You Will Need
Texts
All by Anthony Browne
Willy the Wimp
Willy the Champ
Willy the Wizard
Willy the Dreamer
Plus a range of other Anthony Browne books for children to look at on Day 2. You need at least 5 or 6 other books in addition to those above.
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English Blocks or English Plans?
Which to use: Hamilton’s new flexible English blocks or our adaptable weekly plans?
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Free English Resources on Hamilton
Find out which Hamilton English planning resources you can access for free.
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Hamilton Group Readers
Hamilton have produced books in printed and digital formats specially for children to read in small groups.
Fiction
English Year 2 Summer Stories by the Same Author
Stories by Anthony Browne
Anthony Browne’s books epitomise creativity and quirkiness and will stimulate higher level writing, reading and comprehension skills. Study noun phrases and conjunctions.
We recommend that you start with the core unit, the heart of this English block of study. This introduces key textual material and sets the tone for any further units you wish to teach. These can be selected on the basis of the needs of your class – look at the green icons to identify the unit’s particular focus: SPAG, Composition or Comprehension. Whichever units you choose, we suggest teaching them in order, as there is a built-in progression indicated by the numbering.
‘UNIT PLAN’ gives you a text version of all parts of the unit to use in your school planning documentation. ‘DOWNLOAD ALL FILES’ gives you that unit plan plus all of the associated documents.
Unit 1 Core: Introducing the work of Anthony Browne
(suggested as 4 days)
Objectives
Spoken Language
-- Use relevant strategies to build their vocabulary.
-- Articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions.
-- Give well-structured descriptions, explanations and narratives for different purposes, including for expressing feelings.
-- Use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas.
-- Participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates.
-- Maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments.
Word Reading
-- Continue to apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words until automatic decoding has become embedded and reading is fluent.
Comprehension
-- Listen to, discuss and express views about a wide range of contemporary stories… at a level beyond that at which they can read independently.
-- Participate in discussion about books, poems and other works that are read to them and those that they can read for themselves, taking turns and listening to what others say.
-- Explain and discuss their understanding of books, poems and other material, both those that they listen to and those that they read for themselves.
Transcription
-- Form lower-case letters of the correct size relative to one another.
-- Use spacing between words that reflects the size of the letters.
Composition
-- Plan or say out loud what they are going to write about.
-- Encapsulate what they want to say, sentence by sentence.
-- Re-read to check that their writing makes sense.
Grammar
-- Learn how to use both familiar and new punctuation correctly including full stops, capital letters.
Teaching and Activities
Day 1 Teaching
Read children Willy the Wimp by Anthony Browne and discuss the book. Display the Anthony Browne’s biography, encouraging children to make use of phonics skills and word attack strategies to shared-read the opening section of the text. Share a wide selection of Anthony Browne’s books with children.
Activity
Children work in mixed ability-related pairs or small groups. They continue to shared-read Anthony Browne’s biography. They record intriguing facts they have learned about the author. Some will read as part of a group lead by an adult while others may use the Internet to research Anthony Browne from more than one source.
Day 2 Teaching
Read children Willy the Champ and compare the book to Willy the Wimp. Help children to recognise common features and themes. Show how to use a simple tally chart to record responses to a book in terms of provided criteria.
Activity
Working in mixed ability pairs or small groups, children share, read and discuss a large number of books by Anthony Browne. As they look at and enjoy the books they look out for common themes, ideas and characters. They record their observations on a tally chart.
Day 3 Teaching
Read children Willy the Wizard and compare to Willy the Wimp and Willy the Champ. Children continue to recognise similarities between these titles and Anthony Browne’s other books. Explore Anthony Browne’s art with children. Ask children to express their feelings about the pictures and to talk about the part they play in making the author’s books so successful and effective.
Activity
Children work in ability-related pairs. They select an Anthony Browne image they are intrigued by and discuss it with a partner. They record what it is they really like about Anthony Browne’s art. Some select more than one image and compare the pictures they have chosen.
