This Year 3 English planning pack is based on the magical book 'The Snowman' by Raymond Briggs.

Over the course of six ready-to-teach lessons, your class will first become familiar with and orally retell the story, before exploring how to improve their vocabulary choices and sentence starters, as well as practising their use of direct speech punctuation. They will then apply this knowledge and understanding to planning and writing their own extra section of the story!

This 'The Snowman' activities planning pack includes easy-to-follow plans, engaging and informative slide shows for the teaching input, as well as differentiated activity ideas and printable resources - everything you need for a fun, seasonal set of English lessons!

If you are looking for more English lessons inspired by wordless picture books, you might be interested in our Year 4 scheme based on Aaron Becker's wonderful book, 'Journey'.

Why not upgrade to our Christmas Topic Bundle  – perfect if you're looking for a cross-curricular approach to your teaching.

Becoming familiar with the story

In this first lesson, children are introduced to, and become familiar with, the story of Raymond Briggs' 'The Snowman'.

As a class, children look at the book together before then working in groups, pairs or individually to orally retell sections of the story using the pictures as a guide. In the alternative activity provided, children are challenged to act out and narrate given sections.

Within this 'The Snowman' KS2 lesson pack you will find a detailed plan, an engaging set of slides, differentiated activity ideas and printable resources - everything you need for a successful lesson with your Year 3 class!

View Lesson 1

Choose and use more varied vocabulary

This 'The Snowman' KS2 lesson focuses on helping children to build and use a more varied vocabulary.

Your class are first challenged to identify and define what an adjective, verb and adverb each are, before looking at how to find more interesting or descriptive synonyms using a thesaurus. Children then use their thesaurus skills in their independent activities to choose and replace selected words in a description of a winter scene.

An easy-to-follow plan, an informative slide show for the teaching input and differentiated worksheets are all included in this ready-to-teach 'The Snowman' KS2 lesson pack.

View Lesson 2

Sentence starters

The impact and effectiveness of different sentence starters will be explored by your class in this lesson.

After looking at how noun phrases can be replaced with pronouns to avoid repetition, your children will then explore what a fronted adverbial is, and how they can be created. They put this knowledge into practice in their independent activities where they are challenged to choose appropriate adverbials to place at the beginning of given sentences.

This downloadable lesson pack comes with everything you need, including a detailed plan, an engaging slideshow, differentiated activities and accompanying printable resources.

View Lesson 3

Direct speech

In this lesson, children will explore the punctuation needed when using direct speech.

Your class will look at examples of written speech relating to the characters in 'The Snowman', first identifying what punctuation has been used, then progressing to completing unpunctuated sentences. In their independent activities, children will add the correct punctuation to given sentences, or write their own direct speech inspired by images from the picture book. In the alternative activity, children are challenged to to identify and correct punctuation errors in sentences involving direct speech.

This ready-to-teach 'The Snowman' lesson pack includes a plan, slide show and differentiated, printable resources.

View Lesson 4

Planning a story

In this penultimate lesson, children discuss ideas and plan an extra section for 'The Snowman' story.

As a class, children discuss what might have happened the following night if the snowman had not melted at the end of the story. They use these ideas, as well as given suggestions, to plan an extra section for the book where the boy and the snowman have another night-time adventure. In the FSD? activity, they watch a short clip from 'The Snowman' film (the party scene) and plan a section of the story based on this.

Included in this pack is a detailed lesson plan, differentiated, printable resources, and an engaging slide show for the teaching input.

View Lesson 5

Writing a story

In this final lesson, children combine what they have learnt in previous lessons with their imaginations to write an extra section for 'The Snowman'.

Your class are first reminded of the different ways in which they can make their writing more interesting for the reader (varied vocabulary, a range of sentence starters, using direct speech). They then use this knowledge to assess and improve given sentences written from a plan, before writing their own stories from their plans in their independent activities.

With engaging lesson slides, printable resources and a detailed, differentiated lesson plan, this pack gives you everything you need to help your class write their extra section for 'The Snowman' story.

View Lesson 6