A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen. 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

A time-slip Holocaust narrative in which a contemporary Jewish-American girl is pulled back into a Polish shtetl on the eve of deportation, written across at least three scenes — the modern Seder, the slip itself, and the village before the soldiers arrive — using the passive voice for the historical register and the subjunctive for the moments of speculation.

Grammar features (Year 6 NC-aligned)

• The passive voice for a formal, historical register.
• The subjunctive mood for hypothetical and speculative statements.

Themes explored

The responsibility to remember the Holocaust, Time-slip as a form of moral education, Family memory across generations, The cost of testifying through fiction.

Key vocabulary

Seder, shtetl, deportation, testimony, remembrance, ancestor, transport, witness.

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

Tags

KS2, Year 6, English, fiction, Jane Yolen, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, the devil’s arithmetic