I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
I completed my PGCE at The Institute of Education in 2011, staying in London to start my career at a primary school in Hackney. I taught across KS2 in four years, while also co-ordinating Spanish and Science and receiving brilliant CPD training across a range of specialisms. In 2016 I moved to Lancashire, where I have been supply teacher for a range of local schools. I love creating engaging & purposeful resources to bring education to life and to give teachers their weekends back!
I made this resource based on John Lewis' 2012 Christmas advert. It is about a snowman and snowwoman who are made by some children in their garden, but overnight, the snowman disappears. He is seen making an epic journey across mountains, rivers, city centres, and eventually he returns...with the little girl finding that he had bought his snowwoman some christmas presents.
I wanted to use it to develop children's inference skills and to develop their description; both of the characters and the various settings that the snowman travelled through.
Each KS2 class I've taught have loved this recount. Look out for other Literacy resources I am uploading based on the other John Lewis adverts!
I made this resource based on Sainsburys' 2015 Christmas advert. Judith Kerr's 'Mog The Cat' is brilliantly brought back to life in animation form. He is found having a bad dream in his family home, which caused a series of unfortunate events, ultimately causing the fire brigade to arrive! Christmas seemed like it was ruined for the family, but the village quickly came together to help and to make Christmas a happy and united occasion.
My class last year loved this recount. In the first of the two lessons provided, the focus was on recounting the events from the animation, with use of adverbs to describe, but this can easily be adapted if you have a different Literacy skill that you want your class to develop! The second lesson in the pack gets children to edit and improve their writing.
Look out for my other Christmas-themed Literacy resources!
I made this resource based on the 2019 Waitrose Christmas advert. It is about Edgar, a dragon who is easily excitable about things happening around him, but causes to him breathing fire, and therefore some accidents! He is friends with a young girl, his best friend, who tries to keep him out of trouble, and after one incident which causes the whole village to be angry with Edgar, she buys him a Christmas present which will bring joy to the festive dinner and make everyone happy again.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing on character description in this lesson. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas, a Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson, and a vocabulary sheet/ screenshots to help children to remember the plot. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
I made this resource based on the 2016 John Lewis Christmas advert. It is about a dog called Buster who loves watching his young owner dream of being a professional gymnast, but then as her surprise gift is built on Christmas Eve, Buster appears becomes upset when the garden wildlife get to have a go, unbeknown to the family. The next morning, as the little girl flies out of bed and out into the garden to try her present, the family are lost for words when Buster pushes her aside to leap on to the trampoline first.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because John Lewis adverts have become incredibly popular in the run up to Christmas, and therefore children find them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing especially on verbs. Included are two differentiated story plans, a vocabulary sheet with larger screen shots from the film and a Notebook flip chart or Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group. Enjoy!
And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by John Lewis Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
**UPDATED 05/11/2018 TO INCLUDE POWERPOINT VERSION OF THE LESSON PRESENTATION**
This lesson explains to children the importance of women during WWII - how they kept the country running while men were away fighting, taking on jobs in industries that women previously did not work in and therefore changing their role and status in society.
The notebook presentation explores how women's roles changed, their pay and what that would compare to today, and how the government used posters to encourage women into industrial work in factories and on farms.
The lesson activity is in three parts: 1) studying the posters and annotating observations towards use of colour, illustrations and text 2) Answering questions based on class discussion about women's role during WWII 3) Using the internet to explore given articles about women in WWII, understanding how it is still celebrated today
This lesson models to children how to convert times between the 12 and 24 hour clocks using the following Success Criteria:
* I know that there are 24 hours in a day
* I know morning = am / afternoon = pm
* I label an analogue clock using 24 hour times
* I can use my clock to tell the time across 24 hours
Challenge: I can tell the time to the nearest minute
It is contains a balanced mixture of partner talk questions, teacher modelling and independent activities, along with helpful links to resources to support the objective. It even has a challenge plenary at the end, asking pupils to write 24 hour times on a blank analogue clock.
