20 philosophical thought cards to encourage children to discuss deep ideas and justify the reasons for their choice. These cards can be used as a display, or as a lesson in itself to engage children in paired discussion. Philosophy for Children (P4C) has been proven to improve: Critical reasoning skills. Creative thinking skills. Concentration skills. Listening skills. Communication skills. Social skills. Once a week for a lesson, give it a try!

Dreading a dull lesson on how to create a classification key? Look no further because here your children will be super engaged by creating a classification key for different types of sweets! Included: An activity to allow children to try classify animals in pairs. & An editable Power Point which explains: What ‘classifying’ is. How to create your first question for a key. How to use a classification key. Allows children to work collaboratively by encouraging them to engage in ‘partner talk’. It encourages them to JUSTIFY their choice of groups. Heightening their reasoning skills is very important, especially in Science. I completed this lesson this week as an introduction to classification keys. Next week we will be classifying vertebrates and invertebrates. Please leave a comment to let me know your thoughts.

A complete booklet to hand out to staff outlining events for Book Week. There are ideas, timetables for the week, overviews, checklists for teachers etc. This booklet can be edited to suit your school, but also can be used directly as is to make your Book Week run successfully. This has just been used by my school and was incredibly successful. See photos on my Instagram for more details (Rebecca.the.irish.teacher).

Philosophy 4 Children is being taught across the UK to teach children fundamental skills such as: critical thinking. reasoning skills. empathy. team work. In this pack, I have included: Philosophy Display Cards Philosophy lesson plan: recycling Philosophy lesson plan: friendships Philosophy Powerpoint: recycling Philosophy Powerpoint: friendships A document on how to teach philosophy. I have been teaching Philosophy lessons for a whole term now and the difference it has made in children’s problem solving skills in friendship issues, aswell as mathematical problems is amazing! We spend an hour a week on P4C and it’s the children’s favourite lesson. Some of them have come out with some cracking conclusions too: “Crying is an expression of your truest emotions. The body takes over from the mind”. I mean WOW!

A mathematical activity to engage children with converting units of measure (Christmas Theme). I have included a map of the world with different parts labelled for children to measure the distances between. Children must measure the distance between 2 different parts of the world. Then because 1cm=35 minutes, they must then calculate how long it would take to get to said part. For example: How long will it take Santa to get from house A to house B? Using your ruler, measure the distance from A to B. If it’s 7.6 cm- round to the nearest whole number which is 8cm. 1cm = 35 minutes so 35 x 8 = 280 minutes =4 hours 40 minutes Fill in the table below of your findings. This example has been done for you. Children must then fill in a table with their findings. Included also is two different design opportunities. Children can design their own Christmas jumper and Christmas cookies.

BACK TO SCHOOL!!! (Already?) One of my main goals on day one is to build relationships with the children and leave them go home on the first day feeling happy and safe in their new classroom environment. The idea behind this resource is that each child write a nice comment on their peers’ jigsaw pieces, so that by the end of the lesson, each child has a nice comment from everyone in the class. I then plan to cut the jigsaw pieces out and display them in the classroom for the year, for children to refer to anytime they wish. It also gives you an opportunity to set expectations for a more “busy” lesson, i.e. silent when walking around the room/no running/no pushing etc. Included is: The activity sheet A short powerpoint explaining how to engage in this activity! Please leave a review and let me know how you got on

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.

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 :)

Enjoy some end of term activities by engaging the children with the World Cup 2022. The country of Qatar is getting ready for 2022, so why shouldn’t we? A mathematical activity to engage children with converting units of measure (World Cup Theme). Lesson Plan included. Familiarise the children with the layout of the stadiums. Children must measure the distance between a letter and a stadium. Then because 1cm=35 minutes, they must then calculate how long it would take to get to said stadium. For example: How long will it take A to get to Lusail stadium? Using your ruler, measure the distance from A to Lusail stadium. If it’s 7.6 cm- round to the nearest whole number which is 8cm. 1cm = 35 minutes so 35 x 8 = 280 minutes =4 hours 40 minutes Children must then fill in a table with their findings. A fun activity for the whole class. Please let me know what you and your class thought of this resource- I can’t wait to hear your thoughts. I have included a map of Qatar with the football stadiums.

A fun filled ‘back to school’ activity centered around children applying for classroom jobs! Children will be shown (by powerpoint) what each job entails and what type of characteristics they need to have for each job. The aim here is to get to know children’s personalities: Who is a leader: who is shy: who is outspoken: who is a decent writer etc. Plus it beats a ‘my summer holiday recount’ right? Also another way to reinforce classroom expectations at the beginning of the year, i.e. what each child is expected to do as a responsibility to their classroom. Included is: 14 page PPT outlining each job and explaining the activity Job application form with scaffolding and images Class Jobs posters (as seen in the cover image) Please do leave a review to let me know how you got on

This resource includes a detailed, differentiated plan, activity resources and an interactive notebook file to use as a support throughout the entire lesson. This lesson is a step-by-step guide in how to plan a fair test. It relates to the materials topic as it is questioning different materials and their properties at mopping up spills. Children are encouraged to make up their own scientific question, which promotes a scientific enquiry, heightening the engagement during this experiment. Children will learn how to write up an experiment and revise terms such as fair test.

This lesson is very fun and interesting, while encouraging scientific enquiry and language throughout the whole lesson. This resource comes with a detailed, differentiated plan, activity resources and a step-by-step support notebook. Children will be investigating foams and deciding which foam is the best insulator to keep ice-cream from melting. A messy lesson, but one to remember. It contains enough material for a one hour lesson. Included: *A detailed lesson plan *A colourful notebook file to engage children’s curiosity in the topic *A prior and post assessment tool *An experiment grid to record their findings.

***DIFFERENTIATED MULTIPLICATION FOR 4 GROUPS*** When teaching multiplication this week, I struggled to find a resource in which I needed. In Mathematics, I like a resource to be differentiated, while allowing the children to move up to a higher set themselves, if they find the work too easy. This resource allows children to make great progress in one lesson as they can be challenged constantly, rather than completing page after page of the same type of calculation. My class have not yet moved onto 2 digit multiplication, so it is differentiated by: Bronze: TO x O (focusing mainly on the 2, 3, 4 and 5 times tables) Silver: HTO x O (using a range including the 6, 7, 8 and 9 times tables) Gold: THHTO x O (using a range including the 6, 7, 8 and 9 times tables) Upon finishing the gold section, there is an additional section called platinum. This section allows a further challenge for children in completing missing calculation multiplication questions (answers included). I have provided the success criteria at the top of the page, as I like to remind children constantly what they need to remember to do. Also, for some children who don't know their times tables, I've included a multiplication square for support. These files have been saved as a PDF and a word document.

12 DAYS WORTH OF MATHS STARTERS- DIFFERENTIATED. I created this powerpoint to keep their maths skills quick. Each day, regardless of the maths topic, we will engage with one of these maths starters prior to the lesson. I found that children were not retaining the maths we had done throughout the year, so this was a quick, easy way to keep our skills fresh and quick. They’re differentiated into three groups and we call it the chilli challenge!! 1 Chilli- Low Ability 2 Chilli- Middle Ability 3 Chilli- High Ability If these are a hit, I will continue to make and upload these. Please let me know if they were helpful.