Day 4 Teaching
Read the class Willy the Dreamer. Explain what a ‘book review’ is and shared-read a review of Willy the Dreamer. Model writing the opening section of a review for one of Anthony Browne’s other ‘Willy’ books, teaching children to orally compose their sentences before writing them down and to re-read work to check for both sense and accurate use of punctuation marks, capital letters and word spacing.
Activity
Children work independently or in ability-related pairs. They choose one of the ‘Willy’ books they have read in class this week and compose a short review for the title. They use their best handwriting to do so and take care to punctuate and capitalise their sentences correctly. Some use a scaffolded writing frame to compose their review.
Unit 2 SPAG: Identify adjectives and noun phrases and use in own descriptive writing
(suggested as 3 days)
Objectives
Spoken Language
-- Use relevant strategies to build their vocabulary.
-- Use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas.
Word Reading
None for this unit
Comprehension
None for this unit
Transcription
None for this unit
Composition
-- Consider what they are going to write before beginning by encapsulating what they want to say, sentence by sentence.
-- Make simple additions, revisions and corrections to their own writing by re-reading to check that their writing makes sense and that verbs to indicate time are used correctly and consistently, including verbs in the continuous form.
-- Read aloud what they have written with appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear.
Grammar
-- Learn how to use expanded noun phrases to describe and specify, the grammar for year 2 in English Appendix 2.
-- Use and understand the grammatical terminology in English Appendix 2 in discussing their writing.
You Will Need
Texts
Gorilla by Anthony Browne
What If…? by Anthony Browne
Presentation
SPaG PowerPoint: Adjectives and Noun Phrases
Teaching and Activities
Day 1 Teaching
Read children What If…? by Anthony Browne and discuss the book’s themes and ideas. Using the PowerPoint Adjectives and Noun Phrases, teach children to define and spot nouns and adjectives in texts. Model proposing the opposite of a given adjective and using the former in a simple sentence.
Activity
Children work in ability-related pairs. They read and discuss a set of adjectives. They select opposites for each and use the words they have chosen in a series of sentences. Some work with more complex adjectives while others pair up provided adjectives as opposites.
Day 2 Teaching
Read children Gorilla by Anthony Browne and discuss its themes. Referring to the PowerPoint Adjectives and Noun Phrases, teach children the vocabulary and features of expanded noun phrases using prepositions. Help children to identify expanded noun phrases in lines about Gorilla. Model writing further expanded noun phrases based on characters and events in the book.
Activity
Working in ability-related pairs, children expand noun phrases based on characters and events in Gorilla using prepositions and adjectives.
Day 3 Teaching
Compare Gorilla and What If…? and ask children to nominate a favourite, giving reasons for their choice. Discuss the settings of both books. Revisit the role of adjectives and expanded noun phrases in descriptive writing. Model writing a short passage describing Hannah’s bedroom in Gorilla.
Activity
Children work independently or in ability-related pairs. They write a description of one of the houses on Joe’s street in What If…? They use adjectives and expanded noun phrases in their writing. Some children also use simple similes to enhance their descriptions.
SPAG: Grammar and Punctuation
Adjectives and Noun Phrases PowerPoint
Remind children of nouns and adjectives, next to their noun or not. Extend noun phrases using prepositions to add information.
Unit 3 Composition: explore and write about imaginative characters in stories
(suggested as 4 days)
Objectives
Spoken Language
-- Listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers.
-- Maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments.
-- Speak audibly and fluently with an increasing command of Standard English.
-- Participate in role play, improvisations and debates.
-- Select and use appropriate registers for effective communication.
-- Give well-structured descriptions, explanations and narratives for different purposes, including for expressing feelings.
-- Use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas.
Word Reading
-- Continue to apply phonic knowledge and skills as the route to decode words until automatic decoding has become embedded and reading is fluent.
Comprehension
None for this unit
Transcription
None for this unit
Composition
-- Encapsulate what they want to say, sentence by sentence.
-- Proof-read to check for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation [for example, ends of sentences punctuated correctly].
-- Consider what they are going to write before beginning by planning or saying out loud what they are going to write about.
-- Writing down ideas and/or key words, including new vocabulary.
