Year 5/6 Mixed Age English Planning
Choose the block you wish to teach
Download our fantastic Year 5/6 mixed age English plans.
Try our FREE Grammar and Punctuation Powerpoints.
Autumn Set A Blocks
Using The Proudest Blue and The Boy at the Back of the Class, explore the theme of difference. Use noun phrases to write evocatively. Write formal and informal letters before planning and writing a story on this theme.

Stories on a Theme: Difference
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.

Biographies: The Undefeated
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.

Poems on a Theme: Poems from a Green and Blue Planet
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.

Adventure Stories: The Girl Who Stole an Elephant
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.

Recounts: Races in Frozen Places
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.

Poems on a Theme: Hope
Spring Set A Blocks
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.

Fantasy: Howl's Moving Castle
Take a closer look at the persuasive language used by influencers and advertisers. Look at how degrees of possibility are created and the use of the subjunctive. Write persuasively and create blog posts.

Persuasive Writing: Advertising and Influencing
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.

Poems on a Theme: Science
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.

Short Stories: African Stories
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.

Reports: Re-wilding
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.

Poems on a Theme: Portrait Poems
Summer Set A Blocks
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.

Graphic Novels: When Stars are Scattered
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.

Information Texts: Kings and Queens
Read and explore a selection of classic poems using drama and art and revise poetry terms. Revise adverbs of possibility and modal verbs and explore formal and informal register. Write a poem about childhood memories.

Classic Poems: Selected by Michael Rosen
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.

Adventure Stories: The Explorer
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.

Instructions and Explanations: Fake News
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.

Poems on a Theme: Migration
Autumn Set B Blocks
Using The Iron Man, explore settings and characters through roleplay. Learn to write cohesively using adverbials and conjunctions. Use expanded noun phrases to create vivid descriptions. Put it all together to write a new story about the Iron Man.

Classic Fiction: The Iron Man
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.

Interview and Articles: Black and British
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'.

Narrative Poetry: Poems That Tell a Story
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.

Science Fiction: Boy in the Tower
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.

Reports: Awesome Oceans
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.

Poems on a Theme: Black Lives Matter
Spring Set B Blocks
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.

Adventure Stories: Holes
Use Hidden Figures and Curiosity - The Story of the Mars Rover to explore the features of non-fiction texts. Learn to use cohesive devices and parentheses. Write a double-page spread about Mars Rovers and write a diary entry as part of the Mars rover mission team.

Reports and Recounts: Space
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.

Poems on a Theme: Poems with a Message
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.

Humorous Stories: The Day the Screens went Blank
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.

Biographies: Rise Up
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.

Poems by the Same Poet: Carol Ann Duffy
Summer Set B Blocks
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.

Short Stories: Happy Here
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.

Reports: Survivors
Explore poems about identity, thoughts and feelings using Life Doesn't Frighten Me and Being Me: Poems about Thoughts, Worries and Feelings. Learn to use expanded noun phrases, modal verbs and adverbs of possibility. Create an illustrated poetry book, write powerfully on a passion.

Poems on a Theme: I am Unique
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'.

Modern Fiction: Framed
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.

Instructions and Explanations: Adventures
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.

Poems on a Theme: Poems in Translation
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.
