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Many teachers love the Talk for Writing approach but do not find it easy to organise all of Pie’s brilliant ideas into a unit of work. It is a challenge! I have been following the TfW approach for many years, and I have spoken at a few of Pie’s national conferences. Over the years, I have organised Pie’s ideas into a three week planning grid. The planning frame attached is not supposed to be prescriptive; it is designed to ‘hold your hand’ while you put a unit together. It is invaluable for teachers new to this approach, but even old-timers like me find the prompts helpful. This planner has been taken on in many schools and you may adapt it for your own use. This work is designed to support teachers using the TfW approach.

Key Stage 2 nouns A fun game for 2 players exploring proper, common, concrete, abstract and collective nouns. I designed it to support children preparing for the Y6 grammar test. It could be useful for anyone exploring different types of nouns. Enlarge the game board and playing cards up to A3 for less fiddly fun. Enjoy! If you would like more like this please download my other games. They come with presentations and lesson plans. If you use this, please leave a review - it's good teacher karma!

Simple ‘label a mosque’ activity. I couldn’t find one, so I hope it saves you some time. I drew the mosque.

This activity has also been developed into ‘First Week Back Poetry’, a fully resourced one week unit (PowerPoints, plans, activities). It is available from my shop. Please follow this link /teaching-resource/resource-12907781 Upper KS2 poetry activity: ‘What I DIDN’T do over the summer!’ We didn’t all go on amazing holidays over the summer, but there are amazing things in front of our noses. Try this poetry activity with upper KS2 children. If you use this - and I saved you some time - please leave a review in return.

If you are reading Goodnight Mr. Tom here are three very short drama activities for children to try in pairs. They could be used just to help children engage with the story. I asked children to use these three short pieces of drama to support them in writing a diary entry and they produced some wonderful writing. If you like this creative and active approach to teaching, you will love my pack of 40 grammar games - available to buy in my TES shop. Hope they are of use to someone out there in teacherland. If you use it, please review it! *2200 downloads…2 reviews

27 ways to for KS2 writers to edit and improve their own writing. This project was loosely inspired by Brighton Train Station (bear with us). We put it together to help children develop writing further at the editing stage. The PowerPoint explains how it works, but we are sure you’ll find your own ways to use this. It was a lot of work, so if you spot the odd error, please let us know and we will put it right. We hope it saves you some precious time. Please leave a review. Happy editing!

Here are 6 lessons on digital wellbeing aimed at 7-9 year olds. We use it in Year 4, but it would also work in Year 5. These lessons are adapted from two lessons that can be found in the Be Internet Legends resource (though a very helpful starting point, I think that resource needs a lot of work before it can be used in class). All resources and slides included - I’ve recreated the activities in a more user friendly format. Please leave a review if you use it.

I have edited the National Curriculum into a word document that just shows the grammar content to be introduced in each year group (and the glossary). I find this useful for staff training purposes - hope you find it useful too.

This is the blushometer activity from the seal resources, Year 5, but in handy word format - all on one side. Give these out to pairs and for them to score embarrassing situations before sharing ideas with the class. Brilliant for circle time or PSHE.

A one week unit for Y5 or Y6 exploring the weird and wonderful poem ‘Civil War on The Moon’, by the amazing Ted Hughes. Once the children have unpicked the tricky vocabulary (using the presentation attached), they will love this poem about two armies fighting for domination of the moon. My classes are always very keen to create new armies for a poem of their own. I use it during our space topic. I have included teacher notes about the parts children find a little tricky and a breakdown of each verse. I hope you have fun with this!

From Year 2 onwards children are expected to understand and compose statements, commands and questions as part of their understanding of grammar and punctuation. Bring this dry subject matter to life by playing 'Mission Control'. Why should a fun games-based approach only be used in mathematics? This resource has everything you need: full lesson plan with differentiation; PowerPoint to support direct teaching; fully resourced game. Just add 1-6 die and you are ready for blast off. 10...9...8...7...