Grammar
None for this unit
You Will Need
Texts
Silly Billy by Anthony Browne
Changes by Anthony Browne
Teaching and Activities
Day 1 Teaching
Read children Silly Billy by Anthony Browne and introduce class to the concept of ‘worry dolls’. With help from children, role-play a conversation between Billy and a worry doll. Teach children good techniques for successful speaking and listening during role-play and performances.
Activity
Working in mixed-ability pairs, children act out a brief conversation between an anxious Billy and a soothing worry doll. They rehearse their mini-plays and then perform them for the rest of the class.
Day 2 Teaching
Re-read Silly Billy. Lead a discussion of children’s own worries and fears, and explore advice they might give for coping with common worries. Revisiting reading strategies, help children read sentences about common worries. Model writing out advice for these worries in correctly punctuated full sentences.
Activity
Children work in ability-related pairs. They read a set of worries and compose lines of advice in response. They punctuate their sentences accurately. Some write down further worries they know of and offer advice for these concerns too.
Day 3 Teaching
Read Changes by Anthony Browne. Lead a discussion about characters in Anthony Browne books, drawing out similarities and common features. Model creating a new character in the style of Anthony Browne. Stress the benefit of note taking to capture ideas and plans.
Activity
Children work in mixed-ability pairs. Thinking again about the stories they have read, children share ideas and create new Anthony Browne-style characters. They record details and descriptions of their character.
Day 4 Teaching
Revisit the Anthony Browne-style characters created on Day 3. Model composing appropriate dialogue for a meeting between two characters. Teach children the ‘new speaker, new line’ rule for recording dialogue on paper.
Activity
Working in ability-related pairs children create and act out a brief conversation between their respective new Anthony Browne-style characters. When they are ready, they record their conversation on paper, either in speech bubbles or as continuous prose.
Unit 4 SPAG: Identify co-ordinating and subordinating conjunctions and use in own writing
(suggested as 3 days)
Objectives
Spoken Language
-- Use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas.
-- Articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions.
Word Reading
None for this unit
Comprehension
None for this unit
Transcription
None for this unit
Composition
-- Write narratives about personal experiences and those of others (real and fictional).
-- Encapsulate what they want to say, sentence by sentence.
-- Read aloud what they have written with appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear.
Grammar
-- Learn how to use: subordination (using when, if, that, or because) and co-ordination (using or, and, or but).
You Will Need
Texts
Look What I've Got! by Anthony Browne
Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne
Presentations
SPaG PowerPoint: Co-ordinating and Subordinating Conjunctions
Teaching and Activities
Day 1 Teaching
Read children Anthony Browne’s Look What I’ve Got! and discuss the book’s themes, characters and settings. Using the Co-ordinating and subordinating conjunctions PowerPoint provided, teach children to identify and distinguish between co-ordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
Activity
Working in ability-related pairs, children highlight conjunctions in sentences and say whether they are co-ordinating or subordinating conjunctions. They share other books by Anthony Browne and note examples of each kind of conjunction in the texts they read.
Day 2 Teaching
Read children Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne and ask children to compare the book to Look What I’ve Got! Revisit subordinating conjunctions and teach children to add subordinate clauses to sentences using a variety of subordinate conjunctions.
Activity
Children work in ability-related pairs. They add subordinating conjunctions and dependent clauses to existing sentences. Some write two-clause sentences of their own.
Day 3 Teaching
Re-read Voices in the Park and ask children to describe the characters in the story and to comment on the relationships they have with one another. Model composing an email from one character in the book to another, writing ‘in character’ and using a range of conjunctions to extend sentences.
Activity
Working independently or with a writing partner, children compose an email from Smudge or Charles. They write ‘in character’ and use conjunctions to extend their sentences. Some will use a greater range of conjunctions and will vary the position of the subordinating conjunction in sentences. Children read their emails aloud.
SPAG: Grammar and Punctuation
Co-ordinating and Subordinating Conjunctions PowerPoint
Remind children what a sentence is, identifying the active verb in each sentence. Teach how to join sentences using co-ordinating conjunctions and how to add information using subordinating conjunctions.
