The Napier Code is a 6 lesson mathematics unit that explores patterns and sequences within number through an immersive story telling experience. It’s effectively a play on the Da Vinci Code but uses the Scottish Mathematician John Napier as the central figure in a deathly treasure hunt around Edinburghs landmarks.
Covered are:
Fibonacci Numbers
The Golden Spiral
The Number 9
Quadratic Sequences
Pascals Triangle
The Vedic Square
A series of 5 lessons that explores budgeting and calculating percentage increase/decrease all whilst discussing the Global Goals:
"You now work for Breakwater Bank.
Your first client has asked you to invest £200 in a variety of companies. They are looking for you to buy shares in businesses that are looking to rapidly expand.
You must read and understand the goals of each business before deciding how many shares you will buy.
You need to calculate your expenditure, display your investments in a graph and email your client justifying your decisions"
Low floor, high ceiling math tasks are designed to cut down workload and champion pupils in leading their learning. I usually start with a practical, hands on role play task before doing a little bit of input, followed by around 20 minutes independent work off the slide.
Percentages - get the lost property out, have pupils price it up with post it notes and then task them with reducing the items by 50%
Barbers - get A4 paper, cut it into ten strips (almost to the end of the paper) and attach to the back of chairs. Hand scissors to pupils and watch them cut, style, curl, taper and add extensions!
Area - get the blocks out, give them a rough blueprint with measurements and let them build the foundations with rulers for accuracy
All my Christmas lessons packed in here:
A 3 lesson unit of script writing, with WAGOLLs, progressions and full story
Two circuit lessons
Two maths lessons (revising FDP, Time and Measure)
A couple more small activities
Currently delivering this to two P6 classes but could be used from P4 to P7 with ease.
5 Circuit lessons, all one slide each (and linked to the Global Goals) that aim to be easy access for both teachers and pupils:
Conductors
Circuit Diagrams
Morse Code Machine
Doodlebot
Windmills
Whole class reading sounds great but I’ve always found two issues - financing and finding a suitable text the whole class can engage with. Books can be long!
This is designed for upper primary. Each chapter is no more than two pages long but there is a real variety of rich language and literacy techniques. Every chapter comes with a set of questions - ranging from word finding, literal questions to more higher order thinking tasks and a playful activity.
If you are lucky enough to have 1:1 devices (I am in that position) I am looking to airdrop this to their iPads using the Notes app, chapter at a time. Means they can markup, use read aloud and quickly look up definitions of words - whilst also saving on printing.
The story links to the Global Goals - specifically Climate Action and Life on Land.
A selection of individual, pair and team activities that require nothing more than a tennis ball. I have been taking my class outside to play these for 2x20 minute sessions after break and lunch.
This is a resource designed to work with 1:1 devices - but could be adapted using the QR codes to print out/show the pertinent information for pupils.
The idea is that children pick one QR code, scan it and take notes. They have 20 minutes to fill the main part of the ‘prof forma’ (example found in slides). The final 10 minutes is spent carouselling round other pupils to fill shorter boxes with information about the other two events from the decade.
There are regular recall sessions which I would suggest you present as a quick ‘test’ at the start of a session.
Over the course of (up to) 12 weeks, the pupils will have created their own encyclopedia of the past 120 years. The events picked aim to allow pupils to form links and see how events develop and the decisions of leaders and populations have consequences that can last many years,
These slides are created on Keynote and can be exported from powerpoint to any apple device for pupils to manipulate and learn with all the individual pieces.
Battleships works well using the drawing tool, chess is a simple case of drag and drop (get the kids to tell the other player the grid references to help identify which pawn/bishop/knight etc)
The football slide can be adapted and used with basketball, hockey, volleyball and more.
This is a format of business enterprise lessons that I hope to use throughout this term. It begins with tackling issues in school around inflated resale of Prime, using sustainability and discussions around influencers to act as a catalyset for pupil led change.
Each lesson follows this structure
Role Play in English
Classroom is setup into market/café/bus etc
Children develop roles and play
Identifying key phrases
Key English vocab then picked out and scribed on board
French vocab then taught and compared to English
Script Writing
(1:1 devices? Go to settings and change your keyboard to French!)
