Twinkl Resources

The people at Twinkl have given me a free account on their website and in return I said I’d review, occasionally, some of their resources.

Resources for lessons is a tricky subject for me, because where people want a full standalone lesson lovingly crafted by someone else, I want a task or resource to use in a lesson. If I wanted something done for me, I’d still be living with my parents and they’d write this blog for me. Therefore, I am going to pick several resources, which I think are useful for parts of a lesson.

Fronted Adverbial Word Mat

I am a big fan of using primary school approaches in the classroom. A simple, yet effective way of ensuring transition without the need for a big label. This resources is particularly useful with creative writing. My Year 8s are currently writing horror stories and they are guilty of writing pedestrian sentence openings. I am going to use this when drafting. I particularly like the fronted adverbials related to degree for developing some sophisticated expressions.

Paragraph Cohesion

Paragraphs are the bane of my life and I always like an extract where the use of paragraphs is explored. This resource uses an extract from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and gets students to uses the appropriate conjunction or adverbial. Nice for 5 minute activity before you start looking at paragraph construction in more detail.  

An Inspector Calls Mini Exam Pack

I am always on the lookout for ways to support the department and I found this pack quite an easy hack. I have photocopied the pack and I am giving it to staff so that they can set them as homework. With the questions photocopied as a booklet, students can plan a question after each lesson and start the following lesson with sharing their plan.

Phase 2 Captions Handwriting Activity Sheet

Sometimes differentiating work can be hard. I have found this activity, along with others, on handwriting quite helpful when you have a student who struggles with writing and writing prose. This helps, with a TA, them to work on their control of their pen / pencil.

All resources can be found here:

http://www.twinkl.co.uk