Fully resourced 3 week unit for this text also available in my store! I wrote this model text for year 3/4 children learning about the Stone Age (Bronze Age and Iron Age models are also included in your download). Important year 3/4 conjunctions, prepositions and adverbs are shown in red. The model has been written so that the children can easily use it to help them structure their own reports on the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. There is one image and it is from PIXABAY. I have also included some teacher notes about the text. If you are a talk for writing school, I have included the ‘story map’ for the first 4 paragraphs - that’s the amount we ‘talk’ off-by-heart. I have included Bronze Age and Iron Age versions of the Stone Age model. This is to show how the model can easily adapted to new subjects, and to give ideas for outcomes that the children could research and write. Finally, there are two activities related to the Iron Age version of the model that may be handy. One involves adding prepositions to information sentences. The other involves organising information in a sensible way (sub headings, captions etc).

Adverbs are one of the trickier word classes, so let's start off with the basics and learn in a playful way. From Year 3 onwards, children are expected to understand the term 'adverb' and use adverbs in sentences. From Year 4 onwards, children are expected to be able to open sentences with adverbs. In this fully resourced lesson (including lots of engaging activities), complete with lesson plan, presentation and a lively dice game, children will learn to understand the term 'adverb' as well as exploring some of the functions of adverbs. They will also have plenty of opportunities to use adverbs in sentences orally - though if desired, they could record their learning as well. There is also more challenging task for your talented writers and I have included the game cards so that you can edit them to match your class text. This lesson would also be an ideal revision tool for the Year 6 Grammar Test.

Put your children in pairs to play the fun spelling game ‘VictoriOUS’. It’s a two player dice game that enables children to learn these four rules for adding the suffix ‘ous’: Some root word do not change – just add ‘ous’ For many root words that end in e, take off the ‘e’ and add ‘ous’ If the root word ends ‘-ge’, keep the ‘e’ and add ‘ous’ Change the ‘y’ to an ‘i’ and add ‘ous’ How about words that can’t have the ‘ous’ suffix? Peer assessment is built in. Everything that you need is here - just add 1-6 dice!

Here is a fun 2 player dice game to liven-up exploring silent letters. There is also a PowerPoint with plenty of activities and questions to get the session started. There is an extension task for speedy players who finish games quickly.

It can be tricky for young spellers to choose between the suffixes ‘-able’ and ‘-ible’. The two player dice game ‘WinnABLE’ gives players lots of opportunities to spell and discuss these words and introduces a much needed element of FUN! There is also a simple presentation and a word sorting warm up to use with your class. I’d allow a full session for this suffix work.

This resource is six activities linked to the text. They are ready for children to pick up and use independently. Defining and reusing tricky words from the text Picking out the key features of a fable from the text (and from ‘The Promise’) Adding fronted adverbials to sentences from the text Grouping synonyms to create a word bank for fable writing I can plan a fable of my own I can write a fable of my own

Your class will enjoy playing: 'Will you or won't you?' This is a brilliant way of motivating children to use modal verbs accurately in sentences. Children have to play against each other. One child is trying to go to a sleepover and the other other is desperately trying to avoid it. Sounds bonkers? Well, maybe a little, but it certainly generates a lot of sentence work and discussion. Children will all know what modal verbs are by the end of the lesson. That's a promise. All instructions and resources included - just add dice and counters.

I have recently produced a far more in depth ‘Theseus’ unit with masses of carefully produced, differentiated resources and detailed planning. It is available here: /teaching-resource/theseus-and-the-minotaur-3-weeks-of-detailed-planning-fully-resourced-and-differentainted-11914692 Here are lots of older Theseus resources, including a model text, comprehension work, story boards, fronted adverbials activity, planning frames etc.

Assessment focus I can use a wide variety of sentences and conjunctions in my writing Explanation Some of us are great at writing long descriptive sentences, whilst others are superb at short and shocking ones. We don’t always remember to use a wide variety of sentence types throughout our writing. It is far more enjoyable to read a story packed with questions, exclamations, complex sentences and speech sentences than a story that sticks to one or two of these. Have you ever wanted to write a story without doing any planning or preparation? Well, now’s your chance!