Ah, the World Cup is upon us again and if you’re like me, you’ve been trawling through the internet looking for something to keep the children: Engaged Busy This project is part of a growing bundle in preparation for the World Cup 2022. Check my store regularly for more additions to the project. This particular strand has a music focus! The children will listen to and discuss the Qatari National Anthem (links and translations included). The aim is for them to rate its effectiveness and compare and contrast this National Anthem with their own. Following this, children will then create their own anthem based on either: Their class Their home town Their football club In this pack, there is: An explanation page. The lyrics to the Qatari National Anthem Rate and Review page- where children rate the anthem. Brainstorm page- children collate ideas for their own anthem. Anthem Writing- the children have lined paper to write their own anthem. This can be done as a guided lesson, in pairs, or as a homework based project. It’s up to you! All that’s needed is a copy of the National Anthem from the country you currently live in, in order for the children to compare and contrast. I hope you and your children enjoy this lesson. I’d love to hear from you all :) Check my site: www.rebeccatheirishteacher.com for more ideas like this. Other products like this: Qatar: Maths Lesson Qatar: Art Lesson

Making Connections is a very valuable skill to teach in Guided Reading. Children learn to connect what they read to themselves, another text and the wider world, helping them to understand the text on a deeper level. Most of us tell the children that a good reader “makes connections”, but for the most part, only a handful of the children actually know what this means. This resource will explicitly teach your children how to make connections with what their reading to themselves, another text and the wider world. This resource can be used with ANY text. It teaches the SKILL of making connections and that can be applied to fiction, non-fiction and poetry. What’s included A detailed daily PowerPoint to structure the lessons and encourage children to engage in child talk/cooperative learning. Making Connections support cards- to provide children with the sentence stems in order to be successful when structuring a connection. Summarising Tweet template- to ensure children have understood the text read on a basic level before engaging in making connections. Children are challenged to include the main events, main characters etc in 280 characters. Making Connection activity Sheets. I hope this resource is useful for you. Please leave some feedback and let me know how these lessons went. I’d love to hear from you.

A pack of resources to support you in teaching report writing! As mentioned on my blog (click here), I use Pie Corbett’s Talk 4 Writing strategy to teach English. Children are completely immersed with reports from day one and engage in many different activities to keep writing lessons fun, purposeful and content rich. In this MONTH worth of lessons, children will: Act out a text to familiarize themselves with the language needed. Make playdough birds based off their research to help the facts stick in their head. Research a bird of their choice to write a report about. Work in mixed ability pairs to create a bank of useful phrases/vocabulary that they’ll need in their report. Discuss how author’s generally present their reports and the EFFECT it has on the reader. Following this, they will plan how to present their report in a double page spread (see cover photo). The best part about these lessons is that they are easy to adapt. If you do not wish to write a report about a bird- change it! I have saved the lesson plans as a word document, so they will be easy to change. These lessons are suitable for 2-4th as the elements of report writing are the same, the expectation will just be higher/lower depending on the age group/ability of your children. If you’re from Ireland, these lesson plans align with the Primary Language Curriculum as their is a MASSIVE focus on oral language/language learning! Can be used in other curriculums too, not specific to Ireland. This pack includes: 4 detailed WEEKLY lesson plans (Yes, 20 days) outlining how to immerse children in reports and spark an interest for them to write in this genre. Resources needed for each week. Sample photographs from my own classroom to support the teacher. 2 quality examples of a report to use as a model text. Links to sites to show children how to present their finished piece in a double page spread (see cover image). A ‘How to use’ document and credits page. Please leave a review and let me know how you got on.

Whole Class Guided Reading Resource based on Newspaper Reports! These activities aim to engage children with Newspaper Reports, while working on the important Reading Skills, such as: Summary Asking Questions Inference Explanation Previous Knowledge This Guided Reading resource focuses primarily on the reading skills this week and not on children’s fluency. I decided to give a strong focus on comprehension this week to see where my children were with the different reading skills. As these Guided Reading resources are hands-on, I spent a day on each activity and really explicitly taught that skill. The children worked in groups of 4 and had to justify, explain and discuss their answers with their peers. Thus deepening their understanding of the skill taught that day. Guided Reading can be taught in many different ways, but Whole Class Guided Reading in mixed ability pairs is the way I approach these lessons and it has allowed ALL children to make progress. For more on how I teach it, see my blog: www.rebeccatheirishteacher.com More products like this: Whole Class Guided Reading: Newspaper Reports Whole Class Guided Reading: Little Red Riding Hood Whole Class Guided Reading: Poetry Please leave a review and let me know how you get on.

