Real Writing Year 6 - Unit 6
Model text: The Trees and the Axe, by Jon Mayhew
Curriculum Links: History (Ancient Greece)
Unit Overview
This writing unit for Year 6 is built around an original model text by Jon Mayhew; a wonderful retelling of one of Aesop’s Fables. 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 investigate Aesop’s Fables, learning the features of these traditional tales and how they were originally told orally, before eventually being written as a collection of stories. They will explore how antonyms are used to describe the contrast in the main characters before finally writing their own version of ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’. This unit could be used as part of a history unit on Ancient Greece.
Key Curriculum Skills
Two fully resourced lessons are included for Year 6 English objectives:
1. Vocabulary: to know how words are related by meanings as antonyms
Pupils will: identify antonyms; find antonyms for words given, using their knowledge of synonyms; match antonyms using word cards; describe contrasting characters using their knowledge of antonyms.
2. Composition: To précis longer passages of writing
Pupils will: write a précis of one of Aesop’s fables
Revisited skills
- punctuating direct speech
- using paragraphs
- adverbials
- noun phrases
Additional Y6 teaching points
- using dialogue to convey character
- using a wider range of cohesive devices
- the use of expanded noun phrases to convey complicated information concisely
- using semi-colons and colons
Year 6 words: featured vocabulary
Spelling words: disastrous, familiar, foreign, variety, suggest
Tier 2 words: arrogance, behaviour, calloused, grove, humility, smug