Year 4 Lorax Playscript Unit

This English unit is designed for year 4. The unit requires at least one copy of the book ‘The Lorax’ by Doctor Seuss. The aim is for the children to rewrite the book as a playscript which will then be acted out to a live audience. The unit allows the children the opportunity to become more familiar with playscripts and their composition. It also gives the children the chance to read in character as well as role-play the parts of the different characters involved in the book. It also develops the following skills and knowledge from the National Curriculum:

Develop positive attitudes to reading, and an understanding of what they read, by:

• Preparing poems and play scripts to read aloud and to perform, showing understanding through intonation, tone, volume and action

Writing (composition):

• discussing writing similar to that which they are planning to write in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar
• discussing and recording ideas

Draft and write by:

• composing and rehearsing sentences orally (including dialogue), progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures
• in narratives, creating settings, characters and plot

Evaluate and edit by:

• assessing the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggesting improvements
• proofread for spelling and punctuation errors
• read their own writing aloud, to a group or the whole class, using appropriate intonation and controlling the tone and volume so that the meaning is clear.

Indicate grammatical and other features by:

• using commas after fronted adverbials

This is a 2/3-week unit which includes 10 separate lessons/activities. However, some of these lessons will often need more than a single lesson to complete (particularly the writing and planning sections).

Within this unit plan there are hyperlinks to other resources associated with the plan.