A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on Running on the Roof of the World by Jess Butterworth. 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 contemporary adventure narrative, written in the voice of Tash, recounting her escape from the Chinese soldiers across the high Himalayan passes with her best friend Sam and her family’s yak. Pupils will sustain a single chapter (around 500-700 words) that combines the thin-air danger of the mountains with the warmth of Tibetan family memory, using place-adverbials, modal verbs and dashed parenthesis to control pace, peril and cultural detail.

Grammar features (Year 5 NC-aligned)

• Relative clauses using ‘who’, ‘which’, ‘where’ and ‘whose’ to add specific information about the Tibetan setting.
• Parenthesis using dashes to drop in asides about Tibetan culture, family memory and the speaker’s inner thoughts.

Themes explored

Tibet, identity and exile under Chinese occupation, Escape over the Himalayas as a child, Courage and resilience in a young protagonist, The bond between a girl and her family’s yak.

Key vocabulary

Monastery, prayer-flag, yak, altitude, Himalaya, exile, tsampa, courage.

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, Jess Butterworth, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, running on the roof of the world