What’s it about?

Favourites among children, both in school and at home, the stories of Julia Donaldson engage young readers and can form the basis for enjoyable and memorable lessons. For ideas on how to use these texts in the classroom, there are planning, PowerPoint, worksheets and literacy activities, shared by teachers and compiled in a literacy collection on TES Resources.

You can download Gruffalo finger-puppet templates, for example, shared by Red Nose Day, to put on a show with your pupils, or try your hand at cake- making with a recipe and instructions for some Gruffalo-themed baking from nicmon1604. There are writing templates for Room on the Broom, Monkey Puzzle word banks and planning tips for The Snail and the Whale, to name but a few.

Have we got news for you

First News is the award-winning national weekly newspaper aimed at upper- primary and early secondary. Every week it presents the latest news in pupil-friendly portions. The newspaper and accompanying website inform, entertain and stimulate pupils to take an interest in the world and become active citizens. Thousands of schools use First News for guided reading activities and to develop pupils’ information retrieval, language analysis and communication skills.

What else?

For spoken language, Bluerose has shared speaking and listening resources for use with primary pupils. In the TES forums, check out “Correcting spoken English - how far should we go?”; “Why can’t the English learn how to speak?”; “Please help! Analysing spoken language”; “Adult literacy - waswere”; and “Sloppy English and Emma Thompson”.

See www.firstnews.co.ukteachers or visit www.tes.co.uktess-nov11.