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.

This is a resource designed to help children remember how to spell those lovely words that they need to have mastered by the end of Lower Key Stage 2 (Year 3-4) and Upper Key Stage 2 (Year 5-6). They might not be the best at teaching children the meaning of the words or the context they can be used in but used just as a spelling tool, I have found them to be great. The children will need to look at each word carefully, say the word aloud (but not too loud) and perhaps say each letter at a time, cover the word so they can no longer see it, write it down in the box and then check to see if it is right. The last step can be done by the child, in partners or by the teacher (although the last step can be time consuming!). I have found that these are good early bitrd tasks, lesson starters, revision guides, homeworks, all sorts of stuff really. Also, I by no way invented these but they help me massively so might help you too. They are set up to last about a full term if one sheet is done per week consecutively. Enjoy!

A short guided reading resources based on Kensuke’s Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. The resource is a fictional advert for the Peggy Sue (renamed the Seggy Pue because it is funny) which covers a range of Reading Domains for KS2.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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 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 resource is some writing planning based on the wonderful short film The Lucky Dip. The slides are split into Input slides where the teacher works closely and models to the children and writes with them. On the Independent slides, the lesson patterns are very similar but there is no modeling from the teacher. There are notes on some of the slides to explain what to do but I think it is fairly self explanatory. I used this with my class this year and they not only loved the clip but produced some decent work too. Hopefully you find the same. Any questions, please feel free to get in touch and I hope this helps/saves you some time. Some of the ideas for this unit were taken from the CPD provided by the lovely Jane Considine’s Write Stuff Sessions which took place during lockdown. Do yourself a favour and check out Jane Considine Education and The Training Space YouTube Channel for some excellent examples of planning and resources.

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!

This lesson does exactly what it says on the tin. It begins with some recall on general Mayan facts before displaying a page from the brilliant book ’ ’ linked to Mayan beliefs. This is further expanded on in the net two slides before then looking at specific information linked to 8 Mayan Gods. While this is being read, the children have a cloze procedure task to complete based on missing information which can be easily adapted based on your classes ability level. After this is a game adapted from Pokemon called Pokemayan which features the Gods the children have learned about as Pokemon cards. It is easy to play and the rules are on the slides. The lesson finished with a summary task based on the learning content.