A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson. KS2 Fiction. National-Curriculum-aligned grammar, WT/ARE/GD differentiation, and ready to teach.

What’s inside (35 files)

This complete English unit gives you everything for three weeks of high-quality teaching, designed to match the standard of leading primary schemes.

• 15 lesson PowerPoints — illustrated cover slides, success criteria, vocabulary previews, modelled writing, “big questions” (Bloom’s-laddered), differentiation tiers, plenary, and reflection.
• 15 differentiated resource sheets — Working Towards, Age-Related Expectations, and Greater Depth, with sentence frames, word banks, and writing frames.
• Complete teacher unit plan — unit overview, key themes, model texts (WT/ARE/GD), full session-by-session plans, key questions, assessment focus, and vocabulary focus.
• Child-friendly mark scheme — “I can…” success criteria for the final writing piece, ready for self- and peer-assessment.
• 3 weekly exit tickets — 5 multiple-choice questions per week, with teacher answer keys.

Final writing outcome

A two-part extended piece: (1) an adventure narrative set in the Amazon rainforest, written in third person, using vivid descriptive language, relative clauses and semi-colons; (2) a diary entry from Maia’s perspective reflecting on a key moment of discovery or danger, using the passive voice in formal reflections and colons/semi-colons for sophisticated sentence structure.

Grammar features (Year 5 NC-aligned)

• Relative clauses using ‘who’, ‘which’, ‘whose’, ‘where’ and ‘that’ to add detail about nouns, particularly the rich natural world of the Amazon (Year 5 NC: use of relative clauses beginning with who, which, where, when, whose, that).
• Passive voice to create formal, official or detached tone in diary reflections and legal/documentary contexts within the story (Year 5 NC: use of the passive voice to affect the presentation of information in a sentence).

Themes explored

Belonging and finding your true home, Freedom versus Victorian constraint and duty, The wonder and danger of the natural world.

Key vocabulary

Canopy, tributaries, luminous, oppressive, guardian, expedition, indigenous, bewilderment.

Format & compatibility

• Editable PowerPoint (.pptx) and Word (.docx) files.
• UK English spelling.
• One printer-friendly A4 page per resource sheet.
• Compatible with Literacy Tree, Write Stuff, and Power of Reading planning approaches.

Year groups & key stage

• Year 5 (KS2).
• 15 sessions over 3 weeks (≈45–60 minutes per lesson).

Tags

KS2, Year 5, English, fiction, Eva Ibbotson, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, journey to the river sea