biography homework ks2

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Home > Resources > KS2 RESOURCE PACK: Writing Extraordinary Biographies

Resource Pack: Writing Extraordinary Biographies

Key stage and subjects, what’s the story.

Have you discovered Puffin’s brilliant biographies for kids aged seven and up?

The Extraordinary Lives series includes: Malala, Michelle Obama, Stephen Hawking, Anne Frank , Katherine Johnson and Neil Armstrong. These beautifully illustrated books include timelines, fascinating facts and inspirational quotes from their stars. The series celebrates how ordinary people can lead extraordinary lives because of their own choices, actions, beliefs and passions and will inspire your class that they too can be extraordinary.

This resource pack includes:

You’ll get material for four or more Literacy, Citizenship and PSHE lessons, adaptable for pupils in KS2 and KS3.

Once pupils understand the different features of biography writing  they’ll be able to create the biography of an extraordinary person of their choice using the template in the pack

Get the Resource Pack: Writing Extraordinary Biographies

Related books, the extraordinary life of anne frank, the extraordinary life of katherine johnson, the extraordinary life of malala yousafzai, the extraordinary life of michelle obama, the extraordinary life of neil armstrong, the extraordinary life of stephen hawking, who makes puffin schools, tag on the top needs the closed class if you start as expanded, leave data-collapsed="false" attribute, its used in the css --> puffin schools has been created by the children’s publisher puffin to help bring together all the inspiring content we create for schools into one place. fa-angle-down--> what ages are the books on puffin schools for, tag on the top needs the closed class if you start as expanded, leave data-collapsed="false" attribute, its used in the css --> the books on this website will range from those for eyfs through to primary and up to lower secondary school. you can discover our full range of books at puffin.co.uk fa-angle-down--> what is puffin, tag on the top needs the closed class if you start as expanded, leave data-collapsed="false" attribute, its used in the css --> puffin is an imprint of penguin random house, the world’s number-one publisher representing a vibrant community of publishing houses marked by unparalleled success. through our world of stories, puffin aims to open up the world to every child. our mission is to inspire children to feel they can be and do anything, and to create readers for life. puffin started out as a non-fiction publisher, with its first title appearing in 1940. as the most iconic and well-known children’s book brand in the uk today, we are always on the lookout for innovative ways to tell the world’s favourite stories and for brilliant new debut talent and brands that connect with today’s young readers, from newborn up to twelve years old. we publish a diverse and wide range of fiction, non-fiction, picture books and children’s classics. our list includes some of the world’s favourite authors, illustrators and licensed brands, such as eric carle, helen oxenbury, nadia shireen, the snowman, doctor who, roald dahl, tom fletcher, jeff kinney, rick riordan, robin stevens, and jacqueline wilson to name but a few. fa-angle-down--> what’s the connection between ladybird, puffin and penguin, tag on the top needs the closed class if you start as expanded, leave data-collapsed="false" attribute, its used in the css --> ladybird, puffin and penguin are imprints of penguin random house uk. across their extensive list, we believe there is a story for every child, everywhere. you can find information about books for all ages at penguin.co.uk fa-angle-down--> where can i buy puffin books from, tag on the top needs the closed class if you start as expanded, leave data-collapsed="false" attribute, its used in the css --> all the books featured on this website can be purchased in the usual way: as well as being available on the high street and online, you can find lots of brilliant offers via school-specific suppliers and wholesale retailers. fa-angle-down--> how do i get in contact with a member of the puffin schools team, tag on the top needs the closed class if you start as expanded, leave data-collapsed="false" attribute, its used in the css --> whether you’ve got a brilliant idea for a lesson, a photograph of something incredible you’ve done at your school or just have a question, please email  [email protected] and a member of the team will get back to you as soon as possible . fa-angle-down--> what’s happened to puffin virtually live, tag on the top needs the closed class if you start as expanded, leave data-collapsed="false" attribute, its used in the css --> the story-makers show  was known as puffin virtually live  up until march 2019. the content and ambition of the show remains the same: to give every pupil the opportunity to engage with authors and illustrators in their own classroom using the power of the internet. we’ve re-named puffin virtually live  so that it’s easier for new teachers to discover it as part of puffin schools and to acknowledge that the show now premieres on show day, rather than being streamed live. fa-angle-down--> what’s happened to my puffin virtually live account, tag on the top needs the closed class if you start as expanded, leave data-collapsed="false" attribute, its used in the css --> your account for puffin virtually live has been deactivated as it is no longer a feature of the puffin schools website. if you were registered for the newsletter, you will now receive the puffin schools newsletter, which is filled with all the latest information about accompanying resources and upcoming shows. if you do not wish to receive it any longer then please unsubscribe. fa-angle-down--> which video platform is the story-makers show hosted on.

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Biography (Years 5-6)

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Teach children about the features of non-fiction texts with this PowerPoint, which focuses on biographies. It includes all the key information about the purpose, writing style and presentation of biographies, as well as the information that it is necessary to include when writing them. Children are then challenged to write their own biography — they must make sure that they include all of the features listed.

