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.

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.

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 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.

Here is a simple, easily-editable resources that is aimed at giving the children the opportunity to practise their times tables skills. Each child gets one card each. Each card has a statement at the top and a question underneath. The first child reads their statement and someone else in the room will have the answer. They will then read their statement (answer) before reading their question aloud. This pattern continues until the child who went first reads their statement. This is a fun task that I have done for my Year 4’s in preparation for the MTC but can be used in UKS2 classes as a recap task. Its also fun to time the children and see if they can do it a little faster each time. Hope it helps

Here are the slides and resources for a unit based on the Ancient Mayans. They focus on using Dual Coding to embed the key knowledge in the first couple of lessons before moving onto chronology, daily life, legacy, beliefs and exploring a Mayan city. This is aimed at Lower Key Stage 2 but can easily be adapted for Upper Key Stage 2. I am by no means an expert in this field but you never know, it might be useful.

Here is a half terms worth of gymnastics planning with a focus on balance and travel. I am by no means an expert on this subject but thought that this might help a few people out and save a bit of time. The unit starts with a focus on individual balances and traveling before moving on to group work and building sequences. Cheers.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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!

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!

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 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.!

Here is a seven week unit of work for teaching football to children in Lower Key Stage 2 (although activities can be easily adapted to suit older or younger learners). The sessions cover ball control, dribbling, passing, shooting and goalkeeping. The sessions follow a structure of warm up games, introducing the activity, having a go at the whole skill, breaking it down into parts and building it back up as a whole skill again before going through a few drills. For many of the activities it might be worth splitting your class so you have the more competent players in the same group so they can challenge themselves appropriately. Hope this is of some use!

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!

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.