A Writing Root for Literacy Tree Year 7 Transition Materials

Overarching Literary Theme:

Survival & migration

Texts:

A Different Boy by Paul Jennings; Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin; Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah

Main Outcomes:

Diary entries, journalistic piece, short narrative from another perspective, longer narrative based on the book, essay with debate style writing within.

Overview of content:

This 38 lesson Writing Root is designed to provide a transition at the start of Year 7, and is ideally taught in the Autumn Term, building on the pedagogies and knowledge needed to achieve the end of KS2 standard for writing with KS3 objectives woven in.It allows students the opportunity to engage in three works of fiction all linked by the same theme and to read critically and compare the works by the different authors. The students create their own short narrative with a flashback and a twist, based on the structure of ‘A Different Boy’ and use ‘Illegal’ to create stories not told, Refugee Boy is a longer novel; study and the students have a variety of shorter written outcomes, including some formal written outcomes as a lawyer and some diary entries in role as the main character. There are many non-fiction writing opportunities woven throughout and the grammar and the vocabulary opportunities are chosen specifically to match the genre taught. There are some modelled writing examples used to give children a scaffold. Where possible, using class-sets of the text will give students the opportunity to engage directly with the book.

This can be picked up and used by any secondary school, but it will have deeper impact if the materials are accessed by students who have had the Literacy Tree for their primary English provision.