• Key Stage: Key Stage 2
• Subject: English
• Topic: Themes and Conventions
• Topic Group: Reading
• Year(s): Years 5-6
• Media Type: PowerPoint
• Resource Type: PowerPoint
• Last Updated: 23/09/2022
• Resource Code: E2PAT106
• Curriculum Point(s): Maintain positive attitudes to reading and understanding of what they read by identifying and discussing themes and conventions in and across a wide range of writing.

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A great way to teach about history and content-area topics, biographies highlight famous figures, inventors, scientists, civil rights leaders, sports legends, and heros. Many of these mini-books, plays, and passages feature question/response activities, biography worksheets, teaching guides, lesson ideas, and graphic organizers.

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27.1: Biography

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Figure 1: Aldous Huxley.

Aldous Huxley was descended from two eminent Victorian families—he was a grandson of noted biologist and writer on science, Thomas Henry Huxley, grandnephew of Matthew Arnold, and nephew of Victorian novelist Mary Augusta Ward (who wrote under her married name Mrs. Humphry Ward), Arnold’s niece. His unusual Christian name commemorates a major character, Aldous Raeburn, in the novel Marcella , which Mrs. Ward published in the year of Huxley’s birth, 1894.

Born in Godalming, Surrey, England, he received his first schooling from his mother, Julia Arnold Huxley. He then moved on to Hillside Preparatory School, Eton, and eventually, Balliol College, Oxford, taking a first in English in 1916. Two early blows—the death of his mother when he was only nine, and an attack of keratitis while he was a student at Eton, which left him nearly blind for the rest of his life—may have sharpened his tendency toward introversion. Certainly the latter affliction precluded a career in science, paving the way for a life in letters.

In the course of his long literary career, Aldous Huxley published poetry collections, plays, essays, short fiction, travel narratives, biography, and criticism, but, like George Orwell, author of Nineteen-Eighty-four , he is best remembered as the author of a hugely influential utopian satire. Both men used the genre more than once. Brave New World began, like Orwell’s Coming Up for Air , as a response to H. G. Wells’s utopia, Men Like Gods (1923), and Huxley later wrote two more utopian-dystopian novels: Ape and Essence (1948) and Island (1962).

Although Huxley felt that he was not a “born novelist, but an essayist who writes novels,” he became an innovative fictional stylist, effectively using cinematic montage technique for the purpose of exposition in the third chapter of Brave New World , thereby sparing the reader from that major defect of most utopian novels—the tedious guided tour of utopian schools, hospitals, and factories. With his use of montage and intertextuality, Huxley did for the novel what Eliot had done for modern poetry in The Waste Land 10 years earlier. Like Eliot, Huxley often uses multiple references to canonical works. In Brave New World , his 50 allusions to Shakespeare help develop theme. He also incorporates ideas of fashionable Freudians such as Ernest Jones and his interpretation of Hamlet to deepen the sense of the Savage’s sexual repression. At opportune moments, he echoes key lines from Gray’s “Elegy” and “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton” to underscore the ignorance-is-bliss theme and key images that recall the Utilitarian schoolroom in Dickens’s Hard Times . Nor does he hesitate to use bathos: the deliberate contrasting of high culture with popular culture—excerpts from fictional advertising jingles and popular 1920s-era romances such as Elinor Glyn’s Three Weeks satirize the contemporary lowering of musical and literary standards.

One notes a gradually emerging social conscience in Huxley at the time of his writing Brave New World . In fact, his satiric description of the reified workers in a dystopian factory was based on his visit to a Lucas automotive parts factory in Birmingham the previous spring.

In Brave New World , the novel’s most sympathetic character, Helmholtz Watson, like Wordworth on Westminster Bridge, finds the silence of the sleeping metropolis to be eloquent: the very absence of the numinous in the wholly materialistic state begins, paradoxically, to suggest a presence. Watson is one of the first in what becomes a steady string of protagonists in his future novels who advocate what Huxley called “the great central technique, which traces the art of obtaining freedom from the fundamental human disability of egotism…repeatedly described by the mystics of all ages and countries.” His final utopian novel, Island (1962), is, in fact, Huxley’s final word on the subject of how to construct the good society. He died in Hollywood on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

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Biography Planning & Slides KS2

Subject: English

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Unit of work

Last updated

18 January 2020

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Here are plans and slides for a biography unit for KS2. The lessons in this resources are themed around architects Norman Foster and Christopher Wren but can easily be adjusted for other significant people. The lessons include shared writing, skills lesson, SPaG games and starters and planning time. The final layout of the biography is themed around the amazing book ‘Fantastically Great Women WHo Changed The World’. This was taught to a Year 4 class but the skills and also be adjusted to suit any KS2 year group. Hope this helps.

