Key Stage:Lower KS2 Year 3 and 4

Text:Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World by Kate Pankhurst

Length of sequence:3 weeks

As this book focuses on the achievements of women, a follow up sequence might be Bill’s New Frock by Anne Fine.

Key learning Outcome
To write a biography of a famous person, choosing elements of layout, presentation and language to match the chosen personality and their achievements
Elicitation Task:
Show the pupils part of a short film about a famous person. Give them a format for taking notes and then discuss the information that they have found out. Check that all pupils have enough relevant information. Ask them to write a short text (you could give a word limit) about this person including as much information and detail as possible.
Use the outcomes from this to adapt the medium term plan and age-related learning outcomes.
Medium Term Plan
Reading
Develop positive attitudes to reading and understanding of what they read by:
  • Listening to and discussing a wide range of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction and reference books or text books
  • Reading books that are structured in different ways and reading for a range of purposes
  • Identifying…conventions in a wide range of books
Retrieve and record information from non- fiction / Writing
Plan their writing by:
  • discussing similar writing to that which they are planning to write in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar
  • discussing and recording ideas
Draft and write by:
  • composing and rehearsing sentences orally (including dialogue), progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures
  • Organising paragraphs around a theme
  • In non-narrative, material, using simple organisational devices(for example headings and subheadings)
Evaluate and edit by:
  • assessing the effectiveness of their own writing and suggesting improvements
  • proposing changes to grammar and vocabulary to improve consistency
Proof-read for spelling and punctuation errors / Grammar
Develop their understanding of the concepts set out in
Appendix 2 by:
  • Noun phrases expanded by the addition of modifying adjectives, nouns and preposition phrases (Y4)
  • Using conjunctions, adverbs (then, next, soon, therefore) and prepositions (before, after, during, in because of ) to express time,place and cause (Y3)
  • Using fronted adverbials (Y4)
Indicate grammatical and other features by:
  • Using commas after fronted adverbials (Y4)
  • Introduction of paragraphs as a way to group related material (Y3)
  • Use of paragraphs to organise ideas around a theme (Y4)
  • Headings and sub- headings to aid presentation (Y3)
Standard English forms for verb inflections instead of local spoken forms (for example we were instead of we was or I did instead of I done)
Terminology
Y3: adverb, preposition,
Y4:determiner, pronoun,adverbial
Spoken Language
Pupils should be taught to:
  • listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers
  • ask relevant questions to extend their understanding and knowledge
  • use relevant strategies to build their vocabulary
  • give well-structured descriptions, explanations
  • maintain attention and participate actively in collaborative conversations, staying on topic and initiating and responding to comments
  • speak audibly and fluently with an increasing command of Standard English
  • participate in discussions, presentations
  • gain, maintain and monitor the interest of the listener(s)
  • consider and evaluate different viewpoints, attending to and building on the contributions of others
  • select and use appropriate registers for effective communication

Age-related Learning Outcomes
Working at the expected standard / Working at greater depth within the expected standard
  • divide biography into clear sections and paragraphs
  • use adverbs/adverbial phrases of time and place for precision, detail and concise information
  • expand noun phrases with precise choices of adjectives to convey a lot of information concisely
  • Use commas after fronted adverbials (Y4)
/
  • design layout of information thinking about the reader and visual pathways
  • position adverbials in sentences for emphasis and clarity
  • summarise biographical achievement/character using a strapline or well-chosen quotation

