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Literacy for early childhood

Macbeth: The Context of Macbeth
This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ understanding of the context of the of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Some of the primary topics that are addressed are William Shakespeare himself, James I and superstition, witches and witchcraft, religion, mortality rates, and the theatre. This knowledge should enable students to make convincing links between the play and the events of the time. It is a vital lesson in any Macbeth theme that can be taught before, during, or after reading.
The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to be visual and interactive learners. It follows this learning journey:
- Understanding who William Shakespeare was, and remembering key details about his life;
- Identifying words and phrases that he coined that are still in use today;
- Taking part in a quiz about the some of the more basic key events and ideas of the time;
- Researching the key events of the time (e.g. witch-hunts and the ascension of James I as King) and understanding which ideas were prominent. (e.g. divine right and religion)
- Utilising speaking and listening skills in order to communicate gathered knowledge, and obtain knowledge from others.
- Evaluating the learning in the lesson.
All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation.

Of Mice and Men: Steinbeck's Message
This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of John Steinbeck’s key messages in his novella Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, considering the outcomes about the characters, and making precise and confident interpretations about Steinbeck’s intentions.
The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interpersonal skills. It follows this learning journey:
- Investigating the life of John Steinbeck, including his influences, experiences, and beliefs;
- Finding relevant quotations to ascertain which characters fulfilled their dreams, and what this could tell us about Steinbeck’s message;
- Completing analysis paragraphs on how Steinbeck reveals his message through the final chapters of the text, using a template and a success criteria;
- Evaluating each others’ argumentative attempts.
The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet to decipher which characters achieved their dreams, a template and success criteria for the main task, and a lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet.
All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation.
You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

Of Mice and Men: Characterisation of Crooks
This engaging and informative lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge and understanding of the character of Crooks in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: His dreams, his loneliness, and how his plight is a product of living in 1930s America. The lesson also aims to improve students’ analytical skills, so that they can demonstrate sustained and sophisticated interpretations of the character.
This pack includes the full lesson presentation, with tasks and key information, an extract from the text with close reading questions, a writing to analyse help-sheet, and full teacher guidance. The learning journey is clear and progressive, following a pathway of increasingly more difficult tasks, including:
- An opening task to ascertain what is known about Crooks, and racism in 1930s America
- An extract from the text that highlights some of his characteristics and his loneliness.
- Questions to encourage students to infer and deduce hidden meanings, and understand Steinbeck’s message,
- Joint creation of an analysis success criteria;
- An opportunity to answer an exam style question based upon the character of Crooks;
- A chance to peer assess against the success criteria.
All images are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the presentation.
You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

Of Mice and Men - The Themes of Dreams and Loneliness
This engaging and interesting lesson aims to improve students’ knowledge of the main themes (Dreams and Loneliness) in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It also aims to build their skills in retrieving information from texts, understanding the writer’s ideas and opinions, and making precise and confident interpretations about texts.
The lesson uses a range of tasks, that require students to use their visual and interactive skills. It follows this learning journey:
- Understanding what dreams and loneliness are, and how we each experience them;
- Defining themes and understanding how writers use them;
- Understanding how and why themes are used in other famous texts;
- Retrieving evidence from the text to demonstrate where the characters experience dreams and loneliness;
- Analysing how the themes are used to help get across John Steinbeck’s ideas about 1930s America;
- Evaluating each others’ analytical attempts.
The resource includes a comprehensive and visually engaging PowerPoint presentation, a worksheet for recording the retrieved quotations, a helpful template for the main task, and a lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet.
All images in this resource are licensed for commercial use, and are cited on the final slide of the lesson presentation.
You can choose to buy this resource alone, or as part of the ‘Of Mice and Men - All Lessons and Scheme’ bundle, which contains seven full lessons, resources, teachers notes, and PowerPoint presentations, plus a Pointless Of Mice and Men game, for just £5!

Adventurous Adjectives!
This is an exciting and engaging lesson/set of tasks aiming to build students’ skills at using personification and adjectives in their writing . It was taught during an observation lesson where the teacher received an Outstanding judgement.
Students learn to:
- Define and give examples of what regular, adventurous, comparative, and superlative adjectives are;
- Identify adjectives in fun and interesting examples;
- Analyse what makes them effective;
- Create their own adventurous adjectives using step-by-step advice;
- Peer assess using a clear and succinct success criteria.
It comes complete with:
- Engaging and visual PowerPoint to guide students (and teacher!) through the lesson;
- Colourful and thought-provoking worksheet for the main analysis task;
- Lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet, which goes through the lesson step-by-step;
- Resources to create adjective word cards.
All pictures are licensed for commercial use, and image authors cited on the final slide.
This lesson can also be bought as part of the Descriptive Devices bundle for just £5. The bundle leads students through each language device needed in order to write to describe confidently.
Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £6

Perfect Personification and Awesome Oxymorons!
This is an exciting and engaging lesson/set of tasks aiming to build students’ skills at using personification and oxymorons in their writing . It was taught during an observation lesson where the teacher received an Outstanding judgement.
Students learn to:
- Define and give examples of what personification and oxymorons are;
- Identify personification and oxymorons in fun and interesting examples;
- Analyse what makes them effective;
- Create their own personification and oxymorons using step-by-step advice;
- Peer assess using a clear and succinct success criteria.
It comes complete with:
- Engaging and visual PowerPoint to guide students (and teacher!) through the lesson;
- Colourful and thought-provoking two-part worksheet for the two main create tasks;
- Lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet, which goes through the lesson step-by-step;
All pictures are licensed for commercial use, and image authors cited on the final slide.
This lesson can also be bought as part of the Descriptive Devices bundle for just £5. The bundle leads students through each language device needed in order to write to describe confidently.
Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £6.

