The Dancing Bear | Year 3 English Unit | 15 Complete Lessons + Resources + Mark Scheme

A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on The Dancing Bear by Michael Morpurgo. 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 narrative recount of the dancing bear’s journey from the mountain village to the city, written in third person, followed by a heartfelt letter from Roxanne to Bruno expressing how she feels about losing him. Pupils use adverbs of manner to describe Bruno’s movements, organise distinct settings into paragraphs, and punctuate direct speech accurately.

Grammar features (Year 3 NC-aligned)

• Adverbs of manner (-ly adverbs describing how an action is done).
• Inverted commas and direct speech punctuation.

Themes explored

Fame and exploitation, friendship and loyalty, nature and belonging.

Key vocabulary

Gracefully, clumsily, longingly, spotlight, wilderness, tenderly, abandoned, magnificent.

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

Tags

KS2, Year 3, English, fiction, Michael Morpurgo, reading and writing, complete unit, differentiated, NC-aligned, lesson plans, resources, the dancing bear