A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold. 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 magical-realist narrative in which a child flies above the rooftops of their city at night, claiming the buildings and bridges below as her own and dreaming of a fairer world. Pupils write in the past tense, use subordinating conjunctions ‘when’ and ‘because’ to explain feelings, and build expanded noun phrases to describe the night sky and the rooftops below.

Grammar features (Year 2 NC-aligned)

• Expanded noun phrases for description (Year 2 NC).
• Subordination using ‘when’ and ‘because’ (Year 2 NC).

Themes explored

Imagination as escape, family love on a hot summer night, racial injustice and unfair rules, the rooftop as a private kingdom, dreams of freedom and flight.

Key vocabulary

Rooftop, skyscraper, bridge, kingdom, soar, glittering, claim, freedom.

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

Tags

KS1, Year 2, English, fiction, Faith Ringgold, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, tar beach