30 slides with brain teasers, hidden words, quiz activities.... things you may find useful for tutor period or as lesson starters to get those brains in gear. I have created some of these slides and adapted others from the net. Many of the puzzles are all time classics. On slides where the animations don't come in, answers are on the notes section at the bottom of the slide.

Plastic pollution was highlighted recently in ‘The Blue Planet’. This is a reading passage with questions, a vocabulary study, prompts for discussion and they have to rearange the sentences to get advice on what you can do to help. Key included.

Some memory exercises for pair work, a match-up activity and an exercise on personality adjectives. This powerpoint will hopefully be motivational at the start of the new year!

This is an updated version of my 2016 powerpoint, which was very popular. There are lots of activities to keep them busy and get them thinking. It would be nice to get a few reviews on this one.

There is a huge amount of detailed stuff out there about this day. Here, I have put together some interactive slides mainly about the languages themselves. Should suit years 5,6,7... Hope it's useful, colleagues!

This is an update version of my very successful previous ones. There are lots of activities to provoke thought and plenty of visuals to promote discussion. Images fly in to assist comprehension .

I ask my students to comment on each picture and make inferences. Then they have to prepare a 5 minute talk on whether they are for or against the death penalty and why. It's still a useful debate and can be linked to &'Of Mice and Men&'; and many other works they study.

Some slides to help explain what happened in Paris, if not why. Suitable for younger students. There are some activities to ensure comprehension and hopefully promote some thinking. If there is anything inappropriate, please let me know.

14 slide ppt, discussing the issues at a basic level.

This is designed for EAL learners, but is useful as a prompt for debate in the mainstream classroom. The arguments and counter arguments are presented as exercises: match-up, replace the words and re-arrange the words. There is also a powerful image to describe - my thanks to Rich the vegansidekick for permission to use it. A full key is included.

This is a 20 slide powerpoint about Veganuary. There are match-ups, gap fills, true or false activities, correct the spellings, mini RCs, research tasks (design a menu for…) and hopefully, food for thought. I have designed this for advanced EAL learners, but it will make a good form time activity. My thanks to Veganuary and Rich of vegansidekick for permission to use their visuals.

This is a summary of the five keys for Achievement and Social -Emotional Well-Being. This can be used as an inspirational wall chart.

It’s a worksheet about the recent school strike. It is designed for EAL learners but may be of wider use, maybe in Citizenship or tutor period. I’m sure we don’t want them all downing pens, but knowledge is power!

This is a powerpoint of 52 slides. I uploaded it previously to test the waters as I was going to charge for it. From 23 views, it got 21 downloads! I was pleased. Since then, I have done nothing to make it sale-worthy, like checking image derivation and one or 2 layouts that are not really mine. However, I have faffed about with fancy borders and stuff to make it look presentable. Time to let this go live! So - there are youtube clips with exercises, match-ups, comprehensions, picture description, making inferences, games… All sorts! I hope you can use it and I hope to get a few reviews:-)

There are two lists, one taking a positive view of a Trump action, and the other, a negative take. The students match these up, then describe what the images represent. Finally, they weigh up their own opinions about Trump’s policies. This sheet could be used in a debate about Trump. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list, but hopefully it will encourage them to find out more. Actually, I have put quite a bit of effort into this, so I hope it will be useful!

This is a worksheet about the Do’s and Don’ts for going back to school. Having read the guidelines, it looks like these will be the recommendations for students. They match up image and description, then consider the questions. A chance to explore how they feel about the return to school and to think about how they will need to behave. I have prepared this for EAL but it might be useful in the mainstream classroom. The font I have used is comic sans and it is so popular, it shocks me that TES can’t preview it in comic sans!

I have made this for my year 7 tutor group. Hopefully, this will produce some good resolutions which can be measured throughout next year.

A series of famous pictures to promote higher level thinking skills: what might be happening/have happened? What might happen next? Great for EAL too - describe the pictures. Ask them to start by answering the wh- questions and then make inferences. If you play the youtube clip included first, it will show your students that they can say what they think and that there are no right or wrong answers. Well, there are thousands of great paintings and each one can provide a great starter for your lesson. The questions fly in - just incase they need a prompt!

Two short anecdotes with language activities: 1) Socrates and the triple filter test. 2) The rest of your life. These could be used in PHSCE or English.

This is a ‘for and against’ worksheet to get them thinking in a constructive way at this very restrictive time. They read the sheet, compete the questions and carry out the four research topics. It looks a bit awry on the preview, but it is fine on download.