Having taught in an East London primary school, I wanted to end the class WWII topic by linking it to their own community. East London was a huge target during the Blitz, therefore was devastated during the war, which children in the area might not realise given the infrastructure around them. However, the lesson mainly compares WWII problems with modern day life in East London - positive and negative. It gets children to examine their own community, identify what is good, and what could be improved, and what they imagine it will be like in the future. The lesson activity is continuous through the lesson; making notes about what they think Hackney is like, and then develops to the children using their notes to write a poem (using my teacher example). Although this resource is focused on East London, it could be adapted to focus on area of London or the UK that was particularly affected by the Blitz. Resources include a Notebook lesson presentation, a worksheet for making notes, a presentation page for children to write their best copy of their poem and lots of picture resources.

This short burst English topic presents or revises different types of poetry before focusing on the topic of key Black History figures and creating nominal poems about them. The objectives covering four days are: Day 1: To compare different types of poetry * I know the purpose of poetry * I can identify the structure of different poems * I can identify use of description in different poems * I can explain how a poem makes me feel Day 2: To be able to perform poetry Success Criteria: * I can compare how authors read poetry * I can speak confidently and clearly * I can use punctuation to identify the flow of a poem * I can emphasis key words in a poem Day 3: To be able to plan the content of a poem Success Criteria: * I can research key personal information about an individual * I can find out why they became a key Black History figure * I can brainstorm adjectives that describe their personality * I can brainstorm adjectives that describe their appearance Challenge: I can predict the feelings of an individual at key points during their life Day 4: To be able to write a nominal poem Success Criteria: * I can write the first letters of the persons name down the left margin * I know the first word for each line starts with the given letter * My poem tells the reader why the person is celebrated during Black History Month * I can include descriptive language to make my poem emotive This resource pack contains the Notebook presentation for the four days, which includes examples of all types of poetry, links to poetry being performed, talk partner questions, opportunities to take notes from children's feedback and task outlines for each lesson, along with worksheets for the third and fourth lessons and linking photographs. Suitable for KS2 and great for Black History Month or a general poetry topic.

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

When developing my children's comprehension skills, I don't like using photocopies from text books and meaningless expectancy sheets. I prefer to use purposeful, educational and REAL LIFE examples to engage and inform them, while still challenging them and looking for those reading skills. Therefore a lot of my comprehension challenges are based around interesting newspaper articles. In this example, taken from the BBC News website in April 2017, a village in the South West of England has declared itself as being 'hedgehog-friendly' in a bid to stop numbers falling. Included in this pack is a copy of the article and linking comprehension questions suitable for KS2. Enjoy!

This resource can form a lesson, informing children about the importance of General Elections (like 2017) and why we have them. This Powerpoint presentation allows children to learn about what 'government' is, how it is structured, what different major parties form our current government and what their current policies are (which I have sourced as independently as possible using various news outlets and party pages, barring any U-turns!) This then goes on to allow children to discuss the policies presented to them and to think about what matters / appeals to them the most, with the aim of encouraging freedom of independent thought and debate. Due to the complex wording of some policies, this resource would be most appropriate for UKS2 and KS3, and possibly LKS2 with detailed supporting verbal explanation of key issues provided by teaching staff, such as Brexit. The class can then go on to hold a Polling Station to vote, with polling cards included in the resource pack, before votes being counted and the results being displayed on the slide in both percentage and pie chart form.

I made this resource using a BBC article about Captain Tom’s achievements and subsequent recognition. I made up the questions based on the article, so it is more of a comprehension - but the children don’t need to know this!