Real Writing Year 2 - Unit 5
Model text: How Kangaroo Got Her Pouch by Margaret Bateson-Hill
Curriculum links: Geography
Unit overview
This writing unit for Year 2 is built around an original text by Margaret Bateson-Hill - a retelling of a traditional Australian folk tale. 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 the features of a folk tale and will sequence the events using resources provided. Pupils will learn how to form adjectives by adding the suffixes -less and -ful to words and will also learn how coordinating conjunctions are used to create compound sentences. They will write their own folktale about an Australian animal. This unit gives pupils the opportunity to become familiar with a wider range of stories. This unit could be used within a topic on Australia, including work on aboriginal art, and could also link to work based on the world’s continents and oceans.
Key curriculum skills
Two 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 form adjectives using the suffixes -less and -ful
Pupils will: add the suffixes -less and -ful to words to form adjectives, learning spelling rules where needed. They will then use these adjectives within their own sentences.
2. Grammar: To use coordinating conjunctions
Pupils will: learn that the words and, but and or are coordinating conjunctions and how they can be used to extend sentences.
Additional teaching points to teach or revisit:
- punctuating sentences with question and exclamation marks
- expanded noun phrases to describe and specify
- to use the past tense correctly
- rereading writing to check that it makes sense
- proof-reading to check for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation
- reading aloud what they have written
Year 2 words: featured vocabulary
Common exception words: poor kind even after could again told
Tier 2 words: apron, beliefs, creature, native, traditional
Tier 3 words: Aboriginal, Australia, billabong, dingo, emu, kangaroo, wombat