Real Writing Year 1 - Unit 21
Model text: A Day at the Seaside, by Dan Smith
Curriculum links: Geography, science
Unit overview
This writing unit for Year 1 is built around an original text by Dan Smith - a description of a seaside setting. 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 explore how the senses have been used to help describe the seaside and use adjectives to add description in their own writing. They will also look at how sentences can be joined using the conjunction ‘and’ to create compound sentences. For the final writing task, pupils will write their own setting descriptions of the seaside, using knowledge they have from their own visits or following a class trip to the beach.
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: learn how two words can be joined together to create compound words.
2. Grammar: to use adjectives to describe
Pupils will: understand how adjectives can be used to describe, and write a list poem using adjectives.
3. Grammar: to join words and clauses using and
Pupils will: learn how the conjunction and can be used to join clauses. They will rehearse combining simple sentences to create compound sentences describing the coast.
Additional teaching points to teach or revisit:
- saying out loud what they are going to write about
- leaving spaces between words
- using capital letters and full stops to punctuate sentences
- using a capital letter for the personal pronoun I
- re-reading what they have written to check it makes sense
- reading aloud their own writing
Year 1 words: featured vocabulary
Common exception words: there is where the are go of my so to one some has I a me
Tier 2 words: fairground, jolly, scoop seagull, seaweed
Tier 3 words: beach, cliff, coast, harbour, ocean