This Year 3 writing unit from our Real Writing collection is built around an original model text by published children’s author Jo Franklin. The unit focuses on explanation texts and explores why it is a different time at places around the world at any given moment.
All texts in the Real Writing series are crafted by experienced children’s authors, ensuring engaging, age-appropriate content. Each unit follows a carefully mapped framework and comes with two to three weeks of detailed lesson planning, supporting teachers with step-by-step guidance.
Curriculum links
The unit explicitly addresses Year 3 writing objectives, including using conjunctions to show time or cause, writing expanded noun phrases, applying past and present tense accurately, and correct use of punctuation such as apostrophes.
Pupils will encounter both Tier 2 vocabulary (e.g., deviate, segment) and Tier 3 vocabulary (e.g., globe, meridian, GMT, longitude), as well as common exception words like calendar, opposite, and separate.
Geography links are also built in, with opportunities to explore locational knowledge and understand how time zones work across the globe.
Resources
Teachers receive a range of fully prepared resources, including:
- Model text in PDF (plain, illustrated, annotated)
- Annotated and non-annotated PowerPoint presentations
- Activity sheets for vocabulary, grammar and writing tasks
- Clocks and country cards for hands-on exploration
- Planning tools, including a report margin planner
Key teaching activities
The unit begins with a practical hook activity: divide pupils into small groups, assign each group a clock and a country, and model daily activities according to local time.
Pupils will then read and analyse the model text, highlighting present tense and present perfect verbs, conjunctions, adverbs, noun phrases and subordination.
Introduce new vocabulary using word cards and matching activities, encouraging pupils to infer meanings from context. Writing tasks follow a scaffolded approach, from planning and dialogue exercises to drafting full explanatory texts.
Pupils will rehearse writing using conjunctions and fronted adverbials to express time, cause and sequence. Throughout the unit, opportunities to proofread, edit and extend writing are provided.
Outcomes
By the end of this unit, pupils will be able to:
- Identify and use the key features of explanation texts
- Use subject-specific vocabulary accurately
- Write clear, structured explanatory texts about time zones
- Apply grammar, punctuation and spelling skills independently
- Link English learning to geography, demonstrating understanding of global time differences
This unit empowers pupils to write with clarity and purpose while reinforcing essential curriculum skills in English and beyond.