Skellig Discussion Text Y6 Writing Bundle - everything you need!
"Should Michael tell his dad about the man in the garage?"
Perfect to deliver as an add on unit if you need additional non-narrative writing for KS2 writing moderation or evidence of formal writing, impersonal style, passive and subjunctive verbs.
This bundle includes lesson slides, differentiated resources, planning grids, word banks, supporting SPAG posters for working walls and examples of children’s work all to help write a discussion text based on Skellig by David Almond. The key focus question is based around whether Michael should tell his dad about Skellig or not - helping children to consider how mum might react if she knew but also consider the danger Michael could be putting himself in.
There are 5 lessons overall but we have delivered these in a solid block over a couple of days ahead of writing moderation as well.
Lesson overview is:
1- Reasons for and against
2-Evidence from the text - to be used to develop argument points
3 - Planning
4 & 5 - Writing
Ideally the children will already be familiar with the discussion text style - and obviously need to have read Skellig at least up to about chapter 14 or so at this stage… I am including 3 general model discussion text on unrelated subjects that we have used to teach the style if needed though.
The SPAG posters give examples of how the passive voice, subjunctive form, adverbs of possibility, semi-colons, colons, parenthesis, dashes, apostrophes and more can be applied in the writing. We used these for shortburst SPAG activities at separate times of the day.
This unit is good - really good - and the quality of writing the children produce is fabulous and all the resources and materials you need are included.
I usually follow this unit with a narrative writing unit where children write in the scene where they DO get Michael to tell dad. (The focus on that is using dialogue to convey character and move the action on along with setting and character description. Will be uploading those resources too).
Skellig is a brilliant book to read with short chapters and leads nicely into The Final Year by Matt Goodfellow too!



