Narrative Opening - Cakes in Space

This fully resourced writing pack supports pupils in creating an engaging story opening, using Cakes in Space by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre as the stimulus. Designed as a recap/cold task followed by a narrative sequence, the unit develops key writing skills while inspiring creativity and imagination.

What’s included:

PowerPoint and all lesson resources ready to use

Diary entry task as a recap/cold task, using hot-seating and interview techniques to explore characters

Text marking of story openings to identify features and techniques

Direct teaching of the ‘emotion word, comma’ sentence skill

Short-burst writing activities including:

2A sentences

Adjective–same adjective sentences

Planning resources for the story opening, including a WABOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) and a WAGOLL (What A Great One Looks Like)

Why this resource works:

Builds confidence in writing narrative openings through structured, scaffolded tasks

Encourages imaginative writing and character understanding

Supports sentence-level precision, vocabulary development and punctuation skills

Ideal for Year 4–5, but adaptable across KS2

This pack is perfect for a standalone narrative sequence, a recap/cold task activity, or as part of a wider English unit on story writing and creative literacy.