Writing

Autumn 1 2024

During this half-term we shall be focusing on these texts during our writing sessions:

Synopsis of Text:

Anne Frank's diary telling the story of her years in hiding from the Nazis has affected millions of people. But what was she like as a small girl, at home with her family and friends; at play and at school? And how did an ordinary little girl come to live such an extraordinary and tragically short life? In the first half of the book we meet Anne as a small child growing up with her family in Germany. Then we follow her flight to Holland to escape the Nazis; the German invasion and the gradual isolation, then outright persecution, of the Jewish population which forces the family into hiding; the years in the Secret Annex; and her last heart-breaking journey.

Synopsis of Text:

Discover the incredible story of the search for life on Mars, told from the unique perspective of Curiosity, the Mars Rover sent to explore the red planet. Markus Motum's stylish illustrations and diagrams reveal how a robot travelled 350,000,000 miles to explore a planet where no human has been before.

Writing Outcomes:

Letters, short descriptions, extended diary entries, obituary, optional opinion piece

We will be learning how to:

This topic begins with children discovering a package in class containing a red-chequered diary called Kitty and responding to a video of Otto Frank. As the sequence of learning progresses, they will learn about Anne and her family’s life. They will have opportunities to write extended diaries. The final pieces of extended writing will be an obituary, a newspaper report and an opinion piece. Children can then have fun publishing their own newspapers!

Writing Outcomes:

Proposal to NASA, information labels, short explanation, NASA log of Mars landing, news report

We will be learning how to:

Children will follow the journey of the NASA rover Curiosity as it makes its way to Mars. Children will write labels to explain Curiosity’s features before exploring how to use cohesive devices to expand and explain. They will use the passive voice to log the rover’s landing on Mars and write a short news report to be broadcast to Times Square. Finally, children will draw together their learning to design a new rover and write an expanded explanation to propose it as the future of NASA exploration.