Year 5 English
Choose the block you wish to teach
We’ve been busy spring cleaning our poetry blocks.
Our revised summer poetry blocks should be on the site in May, the autumn ones in July, and the spring ones in September.
Autumn Blocks
Through Chris Riddell’s Goth Girl, explore how atmosphere, settings & characters are created. Study adverbs of possibility, commas, relative clauses, dialogue punctuation.

Gothic Fiction: Goth Girl
Lewis Carroll's Walrus and the Carpenter and Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales stimulate performance, debate, persuasive writing and poetry writing. Revise adverbs and modal verbs.

Classic Poems: Narrative Poems
Using The Hole, by Oyvind Torseter, children ask and answer questions and use inference skills to speculate about events. Children write their own version or a sequel based on the book.

Modern Fiction: The Hole by Øyvind Torster
Explore instructions and explanations with hover boards, doggie umbrellas & new-fangled escalators. Study the grammar of cohesion and create guides for futuristic travel.

Instructions and Explanations: Changing Technology
Explore exciting destinations through a range of travel writing. Revise pronouns, learn about relative clauses & punctuation, including uses of commas. Write own travel recount.

Blogs and Reports: Travel Writing
Explore the charm and challenge of classic fiction with Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book and Just So Stories. Study dialogue punctuation, relative clauses and commas.

Classic Fiction: Stories by Rudyard Kipling
Word classes, noun phrases, fronted adverbials and paragraphs are taught within the context of writing recounts and newspaper reports about UFO accounts.

Recounts: UFOs and Aliens
The What Do You Do with an Idea story and Save-the-Children’s global children’s poem stimulate art, drama, writing. Humorous poems reflecting lockdown experiences help children explore their own.

Wellbeing: Ideas, weird and wonderful!
Spring Blocks
Three amazing texts stimulate children’s reading, writing and discussion of first animal, then human, migration. Writing cohesively and using parentheses form the SPaG element, but children’s own creative work will make this block truly exciting.

Reports and Recounts: Migration
Study genre of short stories using Short! by Crossley-Holland. Investigate adverbials and develop use of perfect form to indicate time/cause. Write predictions and short stories.

Short Stories: Spooky Short Stories
Look at remarkable facts, common beliefs and reference texts. Learn whether you should believe – or not! Study modal verbs/adverbs and relative clauses.

Information Texts: Reference Texts
Meet Joseph Coelho! Read, watch and discuss his work (in Werewolf Club Rules). Write and perform poetry. Revise noun phrases, and brackets, dashes and commas.

Poems by the Same Poet: Joseph Coelho
Read and write stories set in faraway places using Cloud Tea Monkeys and Mysterious Traveller. Study relative clauses and expanded noun phrases for concise writing.

Stories on a Theme: Faraway Places
Use Tuesday by David Wiesner to study reports. Write speech, playscripts, speech bubbles, direct and reported speech. Use modal verbs; learn about cohesion. Write newspaper reports.

Recounts: Reports and Journalism
Choose from Romeo & Juliet, The Tempest, Macbeth for an in-depth study. Relative clauses & prefixes/suffixes in context of Shakespeare’s new words. Write and perform playscripts. Also in Y6 Autumn.

Classic Plays: Shakespeare
School uniform, detentions, mobile phones or screen time - there’s always an argument! This block lays the groundwork for effective argument and persuasion, written and spoken. Plus grammar: cohesion, paragraphs, commas.

Argument and Debate: Argument and Debate
Summer Blocks
Inspirational short stories from Shaun Tan, guaranteed to stimulate amazing work. Explore use of modal verbs, parenthesis and dialogue. Write a short story in Shaun Tan-style.

Fantasy: Fantasy Stories by Shaun Tan
Explore persuasive letters, adverts, protest songs and speeches. Study the impact of modal verbs and cohesion through adverbs and conjunctions. Deliver persuasive speeches.

Persuasive Writing: Persuasion and Argument
Read/memorise poems from I Like This Poem (Kaye Webb) chosen by children. Gather favourites in an anthology; write their own. Use modal verbs and parenthesis.

Anthologies: I Like This Poem
Michael Morpurgo's Kensuke's Kingdom provides inspiration for developing higher level language skills and for cohesion within and between paragraphs, modal verbs/adverbs and commas.

Modern Fiction: Kensuke's Kingdom
Research information about video games and board games. Examine the features of reports before writing your own. Learn how cohesive devices and parenthesis can be used to improve your report writing.

Reports: Games
Become immersed in the world of The Hobbit, investigating settings, characters and narrative style. Write a 'Lost Tale'. Study relative clauses and expanded noun phrases.

Classic Fiction: The Hobbit
Delve into letter-writing, revising conventions, purpose, and register, and analyse fascinating historical texts. Write fan letters, tactful RSVPs and job applications. Study modal verbs, commas, colons and bullet points.

Letters: Historical and Modern Letters
Listen to a variety of inspirational songs, from Blue Moon to A Wonderful World and explore change through historical protest songs. Paint the moon, make friendship bracelets, create tissue-paper art and identify favourite songs.
