‘The Dog That Saved Christmas’ by Nicola Davies is the touching, diverse and insightful story about Jake, a young boy who struggles with the noises, lights, other people and the lack of routine which comes with the festive period. Christmas is a real nightmare for Jake, until he finds a lost dog and she becomes his trusty companion. The bond that quickly develops between the two of them changes Jake’s views and makes the difficulties he experiences, much more bearable. Teaching From Text have created this FREE two week long scheme of work, to help you with those final weeks before the Christmas holidays. This unit contains 10 x 1 hour English lesson plans, differentiated and engaging activities, top teaching tips, hand-drawn images, bespoke teaching videos, ALL resources needed and opportunities for the development of reading, writing, PAG and oral skills – all of which focus on this diverse text. This two-week English unit of work has been written for Years 5 and 6 (ages 9-11). During this unit the children will have an opportunity to develop their retrieval and inference skills, expand their understanding of figurative language and imagery, create free verse poems, perform poetry, develop their summarising skills, practise editing skills, create a persuasive speech with an understanding of emotive language and participate in a purposeful debate. This unit of work can be downloaded for free as our Christmas gift to you, allowing you more time for self-care in those final build-up weeks to Christmas. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support this year and to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a restful New Year! Nicola and Davina

Our Christmas gift to you is a 10 x 1 hour English scheme of work and ALL the resources you will need based on ‘The Woodcutter and the Snow Prince’ by Ian Eagleton. Whilst immersing themselves into this LGBTQ+ inclusive children’s book, your class will use figurative language to write both free verse and reverse poems, as well as intertwining their art skills to produce some stunning outcomes. So, relax and enjoy the last two weeks of term as you and your class follow the Snow Prince’s fight for happiness.

Efua Traoré wrote ‘Children of the Quicksands’: a thrilling adventure story set in Nigeria filled with magic, myths, legends, goddesses, culture, music, courage, pride and friendship. Teaching From Text absolutely loved writing this six-week scheme of work to accompany Efua Traoré’s book, ‘Children of the Quicksands’. This download is Week 1 from the scheme. The full six-week scheme of work has followed the DfE’s June 2021 guidance by creating plans and resources which encourage the children to complete shorter writing tasks to allow pupils to focus on sentence structure. Throughout the 30 English lessons, the children will be completely immersed in the rich and challenging text! They will get to know the characters, setting and storyline through grammar activities such as expanded noun phrases; relative clauses; commas, dashes and brackets to indicate parenthesis; modal verbs and adverbs to indicate degrees of possibility and learning about active and passive verbs. Their lessons will be engaging and varied including drama, links to art and a debate. Alongside shorter writing tasks, the children will apply their grammar skills in a letter from the main character to her mother and a persuasive argument based around an emotive decision in the book. As with all our schemes of work, our resources are fully differentiated, illustrated with hand-drawn images of the incredible characters, all lesson plans are detailed (but easy to follow) and include bespoke teaching videos using themes and characters from the book to help you teach tricky grammar concepts. The whole scheme can be downloaded from Teaching From Text’s website. Front Cover design by Helen Crawford-White

‘The Dog That Saved Christmas’ by Nicola Davies is the touching, diverse and insightful story about Jake, a young boy who struggles with the noises, lights, other people and the lack of routine which comes with the festive period. Christmas is a real nightmare for Jake, until he finds a lost dog and she becomes his trusty companion. The bond that quickly develops between the two of them changes Jake’s views and makes the difficulties he experiences, much more bearable. This unit, written for Years 3 and 4 (ages 7-9) contains 10 x 1 hour English lesson plans, differentiated and engaging activities, top teaching tips, hand-drawn images, bespoke teaching videos, all resources needed and opportunities for the development of reading, writing, PAG and oral skills – all of which focus on this diverse text. During this unit the children will have an opportunity to develop their retrieval and inference skills, create a festive cinquain (and therefore develop an understanding of word classes), perform poetry, write a set of instructions, participate in a purposeful debate, practise editing skills and create a festive letter of thanks. This unit of work can be downloaded for free as our Christmas gift to you, allowing you more time for self-care in those final build-up weeks to Christmas. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support this year and to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a restful New Year. Nicola and Davina

