It can be tricky for young spellers to choose between the suffixes ‘-able’ and ‘-ible’. The two player dice game ‘WinnABLE’ gives players lots of opportunities to spell and discuss these words and introduces a much needed element of FUN! There is also a simple presentation and a word sorting warm up to use with your class. I’d allow a full session for this suffix work.

Adverbs are one of the trickier word classes, so let's start off with the basics and learn in a playful way. From Year 3 onwards, children are expected to understand the term 'adverb' and use adverbs in sentences. From Year 4 onwards, children are expected to be able to open sentences with adverbs. In this fully resourced lesson (including lots of engaging activities), complete with lesson plan, presentation and a lively dice game, children will learn to understand the term 'adverb' as well as exploring some of the functions of adverbs. They will also have plenty of opportunities to use adverbs in sentences orally - though if desired, they could record their learning as well. There is also more challenging task for your talented writers and I have included the game cards so that you can edit them to match your class text. This lesson would also be an ideal revision tool for the Year 6 Grammar Test.

From Year 2 onwards children are expected to understand and compose statements, commands and questions as part of their understanding of grammar and punctuation. Bring this dry subject matter to life by playing 'Mission Control'. Why should a fun games-based approach only be used in mathematics? This resource has everything you need: full lesson plan with differentiation; PowerPoint to support direct teaching; fully resourced game. Just add 1-6 die and you are ready for blast off. 10...9...8...7...

If you are confident with your classroom management, this game works well in a lesson observation. Children compete in teams, dropping relative clauses into prepared sentences. Children try out different roles, from author to reporter, and work collaboratively. I have found that children were quickly able to apply this skill in their writing after a session playing this game. Differentiation included, if needed. Give it a try!

I have recently produced a far more in depth ‘Theseus’ unit with masses of carefully produced, differentiated resources and detailed planning. It is available here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/theseus-and-the-minotaur-3-weeks-of-detailed-planning-fully-resourced-and-differentainted-11914692 Here are lots of older Theseus resources, including a model text, comprehension work, story boards, fronted adverbials activity, planning frames etc.

These resources are designed to promote the teaching and learning of basic number facts across primary school. If children are fluent they do not need to keep going back to inefficient counting methods! Many of the fluency skills promoted here may be the same in Key Stage 1 as they are in Key Stage 2. This is because for many children it is just as important to learn root addition and subtraction facts in Year 6 as it is in Year 1. These number facts will support children when facing the very large numbers they have to deal with at primary school, so it is well worth promoting fluency across your school…and I’m not just talking multiplication tables! Everything is fully editable, so adapt it to make it work for your school. Resources included: A whole school fluency map, showing the number facts that must be learned from Y1 to Y6 ( a lot of skills are repeated across every year group. This is intentional! Fluency guides for each year group, linked to the whole school map Fluency guides for parents (please make sure you send out with the ‘addition and subtraction roots on one page’ document copied onto the back of the sheet) Addition root facts Subtraction root facts Optional reward chart for parents to use at home, linked to parent guides Multiplication facts pre and post assessment sheet Division facts pre and post assessment sheet In the zip folder: Multiplication and division - bronze, silver and gold timed challenges, including medal chart and medals. We give out a times tables wristband anytime a child gets a gold medal - this has proved a big hit. Bronze - times table in order, 30 seconds Silver - times table out of sequence, 40 seconds Gold - times table with division facts, 80 seconds Good luck! I hope your fluency work has a positive impact on mathematics teaching and learning at your school. And remember explicit teaching of fluency skills is just as important as practising and rapid recall.

Your class will enjoy playing: 'Will you or won't you?' This is a brilliant way of motivating children to use modal verbs accurately in sentences. Children have to play against each other. One child is trying to go to a sleepover and the other other is desperately trying to avoid it. Sounds bonkers? Well, maybe a little, but it certainly generates a lot of sentence work and discussion. Children will all know what modal verbs are by the end of the lesson. That's a promise. All instructions and resources included - just add dice and counters.

Prepositions can be a tricky group of words for some children. Through these three games, children will become very comfortable at knowing, classifying and using prepositions and prepositional phrases. First, play the memory test - some surface level learning that ensures that children know some examples of prepositions. Next, play the sorting game. This goes a little deeper, and children learn the different functions of prepositions. In the final game, children move on to prepositional phrases and use them in sentences. The last game is differentiated 3 ways to support those that need it and challenge those that are ready. Play these games over two lessons and your class will be confident at explaining the functions of prepositions and able to use prepositional phrases within written compositions. Explanations of the concepts, rules and resources all included, as always.

There are two useful resources here: 1. A carefully planned lesson about parentheses using dashes, exploring how different types of extra information can be added to a sentence. This includes a detailed lesson plan and 3 activities (the final one is a team game, with clear differentiation). All resources are included. The lesson covers these Year 5/Year 6 objectives: I understand the terms dash and parenthesis/parentheses; I can explain some uses for parentheses; I can use parentheses creatively for lots of different purposes. This is perfect for a demonstration lesson or an observed session. There is minimal ‘teacher talk’ and lots of active pupil engagement. 2. I have also included a further punctuation game: ‘Punctuation show-offs’. I can use brackets, dashes (parentheses) and semi-colons in my sentences. Would you like the writers in your class to be ‘punctuation show-offs’? Me too. I created this dice activity to encourage children to add extra information to sentences using parentheses (brackets and dashes) and also to separate closely related main clauses using semi-colons. I have also provided teacher and - more importantly - child friendly explanations and examples of all concepts. Children may incidentally find out about Usain Bolt, Picasso, Stephen Hawking and a 1000kg bowl of cereal. Have I caught your interest yet? This whole activity has a ‘show-off’ theme and it’s fun. After playing this, you can remind your class to be ‘punctuation show-offs’ in their own writing. Finally, I have added a ‘Victorian’ version of the same game, to show how it can be adapted to different themes.

