A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on The Cuckoo Tree by Joan Aiken. 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

An alternative-history adventure narrative set in a Victorian Sussex that never was, featuring the spirited urchin heroine Dido Twite uncovering a coronation conspiracy. Pupils write a sustained narrative chapter that layers a richly textured Sussex setting (relative clauses), threads conspiratorial menace through every page (modal verbs), and gives Dido a voice that is sharp, funny, and constantly interrupting itself (parenthesis with dashes), with time-adverbials carrying the reader cleanly between scenes.

Grammar features (Year 5 NC-aligned)

• Relative clauses (using who, which, whose, where, that, and the omitted relative pronoun) to add layered detail to setting and character.
• Modal verbs (must, might, could, should, would, ought to) to build a sense of suspicion, possibility, and conspiratorial threat.

Themes explored

Alternative-history Sussex — a Victorian England that never was, The spirited urchin hero who outwits her betters, Comic-grotesque villains and the conspiracies they hatch, Loyalty, disguise and the coronation plot.

Key vocabulary

Conspiracy, coronation, Hanoverian, alternative-history, urchin, grotesque, Sussex, treachery.

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, Joan Aiken, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, the cuckoo tree