Year 1 Writing Unit – Polly Dunbar’s Penguin: Verbs, Plurals & Using ‘and’ | 2 Weeks

Bring your Year 1 writing lessons to life with this engaging two-week unit inspired by Polly Dunbar’s Penguin. These fully editable slides guide children through key early-writing skills including using the conjunction ‘and’, exploring verbs in the past and present tense, and forming plural nouns with –s.

Through shared reading, modelled writing, sentence editing and playful grammar activities, pupils build confidence using simple sentence structures while enjoying the humour and repetition of the story. Daily hold-a-sentence practice, clear modelling, scaffolded tasks and predictable routines make this resource perfect for ECTs, busy teachers, and consistent classroom delivery.

The unit includes:

Two weeks of ready-to-teach lesson slides

Daily learning intentions with examples

Shared reading, sentence editing, verb sorting & plural noun tasks

Guided writing using ‘and’ to join ideas

Repeated opportunities to practise –ed/–ing verbs

Child-friendly visuals and simple instructions

Independent writing tasks linked to story events

A warm, structured and joyful way to develop early writing skills—ideal for classrooms following RWI routines or simply wanting high-quality, low-prep literacy teaching.