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KS2 Science: The work of Galileo Galilei

BBC Teach > Primary Resources > KS2 Science > Scientists and their discoveries

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Video transcript video transcript.

GALILEO: Good morning, guys, I hope you're having a lovely day. I am Galileo Galilei, a scientist from Italy and I am the man who is making some exciting discoveries around force and I am here today to share them with you.I am here at the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and I bet you're all wondering what am I doing here, right? Well, it's 1589, and I am here to carry out an experiment about force.

Now force is the push and pull on an object and I'm not so sure that Aristotle's theory around force is correct and people have believed it for well over 1500 years. He reckons that objects that are heavier fall at a faster speed than the light ones, but the experiment that I am about to do, will prove that this is incorrect.

Well, I hear ya, you want to know what experiment I'm going to be doing and what my scientific method is. Well, I'll tell ya! These two steel balls are both different weights and I’m going to drop them from the top of the tower and see which one reaches the bottom first, record my findings and then I'm going to do this a couple of times to make sure my results are accurate. Sounds pretty awesome, hey?

Scientific method is key. First you start by posing, or developing a scientific question, and my scientific question is: does objects of different weights fall at different speed, or do they fall at the same speed?

I then started to carry out research into existing theories. So, Aristotle's workings on the subject of force. Then I made observations and formed my theory or hypothesis. And then it's time to carry out the experiment. But before I do, I want to share with you my hypothesis.

I reckon that Aristotle's theory is going to be blown at the top of this tower. Pow! I reckon that these two balls are going to fall at exactly the same speed, regardless of one being heavier than the other. Only one way to find out. Let's drop these bad boys and see what happens. [yells] I'll have to do it again.

Let's drop these bad boys. [yells] Right, I am ready to do this. Let's drop these bad boys.Out of the way down there. Off they go and they're neck and neck. Oh no, it's hit the side of the building. Ahh one just edged it. One of the skills of scientific method is to improve the experiment you have designed to make it more accurate.

So I will have to carry this out again and again and record my results very, very carefully. Recording data is key to scientific method.They both, as I predicted, fell at the same speed. [laughs] Aristotle was wrong, and I was right. [laughs] Who's the man? I'm the man. The problem with this guy, Aristotle, is that he just didn't carry out any experiments to back his theories, and you can probably tell by now, that I am all about experiment.

And this is my thinking in the law of gravity. Although it still obviously needs a bit of work, but you have my conclusion.I wonder, is force affected by water? Next time you're in the bath, try and drop two objects of different weights into the water and see what happens. That's all for my vlog today, guys. Bye for now. Oh and don't forget to tune in in 1609, to see my 'How To' film on creating your own telescope. Bye-ee!

Video summary

This vlog style film recreates a famous experiment in which Galileo, an Italian scientist, dropped two objects from the Leaning tower of Pisa in 1589.

He explains that he did the experiment to show the pull of gravity on an object is the same, regardless of their different weights.

He explains that force is a push or pull on an object.

He goes on to dispute Aristotle’s theory of force, and introduces the concept of posing a scientific questions (hypothesising) before experimenting.

This clip is from the series Scientists and their discoveries.

Teacher Notes

As a starter to introduce a practical science activity, you could write a simple quiz to encourage pupils to capture the keywords shown in the video.

Pupils can write their own definitions from these words using the internet or science dictionaries to improve their scientific vocabularies.

To consolidate their knowledge, you could get pupils to make booklets that include key information about the work of Galileo Galilei.

They could define the keywords featured in the film, and find five or more pieces of additional pieces of information about the work of the scientists using books, encyclopedias or the internet.

Suitable for teaching Science at Key Stage 2 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and at 2nd Level in Scotland. They also have cross-curricular links with History and Literacy.

More from the Scientists and their discoveries series:

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This vlog style film introduces the work of Alhazen, and the scientific discoveries that he made about optics and the eye.

The work of Mary Anning. video The work of Mary Anning

This vlog style film explores the work of Mary Anning; the famous paleontologist and fossil hunter.

The work of Nicolaus Copernicus. video The work of Nicolaus Copernicus

This vlog style film introduces the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, and the scientific discoveries he made about the solar system.

The work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. video The work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace

This vlog style film looks at how Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace came up with the theory of evolution and natural selection.

The work of Caroline and William Herschel. video The work of Caroline and William Herschel

This vlog style film introduces the work of Caroline Herschel and and her brother William Herschel.

The work of Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. video The work of Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov

This vlog style film explores how two Russian scientists, Geim and Novoselov, accidentally discovered a 'wonder material' called graphene.

The work of Carl Linnaeus. video The work of Carl Linnaeus

This vlog style film introduces the work of Swedish scientist, Carl Linnaeus. He talks about his scientific method - taxonomy - used for classifying plants, animals and stones.

The work of Sir Isaac Newton. video The work of Sir Isaac Newton

This vlog style film explores the work of Sir Isaac Newton as a physicist and astronomer, and how he made one of his biggest discoveries - gravity.