A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on The Voyage of the Sparrowhawk by Natasha Farrant. 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 extended post-WWI adventure narrative in which two orphans, Ben and Lotti, sail a canal boat down the Thames and across the English Channel to find Ben’s missing brother Sam in France. Pupils weave two parallel narratives — the orphans’ voyage and Sam’s quieter story on the other side — bringing them together at the moment the siblings finally meet.

Grammar features (Year 4 NC-aligned)

• Fronted adverbials of time, place and manner, separated from the main clause by a comma.
• Inverted commas and other punctuation to indicate direct speech, with a new line for each new speaker.

Themes explored

Family loyalty and the search for a lost brother, Finding home when home has been taken away, The long aftermath of the First World War on ordinary children, Courage shown in small, quiet acts.

Key vocabulary

Voyage, orphan, armistice, canal, tiller, horizon, stowaway, reunion.

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

Tags

KS2, Year 4, English, fiction, Natasha Farrant, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, the voyage of the sparrowhawk