As my Reading resources have become quite popular, I’ve decided to make a GROWING BUNDLE! Whole Class Guided Reading has changed my whole outlook on Guided Reading sessions. Children are more fluent, engaged and tapping into those Reading skills every day too. These type of lessons allow for: Collaborative learning Increase in confidence and no constraints per ability A chance to discuss a text as a whole class and really dive in deep. Whole class guided reading packs come with: A detailed day-to-day lesson plan Daily Activities PowerPoint for reference Assessment/Feedback sheet With the purchase of this growing bundle, you will have access to all Whole Class Guided Reading added in the future. You will simply just have to go to “downloads” and redownload the file. Each time I make a new resource, I’ll upload it here and you get it for FREE once you have purchased this Growing Bundle! See how I use these resources on my blog: www.rebeccatheirishteacher.com Please leave feedback and let me know your thoughts on these resources.

Yes- another reading resource! My biggest challenge this year was getting children to PROVE where/how they reached an answer during comprehension lessons. I created these posters to hang around my room as a support system to help the children to structure their answers. An evidence sentence stem- if you will. There’s 10 different posters with different sentence stems for children to use. They could be printed on the one A4 paper too and stuck on the inside cover of the children’s books either. I hope you enjoy these posters and be sure to check out my blog www.rebeccatheirishteacher.com for more Reading tips and tricks. Please leave a comment below to let me know your thoughts :). Rebecca

More Guided Reading Resources- I’m hooked! This week’s product is a week’s worth of inference slides based on 5 different pictures. Inference skills are a form of higher order thinking, which children struggle to understand through words. Take the words away and encourage them to develop this skill through pictures! For more information about using the Whole Class Guided Reading approach, see my website:www.rebeccatheirishteacher.com Act fast, download now, as it won’t be free forever! Included: 5 slides with different pictures 4 questions daily to support inference skills 4 sentence scaffolding daily to support the structure of sentences Copies of each picture to stick in the books. If you have enjoyed this product, please let me know in the comments below! Rebecca :)

4 reading skills graphic organizers and 5 support cards to structure children’s answers for comprehension questions. These post-it note graphic organizers are engaging and encourage children to discuss what they have read to arrive at the correct answer. They can be printed in Black and White or can be printed on colored paper to make them nice and colorful. I love to use them during my guided reading sessions as it encourages children to engage in paired work, extending and elaborating on their own ideas. See how I use them over on my blog: rebeccatheirishteacher.com Reading skills/strategies included: -Main Idea/Details -Making Connections -Theme -Summary Support Cards include: -Making Connections Support -Evaluating -Author’s Choice -Characters -Vocabulary Follow my Instagram to see these products and more in action. The whole idea behind this resource is to structure and build on children’s understanding, by giving them the scaffolding to write their own answers. Reading lessons have become much more ‘talk based’ and fun as a result.

Time to move away from the guided reading carousel and onto whole class guided reading! This lesson plan is FREE to show you step-by-step how you can carry out a whole class guided reading lesson in your class too. Outline: 10 mins teacher/student/chorus read 5 mins quick fire questions (to check understanding) 5 mins modeling the task 15 minutes task and feedback This way your whole class are being guided in their reading daily, as opposed to once a week in a teacher led group. It’s a free resource, so give it a try, let me know your thoughts, and check back later to see more resources like this! Good luck! *This is a follow on lesson from Whole Class Guided Reading: Vocabulary (see my store for more details)

Time to move away from the guided reading carousel and onto whole class guided reading! This lesson plan is FREE to show you step-by-step how you can carry out a whole class guided reading lesson in your class too. Outline: 10 mins teacher/student/chorus read 5 mins quick fire questions (to check understanding) 5 mins modeling the task 15 minutes task and feedback This way your whole class are being guided in their reading daily, as opposed to once a week in a teacher led group. It’s a free resource, so give it a try, let me know your thoughts, and check back later to see more resources like this! Good luck!

St. Patrick’s Day Activities (Reading and Writing) - Let’s celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with these fun no-prep activities in your class for March. These activties are based around a persuasive text, encouraging you to visit the country of Ireland. This Product Includes: Page 1- How to use this product. Page 2- Clumping Activity (learning how to group similar information into the same paragraphs). Children will cut up and un-jumble the statements about Ireland, justifying why they have grouped certain statements together. Page 3- Persuasive Passage about ‘Ideal Ireland’. Page 4- Questions based on the passage ‘Ideal Ireland’ (retrieval and inference). Page 5- Plan your own text on YOUR home country/home town (for those who are also from Ireland). Page 6- Draw a labelled diagram of your home country/home town to persuade the reader to come visit- even MORE! Page 7- Terms of use and credits. Description Use this St. Patrick’s Day mini unit to supplement any St. Patrick’s Day activities you may have! It’s not directly linked to St. Patrick’s Day itself, however it’s based on the lovely country where St. Patrick’s Day was born- Ireland! How to teach this lesson: You can use this fully designed mini-unit as long as you need, because it includes all of the resources you need to teach it! You could also use it alongside your ‘Persuasive Writing’ unit too! It’s up to you :) Let’s connect: Instagram

