A Walker has worked as an LEA Literacy Consultant, an Expert Leading Literacy Teacher, a primary school teacher, an author and was responsible for teaching and learning at one of the UK’s leading Independent Prep schools. She is an author of educational materials used in schools for Cambridge University Press, Pearson, Rising Stars and Cambridge Hitachi and is an experienced KS2 & KS3 English teacher.
A Walker has worked as an LEA Literacy Consultant, an Expert Leading Literacy Teacher, a primary school teacher, an author and was responsible for teaching and learning at one of the UK’s leading Independent Prep schools. She is an author of educational materials used in schools for Cambridge University Press, Pearson, Rising Stars and Cambridge Hitachi and is an experienced KS2 & KS3 English teacher.
This is a suspense story about being locked in the Egyptian Gallery of a museum over night. This is a word document, so can be used as an ICT text for pupils. The pupils are instructed to improve and finish the story, using techniques (such as, adding description of the character's feelings, describing sounds and setting).
There is a self assessment worksheet ( that proves far more effective than success criteria) and also detailed teaching notes.
This is a bundle of punctuating speech resources. It includes a PowerPoint explaining the rules of punctuating speech and a punctuating dialogue investigation using How to Train Your Dragon. It also includes two bookmarks. One bookmark requires children to notice how speech tags are used in guided reading and to compare the ways different writers handle speech. The other bookmark recaps the rules of how to punctuate speech.
Change the highlighted words to change the person. It is a word document, so it is an activity that children could do on the computer, or as a written task.
Change the symbols for punctuation. It is a word document, as well as PDF, so it is an activity that children could do on the computer, or as a written task.
This is a bundle of punctuating resources. It includes a PowerPoint explaining the rules of punctuating speech and a Powerpoint on complex sentences. There is also a punctuation challenge to fill in the missing punctuation in an extract from Anglo-Saxon Boy by Tony Bradman.
This is a great lesson on character. The modelled writing task makes pupils focus on Dahl's style.
There are two word documents for pupils to adapt to create modelled character descriptions.
See the two pdfs which show the work produced by the task.
Great writing tasks - (story, newspaper, persuasive task) on Ancient Egypt.
Differentiated writing tasks with, for example, model texts, planners and teaching notes. A fun Egyptian holiday brochure, a Tutankhamun newspaper and story about 'Night in an Egyptian Museum'.
Pupils are given the opening of Secret Garden and a grid giving clues to techniques used to show character.
An example of the grid is below:
Point - We find out about Mary Lennox’s character from what the narrator tells us directly about her. Evidence – I know this because it says… Explanation – This shows that…
Working with the word document, pupils have to copy quotations from the text that prove the character points listed and paste them into the grid table. Next they fill in the table by explaining how their quotation proves the point.
There are three sheets, differentiated for different abilities, requiring children who need more support to just fill in the section explaining how their quotation proves their point.
There is a worksheet to show pupils how to work out clues to a character and an explanation of PEE (point, evidence, explain)
the task can also be done on paper without a computer using the text. I asked the children to use three colours for the point, evidence, explanation.
