Ossiri and the Bala Mengro – Character Description Writing Unit (8 Sessions)

Inclusive English planning with rich cultural diversity for SEND learners
This immersive unit is based on Ossiri and the Bala Mengro by Richard O’Neill and Katharine Quarmby — a beautifully illustrated tale originating from the British Traveller tradition. The sequence supports pupils to explore diverse cultures and identities through storytelling, inference and creative response. Pupils engage with character, setting and narrative structure while developing communication skills and progressing towards a character description writing outcome.
Designed for learners working from Pre-Formal through to Formal+ pathways, this planning provides barrier-free access through symbol-supported communication, sensory learning and guided adult modelling. Each lesson includes clear learning objectives, differentiated success criteria and links to SOLAR/EHCP targets.
This unit also contains explicit coverage of British Values including democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect & tolerance, giving learners meaningful opportunities to discuss fairness, community and identity

What’s included
• Eight taught sessions
• Two lessons per week (sensory storytelling & English skills lesson)
• Detailed teaching input and success criteria
• Pre-Formal, Semi-Formal, Formal and Formal+ pathways every session
• Strong cross-curricular opportunities including:
• Music and dance linked to Traveller culture
• Art, craft and junk modelling
• Forest School and outdoor learning
• Geography links exploring community and place
• Vocabulary building and inference tasks using illustrations
• Extensive comprehension and sequencing activities
• Junk-model character creation to support imagination and writing
• Story mapping with scaffolded use of time adverbials
• Colourful Semantics for sentence construction
• Emotional development through character exploration

Curriculum and skill development
• Listening and responding to text through shared reading
• Inference using visual cues and detail in illustrations
• Sequencing events using key images and ordering vocabulary
• Building descriptive vocabulary linked to appearance and personality
• Writing simple sentences to describe a character
• Communicating ideas verbally, through images or via AAC
• Developing cultural awareness and empathy
• Engaging in collaborative discussion and turn-taking

Intended outcomes
By the end of this unit, learners will have:
• Demonstrated understanding of the story and key character traits
• Planned and sequenced a character description using visual prompts
• Created an original ‘ogre’ character model based on inference from the text
• Produced a written character description appropriate to their pathway
• Built confidence to contribute ideas to others and express responses to a text
• Celebrated diversity through engagement with Traveller storytelling traditions