Assessment focus I can use a wide variety of sentences and conjunctions in my writing Explanation Some of us are great at writing long descriptive sentences, whilst others are superb at short and shocking ones. We don’t always remember to use a wide variety of sentence types throughout our writing. It is far more enjoyable to read a story packed with questions, exclamations, complex sentences and speech sentences than a story that sticks to one or two of these. Have you ever wanted to write a story without doing any planning or preparation? Well, now’s your chance!

This is a whole lesson about the spelling patterns able and ible. It includes 2 short quizzes, making up new words and a fun writing activity that encourages children to apply their understanding, using a tried and tested word bank and a fun (persuasive) context. Great for spelling and sentence work.

*This version is for United States buyers. There is a UK version too. This is a large word doc. containing all 40 of my grammar games. This represents a fair few evenings and weekends (I know - get a life!). All of these games have been tested in class and adjusted if needed - they have a real impact on learning. For each grammar skill there is: a child friendly explanation of the grammar concept; printable rules and resources for a lively dice game; suggestions to challenge or support learners; suggestions for application of the skill in written work. Here are some of the skills covered: commands, questions and statements/ simple and compound sentences/ adverbs/ proper nouns/ classifying nouns/ contractions/ pronouns/ prepositions/prepositional phrases/ apostrophes/ adjectives/ sentence variety/ parentheses/semi-colons/ discussion/ persuasion/ complex sentences / causal connectives/ fronted adverbials/ speech/ relative clauses/ modal verbs

I can say and write simple, compound or complex sentences If children become confident at using a blend of simple, compound and complex sentence structures, their writing will be varied and accurate. For many young writers, this is not easy to achieve. These sentence skills must be revisited and rehearsed over and over again. Practising sentence skills could get boring! This lively dice game, to be played in pairs, generates lots of purposeful talk about sentences. Children collect game cards to win! If children record their sentences, it also generates plenty of good examples to refer back to during whole class sessions. The activity is differentiated three ways. At its most basic, children generate a mixture of the three sentence types. On track writers try a wider variety of subordinating conjunctions. More able writers are moved on to creating sentences with a greater number of clauses. I used this for myth writing. If you wanted to, the ‘game cards’ and sentence examples on the ‘dice guides’ could be easily changed to match any story or text. It’s a great way of learning or revisiting these three important sentence types. *I have added a version of the game with Beowulf game cards and another version with ‘ough’ words, to demonstrate how the game can be adapted to different texts or spelling patterns.

A lesson pitched at upper KS2 that breaks down solving a multi-step word problem. Multiplication, addition, and subtraction are required! Work is differentiated to two different abilities. Answers also provided.

This lesson is planned in detail and fully resourced, with warm up activities and 5 independent activities, all about subtracting from multiples of 10. First there is a subtraction fluency warm up activity, to get children involved straight away. Using the mastery approach, the lesson begins with simple concrete activity (using counters) that everyone can access. Following this, children can quickly move on to other activities, at their own pace. I used this in a Y3 class and it was a great session. It could work well in Y2 or early in Y4, to check understanding.

Word and PDF both included Assessment focus I can build solid sentences Explanation We teach a lot of grammar in primary schools, but many children still struggle to see how it all fits together. There are plenty of children in upper KS2 who cannot compose grammatically correct sentences. Whilst it is true to say that reading, story-telling and listening to stories are the best ways to build awareness of sentences, it may also be helpful to give children some basic sentence patterns to use. If children can internalise these basic patterns, they may be able to use them in infinite different ways. Ultimately, we hope that children feel confident enough to move away from the patterns we give them and onto creating patterns of their own. Who is this for? On Track (ARE) The ‘4 brick’ version of this activity is for writers who could be at age related expectation if they could create grammatically correct extended sentences. Support There is also very simple ‘3 brick’ version of the activity for learners who are not able to write in simple ‘one clause’ sentences. Going deeper Children who are already confident at writing in accurate sentences can try the ‘Follow the dice’ activity (included). These learners will focus on using sentence variety.

This activity has also been developed into ‘First Week Back Poetry’, a fully resourced one week unit (PowerPoints, plans, activities). It is available from my shop. Please follow this link https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/resource-12907781 Upper KS2 poetry activity: ‘What I DIDN’T do over the summer!’ We didn’t all go on amazing holidays over the summer, but there are amazing things in front of our noses. Try this poetry activity with upper KS2 children. If you use this - and I saved you some time - please leave a review in return.

27 ways to for KS2 writers to edit and improve their own writing. This project was loosely inspired by Brighton Train Station (bear with us). We put it together to help children develop writing further at the editing stage. The PowerPoint explains how it works, but we are sure you’ll find your own ways to use this. It was a lot of work, so if you spot the odd error, please let us know and we will put it right. We hope it saves you some precious time. Please leave a review. Happy editing!

Here are 6 lessons on digital wellbeing aimed at 7-9 year olds. We use it in Year 4, but it would also work in Year 5. These lessons are adapted from two lessons that can be found in the Be Internet Legends resource (though a very helpful starting point, I think that resource needs a lot of work before it can be used in class). All resources and slides included - I’ve recreated the activities in a more user friendly format. Please leave a review if you use it.