Year 5 English Plans

Children explore the charm and challenge of classic fiction, (The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Illustrated by Robert Ingpen, and A Collection of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling). Children write a modern-day Jungle Book story, Just So Stories diary entries, and tell outrageous lies, courtesy of conjunctions. The unit ends with children performing their own Just So Story in Kipling's style.

Use biographies of Roald Dahl and Michael Morpurgo (both books and online) and their autobiographical writing to identify features of biographies and autobiographies. Use the texts to study dialogue, noun phrases and complex sentences (Boy and Going Solo by Roald Dahl, Singing for Mrs Pettigrew: a story-maker’s journey, and Homecoming by Michael Morpurgo). Write autobiographies online.

Through Chris Riddell’s Goth Girl & the Ghost of a Mouse, children explore how atmosphere, settings & characters are created. They produce maps, give a guided tour of Ghastly-Gorm and explore character through illustration and drama. They then write an extra chapter, applying what they have learnt, including adverbs of possibility, commas, relative clauses, and dialogue and sentence punctuation.

Using the context of UFOs, children explore recounts investigating genuine documents, discussing famous sightings and researching notorious hoaxes (UFOs and Aliens: Investigating Extraterrestrial Visitors - Extreme! by Paul Mason, UFO Diary by Satoshi Kitamura). Children write a diary entry and create their own hoax UFO photo and report. A presentation to parents completes the unit.

Hover boards and Doggie Umbrellas meet new-fangled escalators and dial telephones in a unit, which explores instructions and explanations in the context of changing technology. Children try pitching in the Dragon's Den and create guides for futuristic travel.

Explore exciting destinations through a range of travel writing. Read recounts of places and events in Not for Parents - The Real Wonders of the World. Learn about embedded clauses and the use of commas. Write a travel recount of a real or imaginary place.

This unit encourages children to think about how poetry can make the ordinary extraordinary. They enjoy a selection of modern and classic poems, exploring apt word choices and imagery (simile, metaphor & personification). Children make careful observations, imagine winter as a person, examine observational art and produce paintings to inspire them to write their own poetry. Grammar includes expanded noun phrases and relative clauses.

Lewis Carroll's Walrus and the Carpenter stimulates performance, discussion and persuasive writing, in this poetry unit. Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales provide cause for debate and the children end the unit writing their own modern day cautionary poems.

Read and memorise poems from I Like that Poem, chosen by children and edited by Kaye Webb. Children gather together poems they like into an anthology and write two of their own. They find out how to use modal verbs and parenthesis.