This is WEEK 1 of a 6 week scheme of work which has been centred around ‘Breaker’ by Annemarie Allan. It tells the story of twins, Tom and Beth, who have recently moved to a coastal town where a tanker has collided with a rock, leaving it at risk of creating a huge oil spill! The twins befriend a rather intriguing character – a Professor – who leads them to become involved within interesting environmental adventures throughout the text. This 30 x 1 hour English Scheme of Work is written for Years 5 and 6. All Learning Intentions come from the National Curriculum for Reading, Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar and Punctuation for Upper Key Stage 2. During this unit, the children have three extended writing tasks: • News Report • Narrative Writing • Persuasion Text Many grammar objectives are also covered throughout the scheme in engaging and informative ways. These include expanded noun phrases, direct and indirect speech, modal verbs, perfect form of verbs, devices to build cohesion, selecting appropriate grammar and vocabulary, as well as identifying spelling and punctuation errors. In addition to this, the scheme also covers many of the Years 5 and 6 reading objectives, including drawing inferences, predicting, summarising, identifying how language, structure and presentation contribute to meaning and exploring the meaning of words in context. This scheme will save teachers a lot of planning and preparation time! Every single resource you will need for the whole six weeks is provided within the scheme. This includes differentiated activities, research sheets for the children, posters for the Working Wall, handouts for the children, success criteria checklists and high-quality written examples of the extended writing expectations. Finally, all resource illustrations are hand-drawn, and the scheme also includes bespoke teaching videos to engage the children. Annemarie Allen also provides virtual author visits via the Cranachan Publishing website. The whole scheme can be downloaded from Teaching From Text’s website.

Our Christmas gift to you is a 10 x 1 hour English scheme of work and ALL the resources you will need based on ‘The Woodcutter and the Snow Prince’ by Ian Eagleton. Whilst immersing themselves into this LGBTQ+ inclusive children’s book, your class will use figurative language to write both free verse and reverse poems, as well as intertwining their art skills to produce some stunning outcomes. So, relax and enjoy the last two weeks of term as you and your class follow the Snow Prince’s fight for happiness.

This two-week scheme of work has been specifically designed and written for you to build a connection with your new class right from the beginning of the academic year. Through the book, ‘Sunflower Sisters’, each child will get to share their identity with you, share who they look up to and develop a strong sense of belonging in their new class. Through fun and creative English, DT and PSHE learning, the children will get to know you quickly which will propel the fundamental relationship between you and your class. This is week one of the two-week scheme. The whole scheme can be downloaded from Teaching From Text’s website for FREE!

‘Peril at the Bake Off ‘ by Ruth Quayle is the perfect mix of humour, suspense and mystery to appeal to all young readers. The story follows Joe, Pip and Tom during their summer stay with their Granny in the crime-filled village of Muddlemoor. Thank goodness the trio came to stay so they could solve the mystery, which surrounded their Granny and the village’s very important Bake Off competition! This is WEEK 1 of a six-week unit of work which has been written for Year 3 and 4 children (ages 7-9). It includes 30 x 1 hours lesson plans, differentiated resources, engaging hand-drawn images, bespoke teaching videos, high quality example texts, word mats, drama opportunities and success criteria. As all of this is included within the scheme, which only leaves the printing of resources for you to do! It is that simple – the scheme is ready to pick up and use for an entire term! During the six-week unit, the children will learn an array of grammar skills directly from the National Curriculum objectives: conjunctions of time, adverbs of manner, imperative verbs and how to correctly punctuate direct speech. The scheme also includes objectives from the reading curriculum and has many drama opportunities for the children to develop their speaking and listening skills. There are two main writing outcomes for the scheme of work (including lots of smaller tasks in between). The first is an instruction text - where the children get to make delicious cakes and then write a recipe for them. The second is a mystery narrative. There are many high quality WAGOLLs (What a Good One looks Like) included in the scheme. The children use the WAGOLLs to base their own writing on. During the unit, the children will learn about the features of a mystery genre and conclude the six-week period by writing their own predictive narrative about what happens to the main characters in the story. Peril at the Bake off – text © 2021 Ruth Quayle, illustrations © 2021 Marta Kissi Published by Andersen Press

This two-week scheme of work has been specifically designed and written for you to build a connection with your new class right from the beginning of the academic year. Through the book, ‘Sunflower Sisters’, each child will get to share their identity with you, share who they look up to and develop a strong sense of belonging in their new class. Through fun and creative English, DT and PSHE learning, the children will get to know you quickly which will propel the fundamental relationship between you and your class. This download is week one of the two-week scheme. The second week can be downloaded at www.teachingfromtext.com for FREE!