This informative, engaging CPD session is intended to offer a valuable introduction to phonics for teachers and support staff. It aims to enable participants to: -To understand what phonics are and understand why they are widely used; -To grasp key phonics terminology and apply it in different contexts; -To break down the key phonics stages, comprehending how skills develop. The session is aimed at those who are new to phonics. I myself moved from secondary to primary, and can understand how daunting phonics schemes can appear! These resources, whilst detailed, present ideas in a simple way, helping to make key ideas understandable. Included is: A 27-slide colourful, clear PowerPoint presentation, including post-CPD quiz; Resources for an optional card-sorting activity, to learn appropriate phonics terminology; A comprehensive phonics helpsheet, detailing most of the main points from the session. I hope that you find these resources helpful. Many thanks!

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Louis Sachar's 'Holes.' Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the upper KS2 expectations within the new National Curriculum framework. Children love learning from these resources, whilst they are also of great use to teachers, as there is explicit information within each task regarding which comprehension strands the task is designed to demonstrate. They also relate to key extracts, characters, and themes from the story, ensuring that children gain a deep understanding of the text. Activities within the booklet include: - 'An Interview with Stanley Yelnats' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Understand what is read by drawing on information from more than one paragraph, identifying key details that support the main ideas, and using quotations for illustration;' - 'Sachar's Description' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Explain meanings of words that they know and ask the meaning of new words. Link the meaning of new words to words that they already know;' - 'Yellow-Spotted Lizards!' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Understand what is read by drawing on information from more than one paragraph, identifying key details that support the main ideas, and using quotations for illustration;' - 'Figurative Language in Holes' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Discuss and evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language, to create an impact on the reader.' Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is 21 pages in length!) I've also added it as a PDF in case the formatting differs on your computer. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on a separate document (included).

This detailed and engaging lesson enables students to define and exemplify parenthesis, to understand how parenthesis is used grammatically correctly, and to use parenthesis for clarity and effect in their own writing. Students learn through a number of fun and interactive tasks, which enable them to: - Define and exemplify parenthesis; - Understand which punctuation marks are used to signal parenthesis; - Identify the parenthesis in a range of different sentences; - Understand and analyse how parenthesis can be used accurately, and for clarity and effect; - Create a written piece using parenthesis to add detail and clarity to their own writing. The resources include: -Visually engaging and comprehensive whole-lesson presentation; -A model example and analysis worksheet; -A challenging worksheet (and answer sheet) -Step-by-step lesson plan. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final page of the slide.

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Roald Dahl's 'The Twits.' Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the KS1 expectations within the new National Curriculum framework. Children love learning from these resources, whilst they are also of great use to teachers, as there is explicit information within each task regarding which comprehension strands the task is designed to demonstrate. They also relate to key extracts, characters, and themes from the story, ensuring that children gain a deep understanding of the text. Activities within the booklet include: - 'Feed Mr. Twit' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'talk about their favourite words and phrases in the story;' - 'Dahl's Description' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Explain meanings of words that they know and ask the meaning of new words. Link the meaning of new words to words that they already know;' - 'The Mugglewumps' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Say what might happen next in a story based on what has happened so far;' - 'Mr. and Mrs. Twit' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Enjoy reading and discussing the order of events in books and how items of information are related.' Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is around 20 pages in length!) I've also added it as a PDF in case the formatting differs on your computer. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on a separate document (included).

I have recently taught a descriptive writing unit, and devised this assessment to gauge how students descriptive skills have progressed over the term. It includes the question paper, the mark scheme, and the reading insert. Formal enough to ensure that the students took the assessment seriously, but engaging enough to ensure that all students wanted to complete all of the tasks, (they hate some of the practice exam questions that exam boards provide on the past papers) all of my students seemed to enjoy completing this more than they normally enjoy assessments! The assessment is designed to gauge students' skill in: - Defining and giving examples of descriptive devices; - Identifying descriptive devices in texts; - Analysing the effect of descriptive writing in a vivid description of a 'Nightmare World.' - Creating their own descriptive piece about a their own nightmare world. This lesson can either be bought individually, or as part of the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (which works out cheaper.)

