This 51-page resource is designed to be used during Reading Workshop and is to be used with Clockwork (All Wound Up) by Philip Pullman. The pack has been designed in alignment with he 2014 National Curriculum of England’s Reading Objectives for Year 6. **About the Novel: **A tormented apprentice clock-maker, a deadly mechanical knight in armour - and the sinister Dr Kalmenius, who some say is the devil … Wind up these characters, fit them into a story on a cold winter’s evening, with the snow swirling down, and suddenly life and the story begin to merge in a peculiarly macabre - and unstoppable - way. Almost like clockwork … About the Resource: The pack includes templates to write summaries, opportunities to analyse text, make connections, creative writing, and study the setting, characters, theme, and literary devices. **A digital copy of the file is also available on Google Slides for students to complete online instead of printing.

Students show off what they’ve learned by participating in a discussion. In the past, I have used this resource both in Middle School ELA for Novel Study to ensure everyone is caught up on the week’s reading, and also in Middle School Social Studies to synthesize the independent reading and lectures from the week. This resource includes: Introducing Socratic Seminar Preparing for Socratic Seminar Participating in Socratic Seminar Evaluating Socratic Seminar Reflecting on Socratic Seminar There are differentiated rubrics included, as well as a template for creating your own. A link is available for editing and sharing the resource on digital platforms with download.

**This resource is designed to be used during Reading Workshop with Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. ** About the Novel: Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable. About the Resource: This pack includes Chapter Summaries, Comprehension Questions, Digging Deeper Opportunities (includes character, setting and plot studies, point of view), Creative Writing Tasks, and Non-Fiction Tasks related to content of the novel (pandan, Chinese Labour Corps, Marlin Literary Archive, Highlander Syndrome, orientalism, Korean War, Wayback Machine, Kuomintang, KMT and move to Taiwan, One-Child Policy, missing Chinese survivors of Titanic, Jade Squad, Chinese Mafia, sycamore trees). A link to a digital file for editing and use in paperless classrooms is available with download.

**This 174-page resource is designed to be used during Reading Workshop and is to be used with All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The pack has been designed in alignment with the 2014 National Curriculum of England’s reading objectives for Year 6. ** ABOUT THE NOVEL: NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Timesbestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. ABOUT THE RESOURCE: This pack includes: Chapter Summaries, Comprehension Questions, Digging Deeper Opportunities (includes character studies and plot studies), Creative Writing Tasks, and Non-Fiction Tasks related to content of the novel (French Resistance, Saint-Malo, radio, stormtroopers, blindness, Braille, State Youth, N.P.E.A., Stuka, Dresden Green, H.M.S. Beagle, Foucault’s Pendulum, Jewish star, Operation Typhoon, Invasion of Normandy, sonderkommandos). Resource is provided as a PDF but a digital copy of the pack is available for editing and sharing on Google Classroom and Seesaw available with download.

Children will look at popular avatars from different video games, including Super Mario, Bowser, Link, and Donkey Kong. They will look at how their design has changed over time, and will compare how characters are similar and different. Children will then design their own video game characters; a hero and an enemy. In the past I have used this alongside a unit on designing a video game on Scratch, where the children can include their avatar in their game. To do this, we took photos of the drawn characters and then edited them online before uploading them to the program. A link to digital resources for editing and sharing on Google Classroom and Seesaw is available with download.

*Updated with new graphics I have used this project with different classes and in different ways. With more able cohorts, the pitch can be adjusted with different parameters on the designs (eg: no adhesives, instead researching different ways to attach boards with latches and folds vs. using tape and glue guns; setting rules for the height of the walls of the maze to use measurement in a meaningful way; only allowing a certain length of board that needs to be cut, etc). Our Year groups used this as an alternative to making periscopes, as it reinforces the same Science objectives about light and the way it travels. In my experience, the children have enjoyed this project more because they’re more in control of the design. A digital copy of the file for editing and sharing on Google Classroom and Seesaw is available by following the link provided with download.

*Updated with new graphics This resource has been planned for a 6-week Half-Term. It connects the curriculums for Design Technology, Science, Art, English, and History. Children investigate light and how it travels while also studying the eye and the history of cinema, with a focus on special effects. A zip file with PDF units and links to digital files for editing and sharing on Google Classroom and Seesaw is available with download.

Children will learn about Viking raids on monasteries in Northern England before writing a persuasive text. The text can be written from the perspective of a monk or a Viking, and is meant to persuade (or dissuade) their audience - either monks or Vikings - from trading with or plundering a monastery. This pack includes lesson plans, rubrics, and editable rubrics to support with the learning process. Lessons and objectives are aligned with objectives from the 2014 National Curriculum of England. A digital copy for editing and sharing on digital platforms is available with download.

Children will learn about Viking raids on monasteries in Northern England before writing a narrative text. The text can be written from the perspective of a monk or a Viking during the raid of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in North-East England in 793 CE. This pack includes lesson plans, rubrics, and editable rubrics to support with the learning process. Lessons and objectives are aligned with objectives from the 2014 National Curriculum of England. A digital copy for editing and sharing on digital platforms is available with download.

This resource is designed to be used during Reading Workshop and is to be used with The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. **ABOUT THE NOVEL: **Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life. **ABOUT THE RESOURCE: **This pack includes: Background information on the novel (about police shootings), Chapter Summaries, Comprehension Questions, Digging Deeper Opportunities (includes character studies and plot studies), Creative Writing Tasks, and Non-Fiction Tasks related to content of the novel (Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Tupac Shakur, Basketball, Jordans, Malcolm X, Black Panthers, Huey Newton, Dr Martin Luther King, Emmett Till, Black Lives Matter, Nat Turner). Resource is provided as a PDF but a digital copy of the pack is available for editing and sharing on Google Classroom and Seesaw available with download.

