Real Writing Year 1 - Unit 14
Model text: All About Tigers!, by Lucy Strange
Curriculum links: Science (naming common animals)
Unit overview
This writing unit for Year 1 is built around an original text by Lucy Strange - a simple report about tigers. 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 learn how questions can be used as headings to organise information and how adjectives can be used to add description. For the final writing task, pupils
will write their own short reports about a big cat of their choice using the skills taught.
Key curriculum skills
Three fully-resourced lessons are included for the following Year 1 English objectives, which can form part of the unit or be taught discretely:
1. Vocabulary: To add the suffix -s to create plural nouns
Pupils will: learn how to add the suffix -s or -es to create plural words.
2. Grammar: To compose sentences orally that include adjectives
Pupils will: learn how adjectives can be used to describe nouns. They will collect words that could be used to describe big cats and orally compose sentences that contain these adjectives.
3. Punctuation: To write questions punctuating them with question marks
Pupils will: learn to recognise questions. They will learn how to write the question mark and begin to recognise when this is needed at the end of question sentences.
Additional teaching points to teach or revisit:
- saying out loud what they are going to write about
- leaving spaces between words
- using capital letters and full stops to punctuate sentences
- using exclamation marks
- re-reading what they have written to check it makes sense
- reading aloud their own writing
Year 1 words: featured vocabulary
Common exception words: are go they the so to of a be by there we do
Tier 2 words: Africa, Asia, destroy, fierce, male
Tier 3 words: carnivore, claws, cubs, fur, herbivore, hunting, mammal, paws, predator, prey, whiskers