Perfect for use when teaching writing to persuade or argue, this lesson utilises a wide range of teaching strategies to enable students to gain authority over their target audiences. The students who I have taught this lesson before have found it enjoyable and engaging - particularly enjoying the use of videos to see some of the techniques in action! Throughout the lesson, the learning journey that the students follow enables them to: - Define the key terms 'Argue', 'Persuade' and 'Authority.' - Consider famous individuals that are effective at gaining authority; - Link key techniques to their definition and examples; - Identify key techniques in videos (Dave Gorman, Dragon's Den, etc.) and analyse why they are effective; - Write their own authority-filled persuasive piece using a success criteria; - Peer assess their partner's writing attempts. The resource is made up of: - A visual and engaging Powerpoint presentation, which walks teachers and students through the lesson in a step-by-step fashion - Hyperlinks to all of the online video resources that you will need - A key techniques activity worksheet - An analysis worksheet - A full lesson plan/ teacher guidance. All images are cited on the final slide and are licensed for commercial use.

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Robert Swindells' 'Stone Cold.' Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the KS3 expectations within the new National Curriculum framework. Children have found these resources engaging, and for teachers there is explicit information within each task regarding which comprehension strands the task is designed to demonstrate. They also relate to key extracts, characters, and themes from the story, ensuring that children gain a deep understanding of the text. Activities within the booklet include: - 'Context: Homelessness in London' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Know the purpose, audience and context of the writing and drawing on this knowledge to support comprehension.' - 'Swindell's Description' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Know how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, present meaning.' - 'Ginger' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Study setting, plot, and characterisation, and the effects of these.' - 'Vocabulary Inspector' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Learn new vocabulary, relating it explicitly to known vocabulary and understanding it with the help of context and dictionaries.' Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is 21 pages in length!) I've also added it as a PDF in case the formatting differs on your computer. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on a separate document (included).

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Michael Morpurgo’s ‘Private Peaceful.’ Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the KS3 expectations within the new National Curriculum framework. Children have found these resources extremely engaging, and for teachers there is explicit information within each task regarding which comprehension strands the task is designed to demonstrate. They also relate to key extracts, characters, and themes from the story, ensuring that children gain a deep understanding of the text. Activities within the booklet include: - ‘Context: World War One’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Know the purpose, audience and context of the writing and drawing on this knowledge to support comprehension.’ - ‘Morpurgo’s Description’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Know how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, present meaning.’ - ‘Horrible Hanley’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Study setting, plot, and characterisation, and the effects of these.’ - ‘Vocabulary Inspector’ - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: ‘Learn new vocabulary, relating it explicitly to known vocabulary and understanding it with the help of context and dictionaries.’ Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is 21 pages in length!) I’ve also added it as a PDF in case the formatting differs on your computer. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on a separate document (included).

Based on the popular game show ‘Pointless’, this resource is perfect for use as a starter activity, plenary, or revision tool. Editable, so that you can change to any other topic or change questions. Containing almost 30 slides of sound clips, engaging visuals, and suitably challenging questions, this resource is effective at both promoting engagement and enhancing learning. There are several full rounds of questions to build learning of Persuasive Writing: 1. Emotive Language 2. Definitions of Persuasive Devices 3. Adding and Contrasting Connectives 4. Remembering Persuasive Devices The nature of the game ensures that this resource can challenge students of all levels. A blank template is now included, so that you can create your own Pointless games!

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Roald Dahl's 'Esio Trot.' (Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions). They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the KS1 expectations within the new National Curriculum framework. Children love learning from these resources, whilst they are also of great use to teachers, as there is explicit information within each task regarding which comprehension strands the task is designed to demonstrate. They also relate to key extracts, characters, and themes from the story, ensuring that children gain a deep understanding of the text. Activities within the booklet include: - 'Feed Alfie' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'talk about their favourite words and phrases in the story;' - 'Dahl's Description' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Explain meanings of words that they know and ask the meaning of new words. Link the meaning of new words to words that they already know;' - 'Mr Hoppy's Plan' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Say what might happen next in a story based on what has happened so far;' - 'Story Mountain' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Enjoy reading and discussing the order of events in books and how items of information are related.' Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is around 20 pages in length!) I've also added it as a PDF in case the formatting differs on your computer. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on a separate document (included).