Stupendous Similes and Miraculous Metaphors!
This is an exciting and engaging lesson/set of tasks aiming to build students’ skills at using similes and metaphors in their writing . It was taught during an observation lesson where the teacher received an Outstanding judgement.
Students learn to:
- Define and give examples of what similes and metaphors are;
- Identify similes and metaphors on funny posters and captions;
- Analyse what makes similes and metaphors effective;
- Create their own simile and metaphor filled writing piece;
- Peer assess and learn through fun interactive tasks.
It comes complete with:
- Engaging and visual PowerPoint to guide students (and teacher!) through the lesson;
- Colourful and thought-provoking worksheet for the main analysis task;
- Lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet, which goes through the lesson step-by-step;
- Resources to enable the teacher to make ‘flags’ for the introductory task.
All pictures are licensed for commercial use, and image authors cited on the final slide.
This lesson can also be bought as part of the Descriptive Devices bundle for just £5. The bundle leads students through each language device needed in order to write to describe confidently.
Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £6.

VCOP - Punctuation
Perfect for English lessons, or as part of a literacy across the curriculum scheme, the VCOP lessons aim to build students’ fundamental writing skills.
Engaging, differentiated, and easily adaptable, this lesson aims to improve students’ skills at using varied and appropriate punctuation, following a logical learning journey to ensure that students learn in bite-size steps:
- Defining punctuation marks;
- Identifying varied vocabulary in humorous writing examples;
- Analysing varied vocabulary in an interesting descriptive passage;
- Creating their descriptive piece, using varied vocabulary;
- Peer or self evaluating their varied vocabulary attempts.
Resources, worksheets, and a lesson plan are provided.

VCOP - Openers
Perfect for English lessons, or as part of a literacy across the curriculum scheme, the VCOP lessons aim to build students’ fundamental writing skills.
Engaging, differentiated, and easily adaptable, this lesson aims to improve students’ skills at using varied and appropriate sentence openers, following a logical learning journey to ensure that students learn in bite-size steps:
- Defining the different words that they can use to vary how they open sentences;
- Identifying varied openers in humorous writing examples;
- Analysing varied openings in an interesting descriptive passage;
- Creating a descriptive piece, using varied sentence openers;
- Peer or self evaluating the effectiveness of their varied sentence openers.
Resources, worksheets, and a lesson plan are provided.

VCOP - Connectives
Perfect for English lessons, or as part of a literacy across the curriculum scheme, the VCOP lessons aim to build students’ fundamental writing skills.
Engaging, differentiated, and easily adaptable, this lesson aims to improve students’ skills at using varied and appropriate connectives in their writing, following a logical learning journey to ensure that students learn in bite-size steps:
- Defining connectives types;
- Identifying connectives in humorous writing examples;
- Analysing connectives in an interesting descriptive passage;
- Creating a descriptive piece, using varied connectives;
- Peer or self evaluating their writing attempts, and in particular the use of connectives
Resources, worksheets, and a lesson plan are provided.

VCOP - Vocabulary
Perfect for English lessons, or as part of a literacy across the curriculum scheme, the VCOP lessons aim to build students’ fundamental writing skills.
Engaging, differentiated, and easily adaptable, this lesson aims to improve students’ skills at using varied and appropriate vocabulary, following a logical learning journey to ensure that students learn in bite-size steps:
- Defining word types;
- Identifying varied vocabulary in humorous writing examples;
- Analysing varied vocabulary in an interesting descriptive passage;
- Creating their descriptive piece, using varied vocabulary;
- Peer or self evaluating their varied vocabulary attempts.
Resources, worksheets, and a lesson plan are provided.

Truly Effective Persuasive Devices!
This visual and highly engaging set of resources is designed to enable students to use imaginative and original persuasive devices in their own writing. Through following the interesting learning journey, students are given the opportunity to:
- Define each persuasive device;
- Identify these in existing persuasive texts;
- Analyse their effect in a longer persuasive text;
- Create their own persuasive device-filled piece, using a jointly-created success criteria based upon their analysis task;
- Peer assess each other’s persuasive writing attempts.
All resources are provided, including:
- Visual PowerPoint presentation;
- Definitions cards (they just need printing and cutting out)
- Analysis worksheet;
- Lesson outline for teachers and learning support to follow.
Note: All pictures licensed for creative use - authors and sources labelled on the final slide of the presentation.

Amazing Verbs and Adverbs!
This is an exciting and engaging lesson/set of tasks aiming to build students’ skills at using varied verbs and adverbs in their writing . It was taught during an observation lesson where the teacher received an Outstanding judgement.
Students learn to:
- Define and give examples of what verbs and adverbs are;
- Identify verbs and adverbs on funny posters and captions;
- Analyse what makes verbs and adverbs effective;
- Create their own verb and adverb filled writing piece;
It comes complete with:
- Engaging and visual PowerPoint to guide students (and teacher!) through the lesson;
- Colourful and thought-provoking worksheet for the main analysis task;
- Lesson plan/ teacher guidance sheet, which goes through the lesson step-by-step;
- Resources to enable the teacher to make ‘flags’ for the development task.
All pictures are licensed for commercial use, and image authors cited on the final slide.
This lesson can also be bought as part of the Descriptive Devices bundle for just £5. The bundle leads students through each language device needed in order to write to describe confidently.
Alternatively, you can buy the Descriptive Writing Big Bundle (All descriptive devices lessons, structuring and organising writing lesson, capturing the readers attention lesson, and the literacy writing mat) for £6.