I've included a short lesson activity for this lesson, but I cannot include worksheets for this lesson as I would be copyrighting other people's resources, but I have included links on one page to analogue clock resources. Enjoy!
This is a fun lesson which allows children to learn and appreciate other social aspects of life during World War II. It starts by questioning children’s current understanding and enjoyment of entertainment via the radio, and informs them of its importance in the 1930s.
It includes example radio clips from the war, asking children to discuss their features, and then goes on to compare those with clips from present day news broadcasting (both radio and television).
The lesson objective and success criteria are as follows:
Objective: To be able to write and broadcast a World War Two radio news bulletin
Success Criteria:
I can select key information about an event
I can bias my report in favour of the Allied war effort
I can use emotive language to engage the listener
I can speak clearly
I can use intonation and expression in my voice
In my lesson I gave children facts about a particular bombing raid in London and asked them to report it as if they were a 1930s broadcaster. It was brilliant to see them dramatising their pronunciation and tone, and how they took different perspectives about the same event. I’ve left it open in the resource presentation as to what resource you would want to use for the children to complete this task.
There are lots more WWII resources in my shop too if you want to link further lessons. Enjoy!
I made this resource based on the 2017 Marks and Spencer Christmas advert. It features Paddington Bear, who confuses a burglar with Santa Claus. Enthusiastic as ever, Paddington insists on helping the man with his Christmas deliveries, to the dismay of the burglar, who sees his stolen presents being taken off him. Paddington takes his new friend to observe a little girl, Alice, opening her presents, unwittingly showing the burglar the true meaning of Christmas and making him a better person.
It’s got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children will love, having already enjoyed Paddington stories previously.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children's writing, focusing in this instant on dialogue and speech verbs. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and a Smart Notebook or Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
UPDATED 05/11/2018 TO INCLUDE A POWERPOINT VERSION OF THE LESSON PRESENTATION
I made this resource based on the 2018 Barbour Christmas advert. It is about a girl who appears to have loved watching and reading The Snowman; the famous Christmas animation short film, 40 years since it was first released; and wants the story to come to life for herself.
It’s got great graphics to draw in the viewer and a story arc that many children can relate to.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this instant on character emotions. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
I made this resource based on John Lewis' 2011 Christmas advert. It is about a boy who shows his frustration of having to wait for Christmas Day throughout the video, which most children can emphasise with, until you learn at the end that he was desperate to GIVE his parents their Christmas present!
I wanted to use it to develop children's inference skills and to convert the recount of an event into first person; showing their understanding of the character; with of course the description you would expect to bring the story to life.
Each KS2 class I've taught have loved this recount. Look out for other Literacy resources I am uploading based on the other John Lewis adverts!
UPDATE: The lesson presentation is now available in both Notebook and Powerpoint format in this download.
I made this resource based on the 2016 Sainsbury Christmas advert. It is about a man called Dave who is a busy Dad struggling to find time to spend with his family because of work commitments and commuting. Being a toy maker, he comes up with the idea on Christmas Eve to disguise the toys he makes to look like him, so that come Christmas Day, he could be at home with his family while work didn’t notice he was away. It’s got great graphics and a catchy song by James Corden, but most importantly the advert has a very real life, human element that many children and families can relate to.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Sainsburys Christmas adverts are now right up there in quality with John Lewis, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing especially on the point of view of a character. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and a Notebook presentation or Powerpoint for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
UPDATED 05/11/18 TO INCLUDE A POWERPOINT VERSION OF THE LESSON PRESENTATION
I made this resource based on the 2018 Aldi Christmas advert. It is about Kevin the Carrot, who has previously featured in Aldi adverts. The advert starts as a spoof of the famous Cola Cola ‘Holidays Are Coming’ advert, until the truck hits snowfall on a mountain road and slides off the road, balancing precariously on the cliff edge, ending the advert literally on a cliffhanger.
