Just So Stories are brilliant and also really fun to teach (IMO). The children will read some examples of Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling and then have a go at writing their own based on how an animal got its distinct feature. I have used this with my Year 5 Class but it could be easily differentiated to suit any KS2 class. Favourite lesson is using emoji’s to create the speech, any excuse! Hope this helps.

I have made this resource for my Year 5 class to use to support their reading skills. All of the questions relate to the reading domains (2a-2h), I have tried to make them look similar to what they might be seeing in their SATs. The questions relate to four page chunks of the book to give them time to read and answer the questions in a guided reading session. Hope you find it useful, some of the questions may not link directly to the strands (I'm by no means an expert!) so if anything needs changing please comment.

This resource is intended to be used for guided reading lessons when studying the wonderful Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. Each lesson is made up of some quick fire questions (retrieval and inference) and then a longer written question (inspired by the Book Talk reading scheme by Jane Considine) and each chapter is consolidated with VIPERS questions from Literacy Shed Plus (subscription required but very worth it). The last slide provides guidance for how to use the resource. If it us useful then I will be happy to make and share the same for Chapters 1-4. Hope it helps!

This resource is designed to help children with new and unfamiliar vocabulary to help deepen their understand the excellent Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. When teaching this book in the past, I have noticed that there was a lot of vocabulary and idioms that some of the children were struggling to access because either they had not heard or seen the words or phrases before, or had seen or heard of them but were unsure of what they meant. When reading this book, I would have the images displayed on the board for the children to see as we read each chapter and I would print and chop up the idioms and hand them out to some of the children in the class. Those with the idiom would need to pay extra attention and, when their phrase is read out, they would stand up and read the meaning out loud. The other children may wish to record this new vocabulary for future use as these phrases could be useful in their written work. Or you would use it in a different way to suit your class, whatever works!

Hello! Since going back to key worker bubbles, I noticed a particular obsession with the game Among Us with my Year 4 group. This resource uses aspects of the game to get the children engaging with their maths work. There are 6 arithmetic questions with the answers, each one next to a character from the game. Five of the answers are correct, one of them is wrong; this character is the ‘imposter’. The children need to calculate the answers to the questions until they find the incorrect calculation they need to call for an ‘Emergency Meeting’ (slide 2) and state the colour of the character they think is the imposter. if they are correct, they need to explain how they knew and model the correct calculation (slide 3). If they are incorrect, back to slide one and keep calculating. The slides are fully editable. All you will need to change is the calculations (I heavily relied on Third Space Learning’s Fluent in Five) and the colour of the imposter. Hope this helps.

This resource is designed to use in reading lessons when reading the brilliant Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. For each chapter, there are images to support some of the unfamiliar places and objects that the children may not have come across before. There are also easy translations of some of the tricky vocabulary (words and phrases) used throughout each chapter to support children’s understanding of the text. Hope it helps!

Hello, Here is some History planning that I have put together over the last couple of years based on the Kingdom of Benin. I must stress that I am by no means an expert and went into this with zero knowledge about this civilization and it has been a pretty steep learning curve putting this together! However, if this is able to help anyone out then great. The slides focus on the British Empire, an overview of the kingdom and key events, important people, art, daily life and finishes on slavery. I tried to be as careful and as respectful as I could with teaching about slavery as it is a very sensitive issue. This is used with my Year 4 learners. Hope it helps.

This is a three-ish week plan for the wonderful video clip Taking Flight which can be found on the equally as wonderful Literacy Shed and YouTube. The plans start with a short unit on diary writing where the children will write from the point of view of the boy in the story reflecting on his adventures with his Grandpa. The planning then progresses to the children creating a new adventure for the child and his Grandpa to go on and writing the narrative for it. At the time of posting this I have not taught it so I have no idea if this will be good or a total flop! Some of the ideas in the planning are taken from The Writing Revolution, well worth a read. If you want to use the plans then great! I have slides and resources to go with it but the slides are on a file type which is currently not supported by TES (Lynx). However, if you want them I can always convert them into Smart Notebook slides and attach to this file. I can’t be bothered to do it now, its been a long day.!

Literacy Planning I am using with my Year 5 class based on the animated film clip ‘Replay’ which can be found on YouTube and the Literacy Shed. There are a million ways that this clip can be used but this planning is based on turning the film clip into narrative. Inspired to give this a go after reading Modelling Exciting Writing, a brilliant book full of fab ideas!

This resource is made up of planning and lesson slides for a unit on researching, designing, analysing, creating and evaluating some traditional African style Jewellery. The children will look at bracelets, necklaces and head wear and investigate different ways that the jewellery can be fastened as the main focus of the learning. Children will need decide which item of jewellery they will make and then decide on the best way to fasten it based on 6 different fastening mechanisms. They will know if they have been successful if their product stays fastened when they do it up, that it is the correct size for them to wear without falling off, that is it in the style of traditional African Jewellery and that it doesn’t explode (very important!). Hope this helps!

