The Light of Hope is a powerful Year 5 reading comprehension unit built around an original fiction text by children’s author Dan Smith.
The story follows the journey of Araminta, a young girl escaping slavery in 1840s America. Drawing on themes of freedom, resilience and courage, the text provides rich opportunities for developing pupils' reading comprehension skills through drama, discussion and close reading.
You can teach this unit as a stand-alone sequence or as part of a wider reading curriculum. It sits within our Real Comprehension programme. This is a whole-school reading approach offering themed fiction, non-fiction and poetry units for Years 1-6.
Fully resourced sequences
In this download you get three fully resourced lesson sequences focused on vocabulary. Each one explores one key word in depth: plantation, ration and remote. Each vocabulary session includes a PowerPoint that places the word in context, explains its meaning and encourages pupils to use it in their own sentences.
The teaching notes provide detailed suggestions for how to approach the text in class. These include layered and jump-in reading techniques, paired discussion, model reading, visualisation tasks and opportunities for writing in role.
Drama-based activities – such as “Role on the Wall” and emotion graphs – help pupils build empathy and deepen their understanding of character and theme.
To support comprehension, the resource also includes high-quality images (e.g. cotton fields, maps of the Union and Confederacy), and encyclopaedia entries on Harriet Tubman and the North Star. These materials help children connect the fictional narrative to real historical events and figures.
This Year 5 resource pack includes:
- Original fiction text, The Light of Hope, in plain, illustrated and annotated PDF formats
- PowerPoint versions of the text (with and without highlights)
- Vocabulary Focus PowerPoints
- Big Questions PowerPoints and worksheets
- Encyclopaedia entries (Harriet Tubman and the North Star)
- Contextual images and maps
- Full teacher notes with teaching sequence guidance and close reading prompts