A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. KS2 Fiction. National-Curriculum-aligned grammar, WT/ARE/GD differentiation, and ready to teach.

What’s inside

This complete English unit gives you everything for three weeks of high-quality teaching, designed to match the standard of leading primary schemes (Literacy Tree, Write Stuff, Power of Reading).

• 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, 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 Roman-Britain historical narrative chapter in which a young centurion, sent north of Hadrian’s Wall in search of the lost standard of the Ninth Legion, encounters the wild country, the tribes who live there, and the long shadow of the Legion that vanished. Pupils write in a formal historical register using the passive voice and the subjunctive mood, semicolons for parallel clauses, and colons to introduce the stages of the journey.

Grammar features (Year 6 NC-aligned)

• The passive voice for a formal historical register.
• The subjunctive mood for moments of conjecture, and semicolons and colons to control the stages of the journey.

Themes explored

Roman Britain at its frontier, Friendship between Roman and Briton, The lost Ninth Legion and the country beyond the Wall, Loyalty, honour and the cost of going north, The wild northern landscape as the true antagonist.

Key vocabulary

Centurion, standard, legion, frontier, auxiliary, barbarian, moorland, vanished.

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

Tags

KS2, Year 6, English, fiction, Rosemary Sutcliff, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, the eagle of the ninth