Unit 5 Composition: Write a new version of a story by Anthony Browne
(suggested as 5 days)
Objectives
Spoken Language
-- Articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions.
-- Use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas.
-- Participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates.
Word Reading
None for this unit
Comprehension
-- Participate in discussion about books, poems and other works that are read to them and those that they can read for themselves, taking turns and listening to what others say.
-- Explain and discuss their understanding of books, poems and other material, both those that they listen to and those that they read for themselves.
Transcription
-- Start using some of the diagonal and horizontal strokes needed to join letters and understand which letters, when adjacent to one another, are best left unjoined.
-- Use spacing between words that reflects the size of the letters.
Composition
-- Write down ideas and/or key words, incl. new vocabulary.
-- Write narratives about personal experiences and those of others (real and fictional).
-- Plan or saying out loud what they are going to write about.
-- Encapsulate what they want to say, sentence by sentence.
-- Re-read to check that their writing makes sense and that verbs to indicate time are used correctly and consistently, including verbs in the continuous form.
-- Proof-read to check for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.
-- Read aloud what they have written with appropriate intonation to make the meaning clear.
Grammar
Learn how to use: expanded noun phrases to describe and specify; subordination (using when, if, that, or because) and co-ordination (using or, and, or but); the grammar for year 2 in English Appendix 2.
-- Use and understand the grammatical terminology in English Appendix 2 in discussing their writing.
You Will Need
Texts
The Night Shimmy by Gwen Strauss and Anthony Browne
The Tunnel by Anthony Browne
Presentations
SPaG PowerPoint: Adjectives and Noun Phrases as in Unit 2
SPaG PowerPoint: Co-ordinating and Subordinating Conjunctions as in Unit 4
Teaching and Activities
Day 1 Teaching
Read children The Night Shimmy by Gwen Strauss and Anthony Browne. Help children to make connections between the book and other stories by the author. In particular, prompt children to recognise The Night Shimmy as an example of a story featuring a young protagonist, their companion and the adventures the two have.
Activity
Working in mixed-ability pairs or groups, children share a variety of books by Anthony Browne. For each, they note the names of the main characters and summarise the adventures they share.
Day 2 Teaching
Read children The Tunnel by Anthony Browne. Help children to compare the book to The Night Shimmy and others. Model creating two characters for a new version of The Tunnel. Remind children of how and why to make notes of their ideas when they are creating new characters.
Activity
Children work in mixed-ability pairs. They generate ideas for two new characters to feature in a retelling of The Tunnel. Children capture their ideas on a planning sheet.
Day 3 Teaching
Re-read The Tunnel and show children a story map to identify and sequence the core events of the book. Model imitating this story map to plan a new version of The Tunnel, indicating where children can innovate with new ideas of their own.
Activity
Working in ability-related pairs, children begin planning their own versions of The Tunnel. Some children will expand certain sections of their plan, while others will work with adult support to produce simpler narratives.
Day 4 Teaching
Model writing the first part of a new version of The Tunnel. Show children how you use notes made earlier to help you write complete, accurately punctuated sentences. Teach children to include expanded noun- and prepositional phrases in their writing.
Activity
Working independently or in ability-related pairs, children convert notes into finished sentences. They use expanded noun- and prepositional phrases as well as powerful verbs in their writing.
Day 5 Teaching
Teach children to incorporate co-ordinating and subordinating conjunctions in their writing. Continue to model turning notes into finished prose. Remind children of the need to re-read their work to improve accuracy, quality and impact. Later, teach children to read their work aloud with feeling and clarity.
Activity
Children work independently. They finish writing their stories and practice reading them aloud. Later, they have an opportunity to read their versions of The Tunnel to the rest of the class.
SPAG: Grammar and Punctuation
SPaG PowerPoint Adjectives and Noun Phrases as in Unit 2
Remind children of nouns and adjectives, next to their noun or not. Extend noun phrases using prepositions to add information.
SPaG PowerPoint Co-ordinating and Subordinating Conjunctions as in Unit 4
Remind children what a sentence is, identifying the active verb in each sentence. Teach how to join sentences using co-ordinating conjunctions and how to add information using subordinating conjunctions.