Write script – usually no more than 8 lines of dialogue
Pair up to revise
Role Play
Come back together as a class to role play once again
However, this time in French
I must apologise as this is unfinished but had a fair number of people ask me to upload it. This is a poetry unit designed for upper primary, teaching about famous figures from black history and culture, whilst also learning about different poetry techniques.
16 games for your class to enjoy that don’t require anything more than a set of cones and some enthusiasm! Games that can be played individually, in pairs, trios and even some whole class games.
I am a big advocate of the Daily Mile but in my experience it doesn’t motivate every pupil and doing it daily can become a chore as opposed to a joy. Little games like these are intense, inclusive and add a small element of competition (not that there are ever any prizes on offer) which is great for building resilience.
This 4 week unit of work looks at music review writing. It starts with identifying key features and structure, before moving on to subject specific vocabularly and relevant imagery. Pupils have lots of choice throughout and I’d highly recommend you edit the musical artists to those that your class are interested in.
This is a selection of 12 reading lessons - 5 of them short ones for when you only have 20 minutes and the rest longer response activities that children can really dig their teeth into.
Many are designed to have the pupils read the example and co-construct the success criteria with you the teacher - I usually just write this up on the slide with numbers (“What is the purpose of paragraph 1?”)
Most importantly, these are all tried and tested activities that a whole class can work on together YET still be reading their own unique stories. I have 33 pupils all reading their own stories and doing these tasks together, peer assessing one anothers work and producing great jotter work.
This is a 4 lesson unit of work that explores equations and algebra tiles through the Global Goal lens of ‘Life on Land’. The unit exposes pupils to endangered species in Scotland whilst also allowing them to learn facts about the animals through solving equations.
Very much designed to follow a CPA approach to numeracy, algebra tiles are highly recommended (if you don’t have them, just chop up lots of yellow and green paper - it’s what I have done!)
This is a four lesson unit of work that explores 2D shape whilst exposing children to abstract art from a diverse group of artists around the world.
Lesson one: Kandinsky and Circles - learning to use a compass and identifying properties of a circle
Lesson two: Thomas and Circles - learning about Archimedes and how to calculate the circumference
Lesson three: Malevich and regular/irregular shapes - lots of drawing and drilling down into the definitions of regular and irregular
Lesson four: Ocampo and symmetry - opportunities to practice with partners and concrete materials and exploring what symmetry and mirroring are
Building on previous unit of time work linked to Global Goals 11, this is 4 lesson unit looking at buses.
Lesson 1
Pros and Cons of buses and navigating bus timetables
Lesson 2
Create a bus route and calculate how much money a bus can make
Lesson 3
Create a bus timetable from specific arrival times
Lesson 4
Calculate charging times for electric buses
This is a unit of lessons that involve your class building a paper town as a hub for their learning. they can add to it as the topic progresses. I have plans to look at bus timetables, cars and pedestrians but these initial 4 lessons cover cycling in cities.
Lesson 1:
Consider and identify problems with transport in cities worldwide and in local area, initial time assessment, create paper city
Lesson 2:
Consider pros and cons of cycling, discuss Finnish town video, time telling activities, explore how bike gears work
Lesson 3:
Compare and contrast road cycling and cycle path, calculate journey times, create paper cycle path solutions
Lesson 4:
Balance exercises, calculating journey times
This is a whole day of Encanto learning, with 6 curricular areas being covered.
Literacy: I would envision having learners use garageband to record their own podcast but you could even have them do so with the audio recorder that comes as standard on iPads. Alternatively, they could simply record a short interview or promotional video discussing the importance of representation.
Maths: volume of cuboids and cubes (following a concrete, pictorial, abstract approach)
Art: Origami butterfly and discussion of the symbolism
Science: I would look to draw on an interactive whiteboard with the simulation however pupils could observe and jot on their own whiteboards or even create models with playdough? The dancing raisin experiment DOES NOT replicate the water cycle but it does show gases and liquids interacting and CAN be illuminating to understanding evaporation.
Dance: Bachata isn’t originally a Colombian dance (it’s Dominican) but it is popular in the region and some of the dances in the movie use steps and elements from the genre.