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a great book with engaging stories that children, regardless of their attitude to Harry Potter, really enjoy. This 2/3 week planning unit looks at three of the tales (Wizard and the Hopping Pot, The Fountain of Fair Fortune and the Tale of the Three Brothers) before the children choose their favourite and innovate it to create their own story. Hope this is of some use!

6 Weeks of Cricket Planning that moves from skill development to game application. I am by no means an expert so apologies if the terminology is incorrect!

A short descriptive unit of work based on the water colour masterpiece ‘The River’ by Alessandro Sanna. This unit of work was used to fill a spare week but turned out to be one that the kids liked (mainly because they got to do art in literacy, scandalous!) . This was also taught along side our class reader ‘The Explorer’ for a Rivers and Mountains topic. This unit pulls on resources such as Descriptosaurus which is an excellent resource to develop children’s descriptive vocabulary if used in the right way. Hope its of use!

Here are plans and slides for a biography unit for KS2. The lessons in this resources are themed around architects Norman Foster and Christopher Wren but can easily be adjusted for other significant people. The lessons include shared writing, skills lesson, SPaG games and starters and planning time. The final layout of the biography is themed around the amazing book ‘Fantastically Great Women WHo Changed The World’. This was taught to a Year 4 class but the skills and also be adjusted to suit any KS2 year group. Hope this helps.

This resource is aimed at Year 4 and is based on the first 6 chapters of the brilliant Varjak Paw by SF Said. Each lesson begins with some reading tasks that use Jane Considine’s Book Talk approach, before exploring the chapters further with some oracy-lead learning that follows the tasks and recommendations from Voice 21. Most of the slides have notes underneath for guidance and explanations, I think it is all pretty self explanatory… hopefully. I hope you find this useful if you choose to use it. Please leave any questions in the comment section below and I will try to get back with an answer as soon as. Hope it helps.

This unit (Part 1 of 3) focuses on an overview of the Kingdom of Benin. It begins by setting the scene with the British Empire before linking to an overview of the key dates in the kingdom and the Golden Period. Each lesson is followed by retrieval tasks based on the books by Kate Jones. Hope you find it useful and if there are any questions, pop them in the comments box and I will get back as soon as I can. DIsclaimer: I am by no means an expert on this subject and there may be inaccuracies, did the best with what I have managed to cobble together from the internet.

This unit (Part 3 of 3) focuses on the end of the Kingdom of Benin. It begins by looking at Key People involved in the kingdom, Slavery and the Door of No Return (a monument built to remember those who suffered at the hands of slave traders). Each lesson is followed by retrieval tasks based on the books by Kate Jones. Hope you find it useful and if there are any questions, pop them in the comments box and I will get back as soon as I can. DIsclaimer: I am by no means an expert on this subject and there may be inaccuracies, did the best with what I have managed to cobble together from the internet.

This unit (Part 2 of 3) focuses on the Decline of the Kingdom of Benin, Daily Life, Art in Benin and Benin City. Each lesson is followed by retrieval tasks based on the books by Kate Jones. Hope you find it useful and if there are any questions, pop them in the comments box and I will get back as soon as I can. DIsclaimer: I am by no means an expert on this subject and there may be inaccuracies, did the best with what I have managed to cobble together from the internet.

Here is a half terms worth of planning on teaching African Dance for PE. Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on this topic but hopefully it will help someone out. The unit focuses on three different dances from three different countries with each one having 2 weeks spent on them. The first week is spent teaching the children the moves and building a routine together. The second week is used to recap the moves and for the children to build their own routine in small groups. There are links to the warm ups and music as well as the website that I used to find the dances and the moves. Happy dancing!

This resource is three weeks worth of poetry planning for Free Verse Poetry aimed at Year 4 but, as always, its can be easily adapted to suit different year groups. In a nut shell, the children look at a few examples of free verse poems, write a shared poem as a class, break the poems down and look at the skills, build a bank of vocabulary, look at how to write poetically and write their own Christmas Eve themed free verse poem. The third week gives the children the opportunity to write Christmas themed Kennings, List Poems and Limericks. Loads fir them to do! I decided to put the Kennings etc as the last week as I will be teaching this in the last week of the Autumn Term and I don’t want the children trying to write an assessed piece in the whirlwind of chaos that is the last week before Christmas. The third week could easily be moved to the first week if you wanted it to. Hope this helps! P.S. I have the PowerPoints available but they will need editing! My school uses Lynx and you can’t upload them to TES, sad times. Comment if you want them, happy to share.