Real Writing Year 1 - Unit 3
Model text: The Little Red Hen, by Dan Smith
Curriculum links: Design technology - cooking and nutrition
Unit overview
This writing unit for Year 1 is built around an original model text by Dan Smith - a retelling of a traditional tale. 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 create story maps to help them retell the story as a class, in groups and individually, culminating in them writing their own version of this traditional tale.
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: learn new graphemes for reading and spelling - /wh/
Pupils will: practise blending and segmenting words that contain the grapheme wh, exploring how it makes the /w/ and /h/ sound.
2. Punctuation: to begin to punctuate sentences 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.
3. Punctuation: to use a capital letter for the personal pronoun I
Pupils will: practise forming the letter I before identifying where the capital I is needed for personal pronouns.
Additional teaching points to teach or revisit:
- saying out loud what they are going to write about
- beginning to punctuate sentences with capital letters and full stops
- leaving spaces between words
- sequencing sentences to form short narratives for pupils who are ready
- reading aloud their own writing
Year 1 words: featured vocabulary
Common exception words: the some she so ask once asked there was come
Tier 2 words: plant, sow, grow, yard, grind
Tier 3 words: corn, flour, bake, delicious