This Year 4 reading comprehension unit is built around The Letter, a powerful original fiction text by children’s author James Nicol.
Told from the perspective of a young soldier writing home during the First World War, the letter offers pupils an accessible and emotionally engaging route into the theme of remembrance.
You can use it to teach comprehension strategies, explore character and vocabulary, and introduce children to historical context through literature. The text also works well as a model (WAGOLL) for developing writing skills.
The unit includes illustrated, plain and highlighted versions of the text in both PDF and PowerPoint formats. It provides a teacher-annotated version of the letter for close reading, with suggested prompts for drama, discussion and visualisation to help deepen pupils’ understanding.
This unit is part of Real Comprehension, a whole-school programme that uses high-quality, themed texts to build deep reading skills from Years 1 to 6.
Layered reading approach
You can teach the lessons flexibly using a layered reading approach, including model reading, choral reading and paired reading. The pack supports exploration of key vocabulary from the text, focusing on the words gloomy and reckon. Pupils will examine these words in context, identify meaning and formality, and compose sentences using them accurately.
The two-part teaching sequence encourages pupils to think critically about the events, language and characters in the letter.
Part 1 focuses on building understanding through activities such as 'role on the wall' and text marking for informal language. In Part 2, pupils extend their understanding of character and vocabulary by building an informal vocabulary dictionary and completing guided writing tasks.
Follow-up work includes retrieval, sequencing and inference questions, along with personal response activities. Pupils are invited to reply to Albert’s letter in role as his sister, Sally, drawing on everything they have learnt to write with empathy and purpose.
This Year 4 reading comprehension pack includes:
- The Letter by James Nicol (PDF and PowerPoint)
- Plain, illustrated, and highlighted versions of the text
- Annotated teacher version for close reading
- Vocabulary Focus PowerPoints: gloomy and reckon
- Big Questions PowerPoints and worksheets
- WWI image cards and vocabulary cards for prior knowledge
- Revisit the Text worksheets
- Full teacher notes with teaching sequence and guidance