age group and any mathematical concept. Many of the activities could also be adapted across the curriculum. They are self-differentiating, with a low entry point and high ceiling and are very quick and easy to set up. The activities are a great option for lesson starters, mental maths activities or time-fillers. The notes under each slide provide an explanation of the activity and some ideas on how it could be adapted. The handout is provided in both PDF and Microsoft Word format.

Ideal for starter activities, stolen moments, morning task , finisher’s activities or mental maths lessons. These are all ready to go activities that have a low entry point and high ceiling, making them self-differentiating and accessible to pupils across KS2. Each activity is designed to develop pupil’s reasoning skills and make rich connections across mathematical ideas. The activities range from 5 minute fillers to investigations that can be extended to span a whole lesson. There are 37 activities, but these can be very quickly and easily adapted to provide hundreds of activities. These are all activities that I have done with my pupils throughout the year; I have simply collated them onto one Powerpoint. Each slide includes explanation beneath and ideas to support/extend learning. Thank you for looking.

Guided reading planning for Y5/Y6 Middle to Higher ability readers based on the text ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’. Five sessions of planning are included, although in reality it could spread over a much longer period of time as I must admit that I struggled to fit it all in to five 30 minute sessions! The planning includes teacher discussion prompts (each linked to AFs) and a follow up reading activity. In my class I had four groups and ran guided reading over four days. Each group had one session with me and three independent days. The pupils followed this cycle over the four days: • Pre-reading in preparation for Book Club. • Preparing answers for Book Club. Children had a preview of some of the more complex questions and wrote their answers in their reading journals. This had the benefit of me being able to ‘pick on’ any child, but also meant I had some written evidence for all pupils every week (I was finding that some weeks I hadn’t written any notes for some pupils during the Book Club session). • Book Club with teacher. • Follow-up Task. Each group knew which day of the week was their follow-up/Book Club/prep day. On the fifth day I heard individual readers and the pupils did free reading of their own books/magazines. I sometimes used this day to catch up if we had missed a guided reading session earlier in the week.

Ready-to-go ideas for developing pupils’ ability to add and subtract mentally and to reason about number. These activities link strongly with the CPA (concrete, pictorial, abstract) approach to teaching maths. I created these activities for a research project I was conducting in school as part of my Maths Specialist Teacher qualification. They are all aimed at improving children’s mental addition and subtraction by developing a broad range of strategies and encouraging them to reason about number. We had found that children were entering KS2 with only a handful of (often cumbersome) mental strategies, e.g. partitioning into tens and units, using number bonds to ten only or counting on/back in ones, and weren’t always applying them appropriately. We used the activities with Y3 and Y4 children, but it can be used from Y2 upwards as it links very strongly with the Y2 curriculum. The resource includes differentiated activities with written descriptions and accompanying interactive whiteboard slides and paper resources where applicable. Slides were originally in SMARTboard format and this is perhaps the best software to use if you have it as the slides can be interacted with this way; however, I have also copied the slides over to a PowerPoint presentation for those without SMARTboard software. Also included is a wall display, which shows visual representations of different strategies for mental addition and subtraction. The activities can be adapted for all year groups and abilities and you will find a lot more mileage in this resource once you get started and the impact on the classes studied in terms of both their confidence and ability in mental maths was phenomenal. National Curriculum Links Pupils should partition numbers in different ways (for example, 23 = 20 + 3 and 23 = 10 + 13) to support subtraction. Recall and use addition and subtraction facts to 20 fluently, and derive and use related facts up to 100 Add and subtract numbers using concrete objects, pictorial representations, and mentally, including: a two-digit number and ones; a two-digit number and tens; two two-digit numbers; adding three one-digit numbers. Show that addition of two numbers can be done in any order (commutative) and subtraction of one number from another cannot Recognise and use the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction and use this to check calculations and solve missing number problems. Pupils practise addition and subtraction to 20 to become increasingly fluent in deriving facts such as using 3 + 7 = 10; 10 – 7 = 3 and 7 = 10 – 3 to calculate 30 + 70 = 100; 100 – 70 = 30 and 70 = 100 – 30. They check their calculations, including by adding to check subtraction and adding numbers in a different order to check addition (for example, 5 + 2 + 1 = 1 + 5 + 2 = 1 + 2 + 5). This establishes commutativity and associativity of addition.

A one off lesson planned as an addition to the Investigators IPC Unit. The lesson was designed to be fun, but had a more serious purpose of developing the pupils ability to write conclusions to scientific experiments. The lesson is based on the premise that the previous night when I got back from the staff meeting someone had eaten my chocolates - I had made a big thing the previous day about the chocolates that my colleague had bought me for helping her with her assembly. I had my suspicions about which member of staff it was but needed proof - the job of the pupils. Pupils do finger print analysis, handwriting analysis, chromatography and DNA barcode analysis to gather evidence and come to a conclusion (justified with evidence) about who stole the chocolate. I did this as a real life investigation with some very willing colleagues. Selected pupils were sent off to obtain fingerprints and alibis from the four suspects and when presented with the evidence our criminal teaching assistant did a great acting job when coming clean! Obviously you don’t need to go this far if you don’t want and you can just do the lesson as it is without basing it in your own school. Wherever possible, I have included Word versions of the files as well as PDFs so that you can customise to suit your own school if you like. This has everything you need to get going - you will just need to label four different kinds of pen, e.g. whiteboard marker, ink pen, biro & felt-tip. The resource includes a teacher lead guided group with focused questions and recording sheet. Linked to Science APP Grid. This lesson was rated outstanding by Ofsted. It can be used across KS2 and would work brilliantly as a fun lesson, observation or as part of Science Week. Enjoy!

