Rachel has twenty years experience as a primary school teacher, having taught in all year groups from Year One to Year Six in single- and mixed-age classes. She has been Assistant Headteacher/senior leader in three schools and has over ten years experience as subject leader of both English and History. She has also been responsible for leading a whole-school cross-curricular approach which put real-life learning opportunities and an embedded reading for pleasure culture at its heart - an approach which was recognised with a Learning Excellence Award. Additionally, she has had several articles published in the TES and was commissioned to write two books for Schofield and Sims.
Using her experience as a teacher and English Lead, Rachel has created unit plans linked to each of the Pendle Witch Trilogy books which are aimed at Upper Key Stage Two. They incorporate daily reading, discussion, vocabulary prompts and short writing/drama activities. There is also an end of unit extended write scaffold for each book. A Pendle Witch Local History Unit and Cross-Curriuclar topic map are currently under development.
The children loved the book, it gave them a real picture of how Pendle and the surrounding area looked and gave them a real flavour of what life was like back then. We ended up using it as a basis for a Newspaper report - we used the book to gather the details. (Mr H, Y6 teacher)
Some really good cliffhangers and great description of Pendle (KH, Y6 pupil)
The author painted a really good description of Pendle in my head (HS, Y6 pupil)
It took me on a roller-coaster of emotions! (IU, Y6 pupil)
An exciting story with a thrilling twist! (SS, Y6 pupil)
It gave us an insight into the how things were in the 1600's (ZM, Y6 pupil)
It builds up tension through excellent description (HA, Y6 pupil)
Amazing cliffhangers and description! (RS, Y6 pupil)
A thrilling story in which we never know what is going to happen (AA, Y6 pupil)