3 week Diary Extract unit based on Ice Trap by Meredith Hooper

This is a 3 week unit of work that is based on the book ‘Ice Trap’ by Meredith Hooper. This book tells the amazing story of Ernest Shackleton’s epic attempt to be the first person to reach the south pole. When his ship, the Endurance, gets trapped in the ice his adventure turns into a battle to stay alive and fins a way to escape. My class love this gruesome and heroic story and always produce some amazing diary extracts as a character from the Endurance who suffered through this ordeal.

This unit includes all of the worksheets, plans and PowerPoints to teach it today.

The learning objectives for this unit of work are;
• To write a diary extract
• To ask questions and draw inferences to improve understanding
• To draw inferences and make predictions using the text
• To explore the themes of a book
• To evaluate the author’s use of language for effect
• To build background knowledge of a topic; gathering information and making notes
• To explore the character’s feelings and emotions through drama
• To identify different word classes
• To establish the key features for successfully writing in role
• To vary sentence openers to engage the reader
• To use brackets, dashes and commas to indicate parenthesis
• To understand the difference between colons and semi-colons and their use
• To portray contrasting viewpoints effectively in my writing
• To plan effectively for writing
• To edit and publish writing for the chosen audience

This unit of work uses the 3 stage planning process of:
• Stimulate and generate
• Capture, sift and sort
• Create, refine and evaluate

Stimulate and generate = This usually starts with a hook to interest the class where the class realise who they are going to write for so they have a clear purpose and audience. Activities can include reading excellent model texts, drama or researching more about the author or the content of the book.

Capture, sift and sort = This is the part of the unit where pupils look at key features, practise skills they will need in order to complete the final piece or new learning for objectives they have not learnt yet.

Create, refine, evaluate = This is where you bring all you have learnt together and plan the final piece before you write it and then edit it to improve the piece. This can include self, peer or teacher led reviewing.