A whopping 69 ready to go activities - many of which can be easily adapted to use again. All of the activities are based on the number aspect of maths and have been tried and tested with my own class. There are a mixed or closed questions, mysteries, open-ended investigations, quick quizzes and worded problems. These are ideal for starter or mental maths activities - great for revision. Some of the more open-ended activities ended up spanning a whole lesson with my class as they took them off in different directions and made links with other areas of mathematics. I used them with Y6 but they could also be suitable for Y5 pupils. Mathematical ideas covered include: - Calculation with all four operations (mental and written methods). - Negative numbers. - Problems involving inverses. - Properties of number: factors, primes, square numbers, multiples, product, odd, even. - Place value - including decimals and rounding.

This is a set of 37 ready-to -go activities based on fractions, percentages, ratio and proportion that should save you lots of time. I have collated these from lessons that I have taught throughout the years - so they are all tried and tested with Y6 (and some Y4 pupils). Ideal for starter activities, morning task, homework, extending pupils, tasks for early finishers, mental maths lessons, revision and baseline assessments. I have described them as starter activities, but you will perhaps find that many of the activities can keep pupils busy for a whole lesson. The mathematical ideas covered include: - Calculating % of amounts. - Equivalence between fractions, decimals and percentages. - Calculating fractions of amounts. - Solving worded problems involving fractions, percentages, ratio and proportion. Activities include closed-questions, quick- quizzes, open-ended investigations, ‘Always, sometimes, never?’, scaling up recipes and worded problems. I really hope that you find this resource useful.

This is a unit of work that I created for use with Years 3, 4, 5 & 6. It spans six sessions, although it can run for A LOT longer if desired! Although I am a musician, it requires no musical knowhow whatsoever to teach! I was very conscious of this as I was sharing the resource with teachers who lacked confidence in their musical knowledge and skills. This unit focuses predominately on listening, appraisal and understanding, but there are also opportunities for composition and performance included. KS2 Music Attainment Targets Covered: • Pupils should be taught to listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory. • Appreciate and understand a wide range of high quality music drawn from a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians. • Develop an understanding of the history of music. There are also optional links to Science within each lesson, which enable you to cover the statutory requirements for teaching sound: • Identify how sounds are made, associating some of them with something vibrating. • Recognise that vibrations from sounds travel through a medium to the ear. • Find patterns between the pitch of a sound and features of the object that produced it. • Find patterns between the volume of a sound and the strength of the vibrations that produced it. • Recognise that sounds get fainter as the distance from the sound source increases. As a Maths Specialist I also couldn’t resist throwing in a few sorting opportunities in the form of Venn and Carroll diagrams! Overview • The topic starts with an informal baseline assessment and ends with an informal end of unit assessment. • Each session focuses on a specific family of the orchestra. • Pupils enter the classroom each session to an example of music featuring that particular family, giving them the opportunity to appraise music and develop their own taste. • Pupils learn what each orchestral instrument is called, what it sounds like and how it produces sound. • Pupils become familiar with the terms pitch, timbre, vibration, dynamics and tempo. • Children conduct research and learn through activities; however, notes are included for classrooms where ICT/books are not readily available or where pupils lack sufficient research skills. • Activities are fun and active - with low entry and high ceiling for differentiation. • A wode range of activities, e.g. rapping, sorting, poster making, ‘Happy Families’, interactive whiteboard games, mind-maps and guessing games. • Very little marking is required, as the activities lend themselves to being carried out in a group and outcomes can often be photographed or filmed for evidence. Planning, powerpoint and all paper resources are included. I hope you enjoy!

This is a unit of work for music originally planned for Year 4, but I have used to great effect across KS2. It focuses on teaching pupils how to record their ideas more formally on paper, but also provides ample opportunity for children to listen carefully to well known pieces of music - mostly classical. It was originally planned in 2011, but has been updated to cover all aspects of the current musical curriculum. • Use and understand staff and other musical notations • Play and perform in solo and ensemble contexts, using their voices and playing musical instruments with increasing accuracy, fluency, control and expression. • Improvise and compose music for a range of purposes using the interrelated dimensions of music. • Appreciate and understand a wide range of high-quality live and recorded music drawn from different traditions and from great composers and musicians. • Develop an understanding of the history of music. • Listen with attention to detail and recall sounds with increasing aural memory. Key musical vocabulary covered includes: timbre; pitch; tempo; dynamics; rhythm and pulse. This resource includes: • Planning – linked to the current Music National Curriculum. • Presentation – in both Smart Notebook and Powerpoint format. • Videos – hyperlinked within the presentations. I was unable to upload this as a zipped folder so I am hoping that the hyperlinks work despite the fact I have had to upload the files separately. If not they will be quite quick to switch to manually. • Example of a simple graphic score produced by my class. • Blank 16 bar graphic grid for pupils (ideally photocopied onto A3). • Lesson 1 acts as a baseline assessment. In order to add a cross-curricular element, Session One can be easily adapted to suit current affairs or class topic, and Sessions Four and Five can be adapted to suit a text being studied in Literacy or Guided Reading (details given in planning). NOTE: Once downloaded, please save the video clips/music extracts and the PowerPoint in one folder together so that the hyperlinks on the PowerPoint can find the clips! **Musical instrument cards mentioned in Lesson 1 are not included in this resource and are not essential for the lesson (instruments can be allocated by the teacher or chosen by pupils rather than using the cards for random selection). Instrument cards are available to purchase separately from my shop if it is something you would like. ** Thank you for looking :)