A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on Watership Down by Richard Adams. 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

An epic-rabbit narrative recounting a small band of rabbits leaving their doomed warren and undertaking a perilous journey across fields, roads and rivers in search of a safer home — weaving in an embedded El-ahrairah folktale that mirrors the rabbits’ moral test.

Grammar features (Year 5 NC-aligned)

• Relative clauses using relative pronouns (who, which, that, whose) — including the use of commas to mark non-defining clauses.
• Modal verbs (must, should, could, might, will) for indicating degrees of possibility, obligation and urgency in moments of crisis.

Themes explored

The dangerous journey from a doomed home to a new one, Courage, loyalty and quiet leadership under pressure, The natural world — fields, rivers, hedges and weather — as a living setting, The power of shared stories and myth: the legend of El-ahrairah.

Key vocabulary

Warren, silflay, elil, hraka, tharn, embleer, Frith, El-ahrairah.

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

Tags

KS2, Year 5, English, fiction, Richard Adams, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, watership down