This resource is designed to be used during Reading Workshop and is to be used with Beyond the Bright Sea by Lauren Wolk. Updated to include additional activities for deeper learning ABOUT THE NOVEL: The moving story of an orphan, determined to know her own history, who discovers the true meaning of family. Twelve-year-old Crow has lived her entire life on a tiny, isolated piece of the starkly beautiful Elizabeth Islands in Massachusetts. Abandoned and set adrift in a small boat when she was just hours old, Crow’s only companions are Osh, the man who rescued and raised her, and Miss Maggie, their fierce and affectionate neighbor across the sandbar. Crow has always been curious about the world around her, but it isn’t until the night a mysterious fire appears across the water that the unspoken question of her own history forms in her heart. Soon, an unstoppable chain of events is triggered, leading Crow down a path of discovery and danger. Vivid and heart-wrenching, Lauren Wolk’s Beyond the Bright Sea is a gorgeously crafted and tensely paced tale that explores questions of identity, belonging, and the true meaning of family. ABOUT THE RESOURCE: Designed in alignment with the 2014 National Curriculum of England’s reading objectives for Year 6, the pack includes: Chapter Summaries, Comprehension Questions, Digging Deeper Opportunities (includes character studies and plot studies), Creative Writing Tasks, and Non-Fiction Tasks related to content of the novel (tides, crows, Captain Kidd, starfish, dolphins, clams, leprosy, nor’easter). Resource is provided as a PDF but a digital copy of the pack is available for editing and sharing on Google Classroom and Seesaw available with download. You might also like: Beyond the Bright Sea Novel Study + STEAM BUNDLE Wolf Hollow Novel Study

This resource has been made using the** fractions & decimals objectives for Year 4** from the 2014 National Curriculum of England: Recognise and show, using diagrams, families of common equivalent fractions Count up and down in hundredths; recognise that hundredths arise when dividing an object by one hundred and dividing tenths by ten Solve problems involving increasingly harder fractions to calculate quantities, and fractions to divide quantities, including non-unit fractions where the answer is a whole number Add and subtract fractions with the same denominator Recognise and write decimal equivalents of any number of tenths or hundredths Recognise and write decimal equivalents to ¼, ½, ¾ Find the effect of dividing a one- or two-digit number by 10 and 100, identifying the value of the digits in the answer as ones, tenths and hundredths Round decimals with one decimal place to the nearest whole number Compare number with the same number of decimal places up to two decimal places Solve simple measure and money problems involving fractions and decimals to two decimal places ADDITIONALLY there is HANDS-ON FRACTION AND DECIMAL PRACTICE WITH PIZZA for children to apply their understanding in context with calculating costs and measuring ingredients… The pack can be used for reinforcement, in Maths centres for review, Morning Maths work, as well as for home learning tasks.

This resource is designed to be used during Reading Workshop and is to be used with The Wreckers by Iain Lawrence. About the Novel: There was once a village bred by evil. On the barren coast of Cornwall, England, lived a community who prayed for shipwrecks, a community who lured storm-tossed ships to crash upon the sharp rocks of their shore. They fed and clothed themselves with the loot salvaged from the wreckage; dead sailors’ tools and trinkets became decorations for their homes. Most never questioned their murderous way of life. Then, upon that pirates’ shore crashed the ship The Isle of Skye. And the youngest of its crew members, 14-year-old John Spencer, survived the wreck. But would he escape the wreckers? This is his harrowing tale. About the Resource: The pack has been designed in alignment with the 2014 National Curriculum of England’s Reading Standards for Year 6. Chapter summaries are provided, along with comprehension questions, and opportunities to analyse the setting, characters, point of view, and theme. Creative writing prompts and non-fiction research opportunities related to the text are also provided. A link to an editable digital copy of the file on Google Slides for completing without printing is available with download.

Updated with new graphics and Google extension This 26-page resource has been designed to use as a guide to studying the US space program’s chronology. This Outcome will allow children to research how different aspects of NASA’s space program have changed over time, including space shuttles, spacesuits, and space exploration. Children will then write an explanation text following the 2014 National Curriculum English Objectives for Year 6. Link provided to digital resources for editing and sharing on Google Classroom and Seesaw.

This resource is designed to be used during Reading Workshop and is to be used with El Deafo  by Cece Bell. The pack has been designed in alignment with Common Core Reading Standards for Grade 7. I am trying out a new format and would appreciate feedback! The pack has been designed to cover five weeks, with assigned pages for reading, comprehension tasks and quotation and structure analysis. A digital copy of the file is available with download.

Included is a mini writing assignment that I have used for an extra credit opportunity in Middle School ELA. Students will have a background in Norse Mythology before being given the assignment. When I have assigned it, I have also reviewed features of narratives and storylines and compared them to different styles of writing. *A link to the digital file is provided for completion online using Google Slides.

Included is a mini writing assignment that I have used for an extra credit opportunity in Middle School ELA. Students will a novel being studied to re-write the climax of the story. In the past, I’ve used this extra credit assignment with: Flush by Carl Hiaasen, The Weirdo by Theodore Taylor, The Explorer by Katherine Rundell, and The Last Wild by Peter Torday – all in a unit about the environment and conservation. *A link to the digital file is provided for completion online using Google Slides.