OBSERVATION LESSON: Today was my observation and it was day 1 for us, engaging with Persuasive Writing. The children had to identify the features of a persuasive text using the AFOREST technique. (We used this support mat and it was EXCELLENT! This resource includes: a very detailed, differentiated lesson plan, which allows you to follow it step-by-step (just like I did). Links to the texts I used. Key for annotating. Advertisements for Lower Ability pupils. To start: children will try to persuade their teacher to allow them to go for break 5 minutes early. To you (and the observer, this will show their prior knowledge of persuasion, which should be little at this stage). Main: Using a key, children will highlight and annotate a piece of persuasive writing using a key to spot the different features. There are 3 different persuasive texts for high, middle and low ability children so that they can all access the content. Plenary: Children will be placed into mixed ability groups of 4/6 and asked to SELL you a random object from the class (e.g. a pencil case) in a dragon’s den type fashion. This will show the observer (and you) the progress made since the start of the lesson as the children apply the techniques that they have learned. Please let me know your thoughts on this lesson plan.

I’ve added these key terms (in yellow) here for you to create a working wall for your English display. These headings can be kept up all year round, even when you change genre. All you need to do is to change the work around it, accordingly. See my blogpost on my blog to see how exactly I use this display in my class. (Note: only the headings in yellow and the clouds are included).

These spellings are based off the statutory spellings of the English National Curriculum 2014. Children in years 3&4 are expected to spell these words by the end of Year 4, and in my classroom, we try to learn and familiarise ourselves with them as much as possible. With this resource, I print, laminate and cut up these words and have them in a basket or box in the classroom. As a starter to guided reading or any English lesson really, I take out the basket and give each table 5 words to focus on. They discuss the words and the spelling patterns, along with the meaning. This way the words are familiar to them. To increase children’s use of these words, any time they use one of them in their writing, they are encouraged to underline it to show they can spell it. Thus, the spelling of my year 4s has greatly improved, thank god! This resource comes with 109 words in both yellow and black and white. Please leave a review and let me know your thoughts. Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram for more ideas :)

My most recent class assembly was based on Theseus and the Minotaur (with a twist). We had covered this story during our topic of myths https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/myths-understanding-the-features-11943412 and the children LOVED it. I wrote this play script based on the myth however we added a little twist. The minotaur is known to be a FEARSOME, UGLY creature, but in our story he turns out to be nice once people get to know him. Moral: Don’t judge a book by its cover. The play script is editable to ensure that there is enough lines for the children in your class. I have 25 and there is 25 parts. However, it is an easy script to edit and adapt. To tie it all together, we sang ‘Eye of the Tiger’ in the middle of the performance which went down a treat with the parents and the school. Masks NOT included This resource contains the script ONLY and in total the play lasted about 15 minutes. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did and please let me know how you and your class got on.

Prior to a ‘big write’, I ask the children to stick these into their books as a check list to ensure they include all of the necessary features of our chosen genre. You can add extra things on there too, such as a whole class target or focus you’ve been working on that week (e.g. similes or openers). I use it as a slight assessment tool for myself to see how my children are progressing in writing. They complete a big write at the end of our genre which is usually every 2-3 weeks. It’s a simple tool to show progression in writing as well as make use of self and peer assessment. Just edit this document to suit the needs of your class/genre in writing. I’d love to hear how you got on using them :)

6 challenge cards for children to solve upon finishing a comprehension task early or if looking to encourage them to think deeper. We have been trying to use the A.P.E (answer, prove, explain) technique for inference questions, which encourages children to PROVE their answers by looking at clues in the text/pictures. These challenge cards remind children to prove their answers.

As last week was Book Week, I planned a week’s worth of lessons based around the book ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Each day, we read a chapter of the story and then engage in lessons based on what we’ve read. As you can see from the cover image, this involves lots of chocolate!! The children absolutely adored these lessons and were so engaged in the process of melting chocolate. They needed to see which chocolate would be the best to build the Indian Prince’s palace out of by melting different types of chocolate. HINT: flakes don’t melt! Honestly, a really fun week and trust me, you’ll enjoy it too. Please check out my Instagram for more of my activities for Book Week: Rebecca.the.irish.teacher

An editable book cover hunt. Children will follow the clues on the reverse side of each book cover and hunt around the school for some hidden treasure. They must write down the names of the book covers that they come across too and aim to read at least one of them that week. Just something a bit different during Book Week to engage them with different books. For more information of activities that we did during Book Week, check out my Instagram: Rebecca.the.irish.teacher.