Year 6 English Plans

Read historical fiction War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. Compare with play and film versions. Children write dialogue, letter, play script and descriptions of characters and settings. They use relevant vocabulary and relative clauses. Compare with other World War 1 fiction. This plan also uses War Game by Michael Foreman, In Flanders Fields by Norman Jorgensen and Brian Harrison-Lever and One Boy's War by Lynn Huggins-Cooper and Ian Benfold Haywood.

Use Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights to study different types of sentences & expanded noun phrases. Children design a dæmon for a friend and compare the book and film openings. Clockwork by Philip Pullman then inspires children to write both graphic novel and film script versions.

Based on three amazing books, Friend and Foe (Morpurgo), The Island (Greder) and Eric (Tan), this plan asks chn to imagine what it is like to be an outsider.  They empathise with the plight of the person who does not 'fit in'.  Stimulating creative writing and encouraging children to improve the cohesion of their work through different grammatical techniques, the plan is also useful preparation for the KS2 Sats.

Read two personal recounts, in 1st and 3rd person respectively: The Day of Ahmed’s Secret and Hurricane. Identify features of recounts and study adverbials, use of commas and perfect verb forms. Children write a sequel to Hurricane using the grammar they have studied.

Time to get competitive! Children read and write instructions and explanations, exploring register, punctuating bullet points and adding parentheses. The unit ends with writing based on the children's interests, be they football, Strictly or competitive baking.

Looking at various texts from websites, children revisit the features of informal and formal writing. They compose About Me profiles and pen blog posts before writing extended reports on a topic of their choice, as if for an information website.

Using a range of poems children identify the features of good narrative performance poems. They investigate expanded noun phrases, subjunctive verb forms and figurative language. Discuss how a range of fairy tales could be retold as poetry and children write their own.

Use the narrative poem The Highwayman to identify features that poets use for effect. Study the use of historical language, adverbials and relative clauses to add details. Children learn part of the poem by heart, compare it to other poems and write a new ending.

This unit explores how poetry can create vivid characters and build tension, using the classic poems, The Spider and the Fly and The Raven. Children explore the language of older poetry and compare modern interpretations. They write dialogue, consider whether the villains really are villainous and write a new poem, based on The Spider and the Fly. Grammar includes informal and formal language, dialogue punctuation and using colons, semi-colons and dashes to mark boundaries between clauses.