The Snowman

#TheCompleteSeries6lessons

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!

#Lesson1Becomingfamiliarwiththestory

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!

#Lesson2Chooseandusemorevariedvocabulary

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.

#Lesson3Sentencestarters

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.

#Lesson4Directspeech

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.

#Lesson5Planningastory

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.

#Lesson6Writingastory

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.

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Curriculum Objectives covered

• increasing their familiarity with a wide range of books, including fairy stories, myths and legends, and retelling some of these orally

• write from memory simple sentences, dictated by the teacher

• discussing writing similar to that which they are planning to write in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar
• discussing and recording ideas
• composing and rehearsing sentences orally (including dialogue), progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures (English Appendix 2)
• in narratives, creating settings, characters and plot
• proposing changes to grammar and vocabulary to improve consistency, including the accurate use of pronouns in sentences
• read aloud their own writing, to a group or the whole class

• choosing nouns or pronouns appropriately for clarity and cohesion and to avoid repetition
• using fronted adverbials
• using commas after fronted adverbials
• using and punctuating direct speech

• listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers
• use relevant strategies to build their vocabulary
• maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments
• use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas
• participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play/improvisations and debates

• Introduction to inverted commas to punctuate direct speech
• direct speech
• inverted commas (or ‘speech marks’)