lesson ideas

Beyond the traditional boycott narrative – time for change, action not words

In December 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat when asked. All the other Black people on the bus complied but she did not. The image of a quiet respectable old lady sits comfortably in the collective popular imagination of the civil rights movement. This simple narrative… Read More

Leaping across the writing gap: building resilience and independence at KS3

The impact of the disrupted nature of the last few years is perhaps most felt on the continuity which is key to progression. It is surely harder than ever to get a sense of just what level students transition with from the primary phase, given the gaps in learning and… Read More

Considering Dracula and the supernatural: teaching tips

Gothic literary texts can take so many different forms, but they share a preoccupation with the crossing of boundaries: between life and death, the past and the present, ancient and modern, good and evil or more generally, between what is real and unreal. Gothic writers take their readers, then, across… Read More

Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2020: The Genetic Scissors

The 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has, for the first time, been shared by two female scientists, Emmanuelle Charpentier from France and the American, Jennifer A. Doudna. They led separate teams to discoveries which resulted in the exciting new tool that cuts and pastes DNA and goes by the cryptic… Read More

Shakespeare Teaching Ideas for Key Stage 2

The result at Collins are five plays: The Tempest, Midsummer’s Night Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Twelfth Night, rewritten in story form for younger readers. These are a great introduction to the world of Shakespeare but how can we use them effectively to help pupils immerse themselves in the rich language of Shakespeare’s world? Read More

How to… celebrate World Book Day

World Book Day is almost here! This much-loved day in the school year is one to have lots of fun on, from dressing up as book characters to revisiting our favourite books. It’s a day to focus on books and reading and hopefully build up enough of a head of… Read More

Bloody Mary: Did she deserve her reputation?

This teaching activity is about reputations, what they are, how we can acquire one and how we can change or lose one. The 18th February marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Mary I, the lesser known daughter of Henry VIII and sister of Elizabeth I. History today remembers her by… Read More

Christmas and the Environment

Christmas time with thoughts of turkey dinners and Christmas presents rarely provides an opportunity for us to think of the environment but in these two activities, we can get children thinking about the other cost of Christmas and maybe think about how they can do something about it. Read More

National Tree Week – KS1

It’s National Tree Week and it’s a great time to get younger pupils involved in studying trees to gain a better understanding of the role they play in the world. We’re keeping it simple but the activities we’ve planned for you to get young pupils involved and helps them find… Read More

Fibonacci Day – 23rd November

Leonardo Fibonacci lived in the 12th and 13th century and was considered the greatest western mathematician of the Middle Ages. He helped to replace Roman numerals with the Arabic ones we know today but his most famous legacy is the Fibonacci Series, a number sequence from which comes a number known variously as the Golden Mean, the Golden Number or the Golden Ratio which mirrors the proportion seen in nature and perceived beauty. In this series of activities, pupils will investigate the sequence and see how the numbers discovered can be found in nature. Read More