Illegal | Year 5 English Unit | 15 Complete Lessons + Resources + Mark Scheme

A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin. KS2 Fiction. National-Curriculum-aligned grammar, WT/ARE/GD differentiation, and ready to teach.

What’s inside

This complete English unit gives you everything for three weeks of high-quality teaching, designed to match the standard of leading primary schemes (Literacy Tree, Write Stuff, Power of Reading).

• 15 lesson PowerPoints — illustrated cover slides, success criteria, vocabulary previews, modelled writing, “big questions” (Bloom’s-laddered), differentiation tiers, plenary, and reflection.
• 15 differentiated resource sheets — Working Towards, Age-Related Expectations, and Greater Depth, with sentence frames, word banks, and writing frames.
• Complete teacher unit plan — unit overview, key themes, model texts, full session-by-session plans, key questions, assessment focus, and vocabulary focus.
• Child-friendly mark scheme — “I can…” success criteria for the final writing piece, ready for self- and peer-assessment.
• 3 weekly exit tickets — 5 multiple-choice questions per week, with teacher answer keys.

Final writing outcome

A persuasive letter to an international aid agency, written in role as a young person who has crossed the Mediterranean, urging the agency to fund safer routes, rescue boats and family reunification — using modal verbs (must, should), relative clauses and parenthesis for the writer’s private thoughts.

Grammar features (Year 5 NC-aligned)

• Relative clauses (using who, which, that, whose, where) to expand noun phrases and add precise detail to setting and character.
• Parenthesis using brackets, dashes and commas to insert a character’s private thoughts and additional information.

Themes explored

Migration and the search for a safer life, Survival, courage and resilience under extreme pressure, Family — the bonds that pull us across continents.

Key vocabulary

Migration, refugee, smuggler, horizon, shoreline, perilous, desperate, reunion.

Format & compatibility

• Editable PowerPoint (.pptx) and Word (.docx) files.
• UK English spelling.
• One printer-friendly A4 page per resource sheet.
• Compatible with Literacy Tree, Write Stuff, and Power of Reading planning approaches.

Year groups & key stage

• Year 5 (KS2).
• 15 sessions over 3 weeks (≈45–60 minutes per lesson).

Tags

KS2, Year 5, English, fiction, Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, illegal