Tag Archives: year two

Idea 275: FREE Poem Resource for Teaching Suffixes -ness, -ment, -ful, -less, -ly ‘Recipe for a Teacher’

DOWNLOAD THE RESOURCE HERE I saw a great idea for writing a recipe-type poem for friendship the other day as a way to evidence the ITAF 2017 statement that the pupil is “adding suffixes to spell some words correctly in … Continue reading

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Idea 223: Reading Comprehension ‘Twisted’ Father Christmas Lesson with FREE Resources

This lesson is aimed at dealing with a problem I’ve encountered when teaching reading comprehension: when reading a piece of text about something they have encountered before, many of the children tend to use their pre-existing knowledge to answer questions … Continue reading

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Idea 221: Find a New Friend Day

This is a nice way to encourage pupils to make new friends outside of their normal social circle. I’ve now made Fridays my Find a New Friend Day. We discussed the kinds of things we could say such as ‘Could … Continue reading

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Idea 212: Snowman Cards

The children dip their thumbs in white paint to make the body of the snowmen and use their fingertips to do the heads. Once dry, they can use markers to add noses, arms, hats, eyes etc. Having only one paint … Continue reading

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Idea 209: End-of-Day Routine ‘Draw What You’ve Learned’

I was reflecting on my routines in the classroom and thought there had to be a way to get the children ready to go home in a better manner. All of my class piling into our small(ish) cloakroom at once … Continue reading

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Idea 205: Quiz Quiz Trade Differentiation Top Tip

Previously (Idea 184) I mentioned the Kagan structure called ‘Quiz-Quiz-Trade’, where children walk around quizzing each other with cards that have a question on one side and the answer on the other. For an observation I had, I went ahead … Continue reading

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Idea 204: Encouraging Children To Listen with Kagan ‘Timed Pair Share’ Structure

How I previously used ‘talk partners’ in a lesson: “Do you think a car is alive? Discuss with your talk partner what you think and why.” After perhaps a minute, I would signal for everyone’s attention and then randomly-select a … Continue reading

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Idea 201: The ‘2 Minute Check’, Simple Idea to Encourage Children to Start Writing Immediately

This is a simple idea to motivate your children to start writing immediately, mentioned to me by a colleague just the other day (hi Dave!). Once you are ready for your class to go off and begin writing, tell the … Continue reading

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Idea 183: Superb Way to Teach Expanded Noun Phrases

Expanded noun phrases are quite a dry-sounding topic by nature, but don’t despair as there IS a fun way to teach them! My fiancee suggested the following activity, which I tried in my class when I was being observed and … Continue reading

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Idea 181: ‘Chilli Challenge’ Differentiation Approach

This is an approach to differentiated tasks or success criteria that was mentioned at a tutorial I attended, and which I then used in my class. The general concept is that you create either tasks or success criteria that get … Continue reading

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