Telling Case 2, Year 5-6
Narrative writing and character study
in Year 5/6
This unit of work is an opportunity for the children to bring together many of the skills acquired over the year in their story writing. The skills include: writing from the perspective of one of the characters; using inner monologue and dialogue to convey character and advance the action; using pathetic fallacy; and to vary the openings of sentences to make their work more interesting. The unit will also consolidate their previous work on developing the structure of stories, using a beginning, build-up, climax structure.
Overview
In this Telling Case, Year 5 and 6 children plan and write a narrative story over the course of 2 days. The unit of work is called ‘Oktapodi’, a resource from ‘The Literacy Shed’, to which the school has a subscription. The aims of the lessons move from mapping character emotions (via learning to convey emotions using ‘show, not tell’ phrases) and planning a narrative from a character’s point of view; to writing a narrative climax.
The class setting is literacy-rich, with the walls displaying children’s work and literacy-related aide-memoirs. There is an interactive whiteboard displaying the tasks and learning objectives; and a flipchart for teacher modelling. The children each have a Chromebook that they can take home. The Chromebooks are often used for lesson research, but for this writing activity, they will be used to develop a piece of narrative writing, which will be kept in the children’s shared folder on Google. The children are responsible for their Chromebooks, which they use and charge throughout the lessons. Charging is done on a large table at the side of the room, with a bank of chargers for general use.
The children sit in rows in two nested U-shapes. Resources (pens, water bottles, Chromebooks, reading books and work sheets) are on their desks. Children often share these resources, including the Chromebooks and they informally work together on many of the tasks.
The overall writing objectives of the lessons are:
- to integrate dialogue into narratives to convey character and advance the action
- To plan a narrative from a character’s point of view
- To include an inner monologue for effect
The unit of work is a stand-alone unit that is not related to an overall topic, although a prior writing unit also involved an inner monologue, so the new unit builds on from that.
Year 5/6 class in small, one-form entry primary school in rural setting
- One Teaching Assistant (providing 1-1 and targeted group support)
- Interactive whiteboard (IWB), display wall for literacy, flip chart, wipe board, Literacy Shed resources
- 17 Year 6 pupils, 9 Year 5 pupils, with 13 boys and 13 girls
- 3 children with EHCP
- 6 children with Pupil Premium
- One child working towards the expected standard (WTS)
- One child with EAL
- 80% of children meet Age Related Expectations in writing
Class writing targets: to integrate dialogue into narratives to convey character and advance the action
- Plan a narrative from a character’s point of view
- Use pathetic fallacy to convey mood and set the scene
- Write a narrative climax
- Write a narrative from a character’s point of view
Teacher observations about children’s narrative writing:
- SEND children do not always join in fully with writing activities and seldom share their writing output with the rest of the class
- Digital resources can scaffold the writing process
- Using shared folders helps with access and saves printing
- Teacher laptop
- Interactive White Board
- Chromebooks (one per child – semi-permanent loan from school)
- Padlet: Free interactive sandbox style planning board/ timeline
- Literacy Shed resource: Oktapodi
- Free Online Thesaurus
- ScribEasy: trial version of subscription-based story-telling platform
- Google Drive
Activity Summary Table
|
Visit |
Timing |
Activity |
Digital resources |
Literacy focus |
Writing skills |
Digital skills |
|
Visit 1
|
5 mins |
Activity 1: Introduction to the lesson using IWB, Padlets and Flipchart |
|
|
|
|
|
Visit 1 |
40mins
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Visit 1 |
22 mins |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Visit 1 |
35 mins |
Activity 4:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Visit 2 |
|
Activity 5: To be added |
|
. |
|
|
|
Visit 2 |
|
Activity 6: To be added | ||||
| Visit 2 | Activity 7: To be added |
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Composition
- plot the main events of the story from the point of view (POV) of the different characters
- plot the emotions of the different characters throughout their narratives
- build a bank of 'show not tell' phrases to convey different character emotions
- plan story from a character’s POV (lesson 1)
- use pathetic fallacy to convey mood and set the scene
- use pathetic fallacy to describe what appears to be the start of a good day
- write a build-up and climax, creating tension and suspense
- write a narrative from a character’s point of view
- learn to include inner monologue for effect
Grammar/punctuation
- No specific objectives
Proofreading/Editing
- Check that a story contains a beginning, build-up and climax
- Use pathetic fallacy to convey mood and set the scene
New vocabulary for this unit
- pathetic fallacy
- inner monologue
- Plan a story from a character’s point of view
- Write the beginning of a narrative
- Write build-up and climax, creating tension and suspense
- Write the ending of a story
- Write a character inner monologue
- Add the inner monologue to the narrative
- Practice using Padlet to capture ideas collaboratively
- Practice use of an online thesaurus
- Understand DADWAVERS* mnemonic to help structure the beginning of a narrative text:
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-
- Description
- Action
- Dialogue
- Where
- Adverb
- Verb
- Estimation of time
- Rhetorical Question
- Simile
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- Know how to start/stop videos on Chromebook
- The role of inner monologue in narrative writing
- Key grammatical knowledge (extended noun phrases, adjectives, adverbs)
- Use of GoogleDrive and Google login
*DADWAVERS is a mnemonic used with Literacy Shed resources. See Literacy Shed DADWAVERS