Guided group writing targets
Gp 1 / Gp2 / Gp3 / Gp4 / Gp5
Teaching
Familiarisation/ Immersion in text/Analysis
Capture learning about the text to construct a writerly knowledge chart with the children.
Learning about the Text
Although over the course of the sequence children may read about all of the women in the book, most of the activities will focus on the following:
Gertrude Ederle
Coco Chanel
Mary Anning
Agent Fifi
Sacagawea
Reading
In the initial few days of the sequence, talk to children about famous people that they would like to write a biography about. Provide ideas or suggest people who are famous locally, have visited the school or are linked to a topic. You may want to limit choices so that children can work collaboratively on the same person. Make sure that there is plenty of information available either online or in books. Children will need to gather information during the first week about their chosen person ready for writing. This might be as home learning or as part of topic work.
  • Give groups snippets of information about each of the women above and ask each group to choose one of the women to read about. Make sure that a range of the women are included across the groups.
  • Tell the pupils they are going to become experts on the particular person their group has chosen and use what they learn about the writing to help them in their biography writing. In their groups ask them to read and talk about the information that they find on the page and select the five most interesting facts that they can find.
  • In pairs to make up ten questions about that person that could be answered by reading the page. Get children to pair up with pupils from another group and use each other’s texts to ask and answer the questions.
  • Ask the expert roleplay: in groups or as a class, hot-seat individual pupils as ‘experts’ on their chosen person with other pupils asking questions.
  • Respond to text: Likes/Dislikes/Things of Note or Interest. As a class discuss the pages using these headings. Draw out elements of layout, font, pictures as well as information that pupils have noticed.
  • Focus on layout to emphasis the non-linear nature of the writing despite its chronology:
  • Cut up the pages of Amelia Earhart into text and pictures. In small groups or pairs, pupils decide which order to put the sections and pictures in. When they are happy with their choices, stick onto A3 paper. Compare choices with other pairs and discuss decisions.
  • Give pupils copies of the original pages and compare how the information is organised. Draw out the decisions the author has made and why – what impact does the layout have on us as readers? Pictures? Font? Speech bubbles? Colour? Arrows? Link to things noticed in previous activity and how the information can be read in various ways, not always in chronological order.
  • Groups go back to their original text. Give them a chart to make notes about the layout information used in their text, for example: Font/titles, colour, labels, diagrams/pictures/photos, speech bubbles, motifs, the pathway through the information.
  • Groups use the chart to briefly present the layout of their pages to the class.
  • Start co-constructing a Writerly Knowledge Chart with the elements above.
Grammar
Language for precision and to communicate detailed information concisely
Noun phrases
  • Use Gertrude Ederle text. Identify nouns with the class and the adjectives used to describe them eg teenage Olympic medal-winning swimming sensation; a heavy woollen swimsuit; a bright red swimming cap; one of the first two piece bathing suits; a new record time; the freezing waters of the English Channel; her enormous achievements. Use a noun chart (see below) to show how noun phrases are constructed with information before the noun (determiners, adverbs, adjectives).Look at the choice of adjectives and precision of information. Learn and remember some of the sentences with expanded noun phrases.
  • Pupils experiment with noun chart to make other noun phrases and put these into sentences about Gertrude, focusing on choosing the most effective descriptions to convey information.
  • Read some of the descriptions and decide with pupils which are the most effective. If using the Sentence Toolkit, model using the tape measure to show when there are too many adjectives. Focus on choices for precision and conveying concise information.
Practising Writing
  • Model writing expanded noun phrases using information gathered about another famous person by selecting key nouns and adding associated adjectives, re-ordering, discarding etc. Model completing a sentence using the noun phrase eg The intrepid, record-breaking sailor Ellen MacArthur crossed the Atlantic. When she was sailing alone, she wore a totally waterproof, brightly coloured jacket with high-visibility flashes.
  • Pupils read information they have gathered about their chosen person, write key adjectives and nouns on sticky notes or into a blank noun chart and experiment with creating noun phrases to give precise information concisely. Write their most informative noun phrases into their books and/or record on the working wall, writing them into complete sentences.
Add to Writerly Knowledge Chart.
Adverbials
  • Look at the sentence Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis, England, in 1799. Use a cut up version on cards and get pupils to arrange the sentence in as many ways as they can by moving the adverbials. Establish that it makes sense each time but discuss the changes in emphasis. Introduce or revise the concept of adverbials as either single words or phrases that can tell you where/when/how/why/how much/how long. Introduce that many of these adverbials are prepositional phrases beginning with a preposition. Look at the use of commas and teach Y4 the convention of a comma after an adverbial if it is at the ‘front’ of the sentence.
  • Ask pupils to look at small sections of the Mary Anning text and others as appropriate to find and highlight other examples of adverbial phrases of where/when. For example: at the time, on the beach, in the early 1800s, over millions of years, today, for years. Make a collection of these for the working wall and teach pupils how these prepositional phrases are formed (preposition + noun or noun phrase). Use cards for pupils to experiment with re-ordering the adverbials (including commas where these are fronted) and discuss the changes in emphasis.
Add to Writerly Knowledge Chart.
Practising Writing
  • Model writing a sentenceincluding detail with adverbials. Model experimenting with changing the order of the adverbials and deciding which order conveys the information in the clearest way. Eg In 2001, atonly 24 years old, the intrepid, record-breaking sailor Ellen MacArthur set off from France to sail around the world.
  • Ask the pupils to work in pairs to find where/when information from their own research and to write individual sentences about their person using these. Experiment with the order of the adverbials and inclusion of commas for fronted adverbials.
Paragraphing
  • Model selecting information to include in a section/paragraph and using both adverbials and expanded noun phrases to write several linked sentences into a paragraph. Pupils practise selecting and writing their own sentences into a paragraph.
  • Model reading writing and improving the sentences.
  • Model proof-reading for punctuation and spelling
Summarising: if appropriate, model for pupils how to take key information about someone and reduce it to a few words to make a strapline. Use the text examples eg She swam her own stroke and create own examples eg the world was her oyster.
Structuring the text
  • Revisit the interesting facts that pupils found out about the person they read about earlier in the sequence. Use this to model selecting information from notes to include in the new biography and discarding things that may not be as interesting for the reader. Stress that the format allows for a limited amount so selection is crucial and the use of the expanded noun phrases and adverbial phrases to include a lot of information is a key feature – refer to Writerly Knowledge Chart.
  • Pupils select key information and begin to plan the order and detail to include.
  • Model using elements of the layout from the text to map out a page design eg arrows across a map of the world and selecting which parts of the information should be included where and in which order.
  • Pupils design their structure, order and placing of information, thinking of the pathway for the reader.

Independent Writing
  • Pupils write the text, using the features that they have practised throughout the sequence and referring to the Writerly Knowledge Chart to support them.
  • Support pupils writing the text through revising and editing to include the elements taught throughout the sequence.
Proof-read for spelling and punctuation
.
  • Compare and comment on the progress made from the elicitation task and the independent writing.

Noun Chart

Determiner / Adverb / Adjective / Noun
the
a
an
her
this
these
that
those
some
many
several / bright
very
extremely
incredibly / teenage
Olympic
medal-winning
swimming
red
freezing
strong
strongest
first
second
enormous
stinging
bad
cold
heavy
woollen
two-piece
American
new
dangerous
difficult
biggest / woman
sensation
challenge
cap
onlookers
waters
currents
stroke
achievement
jellyfish
attempt
English Channel
weather
water
swimsuit
bathing suit
breaststroke
record

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