This highly engaging and informative double lesson (around 1.5 to 2 hours of teaching materials) helps students to build skills in demonstrating appropriate, sophisticated, and original structures in their writing, and provides them with theories and techniques to help them to organise their writing adequately. I wrote this lesson because I noticed that there are an extremely high volume of students that approach extended writing tasks (even in their GCSEs) with practically no sense of organisation. Even though they have clearly learnt a number of writing techniques from their teachers, their writing can be extremely short, repetitive, and in some cases the topic is confused. This lesson aims to address each of those issues. Students learn: - What structure and organisation mean; - Narrative structure theory and 'plot mountain;' - How time order can effect a creative text; - How to expand using the five key senses; - How and when to use paragraphing; - Plan for their own extended piece of writing; Included are all worksheets, and detailed and visual PowerPoint presentation, which explains each concept clearly, and a lesson plan for teacher guidance. Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £5. All images are licensed for commercial use, and authors are cited on the final slide.

These handy helpsheets have been employed by teachers across the curriculum to aid students completing extended writing tasks for a particular purpose. There are helpsheets for: - Informing - Describing - Analysing - Arguing - Explaining - Evaluating - Persuading - Instructing Each helpsheet defines the aim of the writing purpose, details the key writing features to be used, offers sentence starters, and gives a short example of the writing purpose, alongside other hints and tips. These helpsheets have also been blown up to A3 or A2 size to become engaging and interactive literacy across the curriculum posters.

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of C.S Lewis's 'The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.' Teachers have found them particularly useful in comprehension or guided reading sessions. They are perfect for aiding the progress of children towards meeting the upper KS2 expectations within the new National Curriculum framework. Children love learning from these resources, whilst they are also of great use to teachers, as there is explicit information within each task regarding which comprehension strands the task is designed to demonstrate. They also relate to key extracts, characters, and themes from the story, ensuring that children gain a deep understanding of the text. Activities within the booklet include: - 'An Interview with Peter' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Understand what is read by drawing on information from more than one paragraph, identifying key details that support the main ideas, and using quotations for illustration;' - 'Lewis's Description' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Explain meanings of words that they know and ask the meaning of new words. Link the meaning of new words to words that they already know;' - 'Aslan' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Understand what is read by drawing on information from more than one paragraph, identifying key details that support the main ideas, and using quotations for illustration;' - 'Figurative Language in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Discuss and evaluate how authors use language, including figurative language, to create an impact on the reader.' Plus many, many more activities (the booklet is 21 pages in length!) I've also added it as a PDF in case the formatting differs on your computer. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on a separate document (included).

This is an exciting and engaging lesson/set of tasks aiming to build students' skills at using personification and adjectives in their writing . It was taught during an observation lesson where the teacher received an Outstanding judgement. Students learn to: - Define and give examples of what regular, adventurous, comparative, and superlative adjectives are; - Identify adjectives in fun and interesting examples; - Analyse what makes them effective; - Create their own adventurous adjectives using step-by-step advice; - Peer assess using a clear and succinct success criteria. It comes complete with: - Engaging and visual PowerPoint to guide students (and teacher!) through the lesson; - Colourful and thought-provoking worksheet for the main analysis task; - Lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet, which goes through the lesson step-by-step; - Resources to create adjective word cards. All pictures are licensed for commercial use, and image authors cited on the final slide. This lesson can also be bought as part of the Descriptive Devices bundle for just £5. The bundle leads students through each language device needed in order to write to describe confidently. Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £6

This is an exciting and engaging lesson/set of tasks aiming to build students' skills at using personification and oxymorons in their writing . It was taught during an observation lesson where the teacher received an Outstanding judgement. Students learn to: - Define and give examples of what personification and oxymorons are; - Identify personification and oxymorons in fun and interesting examples; - Analyse what makes them effective; - Create their own personification and oxymorons using step-by-step advice; - Peer assess using a clear and succinct success criteria. It comes complete with: - Engaging and visual PowerPoint to guide students (and teacher!) through the lesson; - Colourful and thought-provoking two-part worksheet for the two main create tasks; - Lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet, which goes through the lesson step-by-step; All pictures are licensed for commercial use, and image authors cited on the final slide. This lesson can also be bought as part of the Descriptive Devices bundle for just £5. The bundle leads students through each language device needed in order to write to describe confidently. Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £6.