The Tear Thief Year 3 English Unit of Work

Year 3 English Unit of Work based around the story ‘The Tear Thief’ by Carol-Ann Duffy. English planning objectives link to the Year 3 National Curriculum for Reading, Speaking and Listening, Grammar and Writing. This unit comes downloadable with lesson plans, worksheets, presentations and display posters.

**Unit Overview: **

In this English unit, children will start by engaging with a bag of jewel tears to spark their curiosity about whom they might belong to. They will be introduced to the book ‘The Tear Thief’ by Ann Duffy. Through shared reading sessions, the children will predict, summarise the text, analyse effective language use (such as similes), and draw inferences from character emotions and thoughts. Additionally, they will examine how grammar and punctuation are skilfully employed in the story. They will learn to recognise and utilise prepositional phrases, direct speech, possessive apostrophes and powerful verbs. Finally, the children will be guided on planning and drafting their own narrative based around a Tear Thief who gathers ‘happy’ tears to offer to the sun.

Reading Objectives

• Predicting what might happen from details stated and implied.
• Identifying main ideas drawn from more than one paragraph and summarising these.
• Identifying how language contributes to meaning.
• Drawing inferences such as inferring characters’ feelings, thoughts and motives from their actions, and justifying inferences with evidence.
• Discussing words and phrases that capture the reader’s interest and imagination.

Speaking and Listening Objectives

• Listen and respond appropriately to adults and their peers.
• Ask and answer relevant questions to extend their understanding and knowledge.

Grammar Objectives

• Indicating possession by using the possessive apostrophe with singular and plural nouns.
• Using and punctuating direct speech.
• Teach and identify prepositional phrases.
• To identify and use ‘Powerful Verbs’ to improve writing.

Writing Objectives

• Discussing writing similar to that which they are planning to write in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar.
• Organising paragraphs around a theme in narratives, creating settings, characters and plot.
• Proposing changes to grammar and vocabulary to improve consistency, including the accurate use of pronouns in sentences.
• Proof-read for spelling and punctuation errors.
• Read aloud their own writing, to a group or the whole class, using appropriate intonation and controlling the tone and volume so that the meaning is clear.