A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. KS1 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 simple friendship narrative about three sea creatures who learn to share a rock pool home, with a clear beginning, middle and end, using capital letters, full stops, the joining word ‘and’, adjective noun phrases and exclamation marks.

Grammar features (Year 1 NC-aligned)

• The joining word ‘and’ to link words and clauses.
• Exclamation marks to show surprise or strong feelings.

Themes explored

Friendship and sharing, the rock pool home, kindness and learning to live together.

Key vocabulary

Shell, rock pool, crab, barnacle, anemone, share, friend, wave.

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 1 (KS1).
• 15 sessions over 3 weeks (≈45–60 minutes per lesson).

Tags

KS1, Year 1, English, fiction, Julia Donaldson, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, sharing a shell