Here are seven instant lessons ideas that use coloring pages to extend and engage your class. This is a terrific way to settle younger students - ten minutes coloring in will calm and focus them which opens up the opportunity to discuss and explore ideas further.

1. Narratives - Write a story based on the picture. Work as a class to build up ideas about setting, characters, problems that might unfold and solutions to that problem, before students work on their own. Put a class created word bank on the board.

2. Speech Marks - Write a conversation involving the characters in the picture (a great way to practice speech marks).

3.Spelling words - Choose a picture that contains an image of one of your week's spelling words or can relate in some way. Students write a sentence for each spelling word in the week's list, linking each one somehow to the picture. This is great fun and can lead to some very silly ideas.

4. Past, Present and Future Tense - Write a paragraph explaining what is presently happening in the picture. Write another in past tense and another in future tense.

5. Nouns - list all the nouns in the picture. If there is time, draw in more nouns and add them to the list.

6. Adjectives - Fill the empty spaces up with words that could be used to describe the images. Writing some on the board helps get them started.

7. Day and Night - Print two smaller versions of the sheet on one page. You can do this by selecting two copies and using the two per page option when first printing. Title one "Night" and one "Day". Students then add relevant elements to each (Day-sun,birds, butterflies and Night-moon, stars, black sky, lights on houses, torches in people's hands).

You can find more lesson ideas and a huge range of coloring pages at http://www.free-teacher-worksheets.com/free-coloring-pages.html.