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Each worksheet features a variety of writing, comprehension and research activities for pupils to carry out. These include writing a timeline of Joan of Arc’s life and describing how you met your best friend.

The pictures, with varying perspectives, enable readers to more easily understand the hazardous conditions faced by the small bird. The robin’s return home, which has been anticipated by more than just his mate, makes for a satisfying addition to holiday collections. A highly unusual picture book to satisfy the heart of anyone who enjoys making the natural world part of a Christmas celebration. As a child, I remember listening with baited breath as our headteacher read Friend or Foealoud in assembly. He was sure to always stop on a cliffhanger so we’d have to wait a whole week to find out what happened next. Helped by his new friends, Omar becomes Son of Gulliver – a role that requires him to develop peacemaking abilities.This text can provide a great model for first-person writing. Children can invent new adventures for Pinocchio or retell another familiar story with themselves in the role of the protagonist. Times of war Friend or Foe At the end of the story there is a list of facts about Scandinavian robins, this list is brilliant! I never even knew there were Scandinavian robins, let alone their migrating habits and that they are almost identical to our own English robins. At the end of his journey, the robin meets his mate. We are not told why the mate is already there or if the mate never migrated. Perhaps that is a tale for another day. In this free PDF there are loads of ideas and writing opportunities. These range from environmental information pamphlets and persuasive letters to news reports.

It has been exclusively created to be used with episode nine of the Author In Your Classroom podcast. This is a virtual ‘author visit’ you can share with children whenever you like, absolutely free! While listening to the story, groups of children could be given different topics from the books to research: the Camargue, the occupation of France during WWII, flamingos, carousels.Pupils could then be challenged to use the word in their own writing. Tales retold Arthur, High King of Britain Read as a class and imagine what it would be like to be there. Next, look carefully at how the author describes the setting. This can support children’s own development as writers. He has said: ‘For me, the greater part of writing is day-dreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out - the writing down of it I always find hard. But I love finishing it, then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers.’

In my first year teaching, I adopted the same approach with Kensuke’s Kingdom, my class howling when we had to stop each day at home time. Michael Morpurgo Month takes place every February. What’s the theme for Michael Morpurgo Month 2023? This resource features three printable worksheets for three Morpurgo books: Sparrow: The True Story of Joan of Arc, Alone on a Wide Wide Sea and A Medal for Leroy. Where My Wellies Take Me, by Michael and Clare Morpurgo, uses 40 evocative poems to celebrate the wonder of childhood, germinating a love of verse that will stay with pupils for many years to come.

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Use Morpurgo’s tale of a boy who spies a bottlenose whale in the Thames as the centrepiece of your next Key Stage 2 storybook curriculum. This is a magical story that spans many decades. The Butterfly Lion provides a motivating and memorable way of teaching children to control shifts in time in their own writing. Listen to the story and think about how the author moves from one period to another. This is a beautifully constructed story-within-a-story. When a boy awakens after being stranded on a sandbank, he finds himself confronted by the legendary King Arthur himself. The King then proceeds to tell his story. Let there be half an hour of storytime at the end of the day in primary schools up and down the country. Make this the half hour they all long for, that they don’t want to be over. Let the children go home dreaming of the story, reliving it, wondering.”