Real Writing Year 4 - Unit 15
Model text: Joe’s Hooded Hawk by Ross Montgomery
Curriculum links: Science (Precautions for working safely with electricity)
Unit overview
This writing unit for Year 4 is built around an original model text by Ross Montgomery; a warning story about the dangers of electricity. 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 how authors create characters and use ideas from the model text to create their own, describing their characteristics, feelings and actions in their own story. Pupils will also explore synonyms and antonyms, building a varied and rich vocabulary which they can use in their speech and writing. This unit could be used within a science topic about electricity.
Key curriculum skills
Two fully-resourced lessons are included for the following LKS2 English objectives, which can form part of the unit or be taught discretely:
1. Vocabulary: To build a varied and rich vocabulary - synonyms and antonyms
Pupils will: match synonyms and antonyms to given words; use synonyms and antonyms when writing descriptions
2. Grammar: To create characters
Pupils will: explore how an author has described characters; complete character profiles for characters in a story that they know well, create their own characters for a story
Revisited skills
- Using consistent tense
- Prepositions
- Use apostrophes to show singular possession and contraction
Additional year 4 curriculum teaching points
- Fronted adverbials
- Nouns and pronouns to avoid repetition
- Modifying nouns to create expanded noun phrases
- Punctuating direct speech with inverted commas and other speech punctuation
Year 4 words: featured vocabulary
Spelling words: accidentally, breathe, build, caught, centre, favourite
Tier 2 words: haughtily, plummet, precaution, shallow, stealth, streak, unconsciousness
Tier 3 words: current, electric, electrocuted, hazardous, pylon, smoulder, voltage