Year 5/6 Mixed Age English Planning

Starting with the excellent Undefeated explore the biographies of black sports people, activists and authors. Learn about cohesion and explore the subjunctive in formal writing before studying Coming to England and writing a short biography of Floella Benjamin.

Read and enjoy a selection of poems from this wonderful anthology. Focus on poetic features and language, looking at their effects on the reader. Explore synonyms and antonyms using dictionaries and thesauruses. Express ideas and thoughts creatively in their own poetry.

Explore this exciting adventure story, examining characterisation and descriptive language. Learn how to integrate dialogue and to use expanded noun phrases. Improvise, draft, write and perform a playscript based on the book.

Explore the frozen wilds! Examine text organisation in Shackleton's Journey, write evaluatively using model verbs and punctuate lists. Summarise events depicted in The Great Serum Race and write a newspaper recount.

Using the superb Book of Hopes this block teaches poetry terminology and appreciation. Use relative clauses to create magical places, revise commas and colons and work together to create a class Book of Hopes.

Explore the characterisation and settings in the text and film of Howl's Moving Castle. Compare and contrast the two versions. Write film reviews and fantasy stories. Revise relative clauses and cohesive devices.

Be inspired by Philip Gross's wonderful collection of poems Dark Sky Park. Read, discuss and write poems about space, microscopic creatures, volcanoes and storms! Revise expanded noun phrases, colons and semi-colons along the way.

Taking inspiration from Chasing the Sun, study what makes a great short story. Examine characterisation, setting, structure and story 'hooks'. Revise relative clauses and formal and informal language.

Starting with Catherine Barr's stunning book, Fourteen Wolves, learn about re-wilding. Revise paragraphs, cohesive devices and active and passive voice. Research and write a report about the reintroduction of a UK species.

Using Rachel Rooney's collection, A Kid in my Class, study different poetic forms. Revise adverbs of possibility and modal verbs and use these to write school reports. Write portrait poems in response to those read.

Explore the brilliant graphic novel When Stars are Scattered, learning about how characters are developed through images and words. Grammar includes writing speech as well as adverbs of possibility and modal verbs.

Discover more about kings and queens of Britain and write an information text about a chosen monarch. Look at formal and informal writing in different texts and learn about the active and passive voice.

Get lost in Katherine Rundell's wonderful book The Explorer, focusing on character and plot. Revise relative clauses and formal and informal language. Write an exciting new chapter inspired by the book.

Tackle the tricky issue of Fake News with this excellent block. Learn technical vocabulary, examine texts, carry out fact-checking and write a guide to help others. Incorporates modal verbs and adverbs and organisational devices.

Using Michael Rosen's moving collection of poetry On the Move, spend time appreciating the poems and understanding the story behind them. Be inspired by Quentin Blake's illustrations to write poems on the themes in the collection.

Using David Olusoga's fantastic book, research Black Britons and their role in British history. Use active and passive voice to change the tone of writing and study formal and informal language. Ask insightful interview questions, write a blogpost and news article.

Explore how poets tell a story in a selection of modern and traditional poems. Use relative clauses to write about the 'Night Mail' and the subjunctive to write advice for modern children after reading 'Mother to Son'.

Explore the science fiction genre, examining characterisation and settings in this superb story. Revise relative clauses and learn how to use the subjunctive for hypotheticals. Write a story using the same setting.

Use My Encyclopedia of Very Important Oceans to revise key features of information texts. Research and create information pages for younger children. Learn to use complex punctuation and cohesive devices.

Explore a range of poems, prepare poems for performance and answer comprehension questions. Use modal verbs to empathise, advise and talk about change. Revise sentence punctuation and write short stories and poems.

Immerse your class in the world of Holes by Louis Sacher while exploring characters, setting and atmosphere. Explore expanded noun phrases and formal/informal language in the context of dialogue and narration. Write and illustrate your own chapter for Holes.

Explore classic poetry by looking at Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales - identifying the messages, discussing poetic devices, creating modern characters and writing an appreciation. Use Best Friends by Valerie Bloom to learn about subjunctive form and write poems about friendship.

Have fun exploring comic technique and writing a funny story using The Day the Screens went Blank as inspiration. Use modal verbs and adverbs of possibility to describe characters' emotions. Discuss 'old technology' and practise using commas, colons and semi-colons correctly.

Enjoy and discuss a range of inspirational biographies from Rise Up: Ordinary Kids with Extraordinary Stories. Learn the difference between active and passive voice and how to use the perfect form of verbs. Research, plan and write a biography.

Introduce your class to Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy and her fantastic book of poetry, New and Collected Poems for Children. Explore personification, relative clauses and the subjunctive form through poetry. Make comparisons, write recommendations and get creative writing your own poem.

Enjoy reading a selection of stories from Happy Here, exploring character, setting and plot. Learn about relative clauses and adverbials of time. Plan and write a short story based on A House Like No Other involving a character who grows in confidence after finding a magical item.

Share exciting real-life survival stories from Survivors by David Long and find out about the Tham Luang cave rescue. Investigate relative clauses and cohesion between and within paragraphs. Write different types of reports including a podcast episode.

Inspire your class with the funny and moving Framed by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Explore story openings, anecdotes, common sayings, formal and informal language and role play. Compare the register of the narrator’s descriptions of art to that of The National Gallery. Create impact through sentence structure and edit writing to bring it 'to life'.

Enjoy reading a selection of pages from The Lost Book of Adventure. Jump into your own wild camping adventure as you learn how to write effective dialogue, investigate different biomes, explore the use of bullet points and write instructional texts.

Explore poetic language and translation using Poems The Wind Blew In and Dos Oruguitas, from Disney's Encanto. Consider the use of perspective; create illustrations and draw a city street. Learn about the subjunctive form. Compose poems, character descriptions and short stories.

Explore some of the speeches in Talking History; examine the structure and learn about rhetorical terms. Use Martin Luther King's speech I have a dream to learn how modal verbs, parentheses and active and passive voice are useful in persuasive writing. Research, write and deliver a speech on an issue important to the children.