This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Susan Hill's 'The Woman in Black.' 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: The Rural North' - 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.' - 'Hill's Description - The Horse and Trap' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Know how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, present meaning.' - 'Mr Jerome' and 'The Woman in Black' - 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 stimulating and informative lesson aims to improve students’ ability to adapt the style of their writing to suit their audience and purpose. In particular, they attempt to meet the purpose of writing diary entries. Students follow a clear and logical learning journey, in which they: -Define diaries and their key content features; -Read extracts of diaries, and explain which content features different writers employ; -Work collaboratively to ascertain the language and structure features of diary entries; -Create a success criteria for effective diary writing (although a ready-made success criteria is included) -Write a diary entry for a famous character from their favourite movie, using the techniques that they have learnt; -Peer/self-assess their diary writing attempts. There are enough resources here really for two lessons, including: -Visually engaging whole-lesson PowerPoint; -Diary extracts x 4 (Adian Mole, Anne Frank, etc.) -What's in a Diary Entry worksheet; -Success Criteria; -Step-by-step lesson plan. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final page of the slide.

This detailed and engaging lesson enables students to gain an understanding of simple, compound and complex sentences, and to use a variation of sentence types in their own writing for clarity and effect. Students learn through a number of fun and interactive tasks, which enable them to: - Define and exemplify simple, compound, and complex sentences; - Identify them in writing; - Understand and analyse how different types of sentences can be used for clarity and effect; - Create a written piece using a variety of sentence structures for clarity and effect; - Evaluate their use of different sentence structures. The resources include: -Visually engaging and comprehensive whole-lesson presentation; -Resources for the card-sorting activity; -A model example and analysis worksheet; -A success criteria; -Step-by-step lesson plan. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final page of the slide.

This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students' knowledge of the main themes (Dreams and Loneliness) in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, understanding the writer's ideas and opinions, and making precise and confident interpretations about texts. The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interactive skills. It follows this learning journey: - Understanding what dreams and loneliness are, and how we each experience them; - Defining themes and understanding how writers use them; - Understanding how and why themes are used in other famous texts; - Retrieving evidence from the text to demonstrate where the characters experience dreams and loneliness; - Analysing how the themes are used to help get across John Steinbeck's ideas about 1930s America; - Evaluating each others' analytical attempts. The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet for recording the retrieved quotations, a helpful template for the main task, and a lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet. All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the 'Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme' bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

This resource booklet contains a wide range of age-appropriate, engaging, and meaningful comprehension activities for use throughout the reading of Mark Haddon's 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.' 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: Asperger's Syndrome' - 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.' - 'Haddon's Description - The Police Station' - to enable students to demonstrate that they can: 'Know how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, present meaning.' - 'Ed Boone' - 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 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 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 engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students' knowledge and understanding of the character of Crooks in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men: His dreams, his loneliness, and how his plight is a product of living in 1930s America. The lesson also aims to improve students' analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character. This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with tasks and key information, an extract from the text with close reading questions, a writing to analyse help-sheet, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of increasingly more difficult tasks, including: - An opening task to ascertain what is known about Crooks, and racism in 1930s America - An extract from the text that highlights some of his characteristics and his loneliness. - Questions to encourage students to infer and deduce hidden meanings, and understand Steinbeck's message, - Joint creation of an analysis success criteria; - An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Crooks; - A chance to peer assess against the success criteria. All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation. You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the 'Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme' bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

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.)

This engaging and informative lesson helps students to understand the key events of the sub-plot in Louis Sachar’s 'Holes' - the story of Kissin’ Kate Barlow and Sam. Students demonstrate their comprehension of the key events in Kate and Sam’s life, before forming their own opinion on Kissin’ Kate’s justification for becoming an outlaw. The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through: - Reading and understanding the selected extracts to comprehend the key events of the sub-plot; - Storyboarding the key events (using the template provided) to demonstrate their understanding of key quotes and ideas; - Using textual evidence to show a deeper understanding of the sub-plot, considering the writer's ideas and the historical context; - Forming their own viewpoint about Kissin' Kate's actions through a writing to argue piece; - Peer assessing each other's learning attempts; Included is: - Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive; - Storyboard Template; - Selected extracts - Chapters 23, 25, and 26; - Analysis of the Sub-Plot worksheet (and student answer sheet); - Comprehensive lesson plan. There are also opportunities for group learning, speaking and listening, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. I originally used these resources with year 7 and 8 classes, however colleagues have used them for between years 4 and 9 with minimal adaptations. All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.

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.

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!