Real Writing Year 1 - Unit 19
Model text: The Mysterious Book, by Gabrielle Kent
Curriculum links: Portal stories, pirates
Unit overview
This writing unit for Year 1 is built around an original text by Gabrielle Kent - a portal story. 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 the features of a simple portal story, also known as a home-away-home story, and will explore the world the character enters using the magical book. They will write their own version of the story, writing in the first person, changing the place that the character visits by thinking about a book that they would love to jump into. This unit could be used to develop pupils’ familiarity with key story types or used within a topic based on pirates.
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 spell words ending in the suffix -ed (where no change is needed to the root word)
Pupils will: learn how the suffix -ed can be added to verbs. They will also learn that the suffix -ed creates past tense verbs.
2. Grammar: to compose sentences orally, using adjectives
Pupils will: learn how adjectives can be used to describe nouns. They will explore adjectives that could be used to describe characters and objects from the story ‘The Mysterious Book’ by Gabrielle Kent.
3. Grammar: to join clauses using and
Pupils will: learn how the conjunction and can be used to join clauses. They will rehearse combining simple sentences to create compound sentences before writing their own based on the story ‘The Mysterious Book’, by Gabrielle Kent.
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Additional teaching points to teach or revisit:
- saying out loud what they are going to write about
- using capital letters and full stops to punctuate sentences
- leaving spaces between words
- to sequence sentences to form short narratives
- reading aloud their own writing
Year 1 words: featured vocabulary
Common exception words: one I a me so was to of there they push said my full he put
Tier 2 words: buried, librarian, library, mysterious, peach, strange, treasure
Tier 3 words: N/A