Real Writing Year 1 - Unit 4
Model text: Hedgehog’s Journey, by Gabrielle Kent
Curriculum links: Science, geography - the seasons, animals and their habitats
Unit overview
This writing unit for Year 1 is built around an original model text by Gabrielle Kent - a simple, original journey story about autumn. 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 a story map to help them retell the story as a class, in groups and individually, culminating in them writing their own journey stories about animals in autumn.
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 read and spell compound words
Pupils will: practise blending and segmenting words that contain the grapheme wh, exploring how it makes the /w/ and /h/ sound.
2. Punctuation: to compose sentences orally before writing
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 begin to punctuate sentences using capital letters and full stops
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
- composing sentences orally before writing
- beginning to leave spaces between words
- reading aloud their own writing.
Year 1 words: featured vocabulary
Common exception words: was go one a the she were so full
Tier 2 words: hedgehog, beetle, blackberry, caterpillar, snail, slug
Tier 3 words: season, autumn, winter, hibernate