Aldi themselves ask the audience at the end of the advert to help Kevin, so I thought this would be a great opportunity for children to have a go at writing their own version of the end of the story.
I wanted to use this advert, not only because Christmas adverts continue to grow in quality and popularity, with children finding them very entertaining and engaging, but also to develop children’s description, focusing in this activity on being able to continue the flow of a story. Included is a story plan for children to note their ideas and both a Smart Notebook and Powerpoint presentation for teaching the lesson. This can easily be adapted to develop a different Literacy skill or to suit a particular year group.
Enjoy! And also see other Literacy recount lessons inspired by Christmas adverts in my TES shop!
This resource is taken from my Zoom online courses during COVID. The pack consists of 3 x Powerpoint presentations/lessons (each one having an annotated version as reference) and linking worksheets teaching all about Area, Perimeter & Volume (one lesson for each). Suitable for Y5-6 with extra challenges included to push higher learners. Great as a revision lesson as it moves from introductory right through to challenge. As it’s from my courses my logo is included on the presentations and worksheets but you can obviously remove these to make them your own!
Click on my profile to find FREE lessons from my Zoom courses (see most recent uploads), so you can see their layout/content/flow before choosing to purchase this one.
I made and taught these Art lessons alongside our class Victorians topic, helping children to understand why silhouette artwork became popular in the Victorian period, how silhouettes are made and identifying everyday objects by their silhouettes.
The first lesson is an introduction, as described above. The task gets children to match images of everyday objects with its silhouette.
The second lesson gets children to work in small groups to sketch their portrait silhouette outlines using torches and pencils.
The third lesson brings a modern twist to the portrait silhouette, by getting children to fill their portrait not with solid black, but with drawings and colour linked to their own personality (which could be linked to Mindfulness in PHSE).
UPDATE 27/03/2019 Presentation now available in Powerpoint format.
This is a great lesson to introduce a World War II topic. Using a Notebook presentation, it involves a range of discussion and activities helping children to understand what a world war is, why WWII started, what the two main sides were and why these alliances were formed. The lesson follows the objective and criteria:
Objective: To be able to locate the Allies and Axis powers
* I know the meaning of Allies and Axis
* I can use an atlas to locate countries involved in WWII
* I can identify which countries were Allied or Axis
* I can explain why countries may have formed alliances
The main lesson activity involves children using atlases to identify countries in Europe, and then either independently or as a class understanding and marking whether each country was Allied or Axis.
Nelson Boles' 'Little Boat' animation is surprisingly powerful - taking a simple boat through a range of settings which sees it become more and more damaged by human life, storms and war, but with a surprising and heartwarming ending.
This Literacy lesson challenges children to image they are the boat themselves and recount it's story in the first person, describing what it can see, but also what happens to it, and its consequential feelings.
Lesson pack includes writing plan for children and full lesson notebook! Enjoy!
This activity gets children to compare the UK and Egypt's most important rivers; the Thames and the Nile. Using ICT, they will compare their size and overall importance by researching their length, depth, origin, mouth and major cities that they pass through and how each river has been used historically by their country.
This would be a good cross-curricular activity to use if you are studying the Ancient Egyptians or Water/Rivers in your topic work and want to cover lots of skill sets.
As an introduction to your Plants topic, get children to brainstorm what they already know about plants. This will help you to direct your future planning more precisely by not repeating old knowledge or allowing you to plug clear gaps in understanding.
Also, this lesson will allow children to brainstorm what they would LIKE to know, which gains you an insight into their interests about plants, helping you to produce engaging and focused lessons to inspire them!
Is your current English topic focusing on persuasive texts/adverts? Here's a handy plan for children to brainstorm/note their ideas before they do their final design! It gets children to think about different vocabulary they will use, and includes LO/SC to make skill targets clear.