Primary teachers have heard of and are using Vocabulary Ninja and the rest of the series in classrooms around the world.

Begun in author Andrew Jennings’ own classroom in 2016 as a vocabulary activity the series supports literacy in Primary School in a variety of ways.  Covering vocab, comprehension and writing the Vocabulary Ninja series is full of titles to support teaching literacy in primary classrooms, and now includes titles for numeracy too!

We invited Andrew to share with other teachers what the focus of this series, how they can help students and teachers and what’s in store in the Ninja world…

Hello! I’m Andrew, creator of Vocabulary Ninja and author of all of the wonderful books that that have been published since 2018 when the original Vocabulary Ninja was published. Since then, I’ve written and published nearly 40 books, with more already written and due to publish in the coming year.

This short blog hopes to give you a little more insight into the different Ninja books and how they can help you in the classroom and at home to make the teaching and learning process less stressful and more effective!

The Like a Ninja series has become a powerhouse book in the world of education. Small, palm-sized yet epic books crammed full of everything you need to know about the subject. Schools have invested in these books in their thousands to support all aspects of the curriculum. Write Like a Ninja is now a staple of thousands of classrooms as a quick-glance reference tool to support writing, while SATs Like a Ninja is the ultimate SATs subject knowledge book covering SPaG, reading and maths. It’s unrivalled and parent, pupils and schools just love it.

Perfect for: Everyone! Pupils (learning), teachers (subject knowledge), parents (strategies and support), tutors

Coming soon: Times Tables Like a Ninja

The Comprehension Ninja books are personally some of my favourite books and offer so much more than people realise. There are two books for each year group: non-fiction and fiction and poetry. Both focus on retrieval, and they ensure a wide level of exposure to a range of text types and genres. Each books contains 24 high quality texts and loads of questions about each text to support retrieval practice. Texts have been written to support the wider curriculum too. The fiction and poetry books contain extracts of books that no other comprehension books contain, from some of the best authors around.

Time-saving gold with more than enough texts and questions to cover the whole academic year. I love these books, but I know teachers love them more! The best thing is that these books can be implemented in one classroom or across the whole school. Consistency and quality – exactly what every school wants.

Perfect for: Teachers and schools

Coming soon: Comprehension Ninja Inference & Beyond KS1 and KS2

These two books will complete the series by covering inference and the remaining strands in the reading curriculum.

I just love these books! They a very different to all the other books and are designed to be used at home or at school, with pupils working directly in the books. The Comprehension Ninja workbooks offer confidence-building practice of reading retrieval, while the Vocabulary Ninja workbooks are vivid, full-colour books that contain 100s of vocabulary-focused activities for children to complete. Vocabulary is the foundation of writing, reading and verbal communication, so these books can be so impactful. There is a book for each year group, Y1 to Y6, to ensure pupils can progress throughout their school career and improve their use of vocabulary effortlessly.

Perfect For: Pupils at home or in school; teachers and tutors, too.

Arithmetic Ninja is epic! With books for Y1 to Y6, each book contains over 27,000 questions. Each set of questions is mapped progressively against the National Curriculum, but with procedural variation in mind so pupils develop their mathematical fluency and ability to use facts they know to answer other problems – maths at its best. The series is a mathematical beast in terms of content, but is also cleverly presented in small photocopiable question sets of 10, with once set for each day. It’s a complete and comprehensive daily photocopiable resource that can be implemented in one classroom or in the whole school.

Perfect For: Teachers and tutors

Written predominantly by Sarah Farrell, these books are essential for every school. 100s of progressive times tables activities that can be easily photocopied and ensure pupils smash their times tables. The perfect dip in resource that will save hours and hours of preparation and ensure pupils master their times tables.

Perfect for: Teachers and tutors.

Watch out for these two titles that will be publishing soon. They are pure gold to support writing outcomes and sentence mastery.

Ninja Text Types and Modelled Writes (note from Heath’s – this publishes soon but can be ordered now here)

Ninja Text Types and Modelled Writes is a KS2 resource that provides exciting model texts, planning, teaching scripts and photocopiable writing templates to take pupils through a fully modelled drafting process to producing their own high-quality writing outcomes. It will be fabulous for whole-class introduction to text types, interventions, small group work, guided writing and much more.

Sentence Ninja

Sentence Ninja is the complete subject knowledge guide, progression tool and resource centre for successfully implementing and teaching children across your whole school to form sentences effectively. It’s the book I’ve wanted to write for years and it’s going to have a huge impact in so many classrooms!

For any teachers looking to enhance their literacy teaching, the Vocabulary Ninja series supports students and teachers.

Find some of the most popular Vocabulary Ninja titles below or see the whole selection by clicking here.