Real Writing Year 4 - Unit 17
Model text: The Tale of Johnny Appleseed, by Ross Montgomery
Curriculum links: Geography (North America - knowledge of places)
Unit overview
This writing unit for Year 4 is built around an original model text by Ross Montgomery; a retelling of one of America’s fondest legends about the folk hero Johnny Appleseed. The example text is available as a PDF in three versions (plain, illustrated and annotated); annotated and non-annotated PowerPoint presentations are also included.
In this two-week unit, pupils will explore synonyms, developing their vocabulary. They will also investigate how nouns can be modified to create expanded noun phrases and use these to describe characters from other North American legends. In their final writing task, pupils are asked to research and retell another North American legend. This unit could be used within a geography topic about North America.
Key curriculum skills
Two fully-resourced lessons are included for the following LKS2 English objectives, which can form part of the unit or be taught discretely:
1. Vocabulary:To build a varied and rich vocabulary through the use of synonyms
Pupils will: match words that are synonyms; describe a character using their knowledge of synonyms
2. Grammar: To use expanded noun phrases to describe characters
Pupils will: create expanded noun phrases using determiners, adjectives, modifying nouns and prepositional phrases to describe a character; write a character description using expanded noun phrases
Revisited skills
- Extend sentences to include more than one clause
- Apostrophes for contracted words
Additional year 4 curriculum teaching points
- Fronted adverbials
- Punctuating speech
Year 4 words: featured vocabulary
Spelling words: decide, favourite, fruit, important, knowledge, particularly, peculiar, strange
Tier 2 words: generosity, produce, random
Tier 3 words: frontier, native, orchard, pioneer, sapling