Up and Down | Year 2 English Unit

A 3-week, fully resourced primary literacy unit based on Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers. KS1 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 the National Curriculum for English at KS1 and KS2.

• 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 retelling of the penguin’s ambitious journey to fly, written in three parts: leaving his friend, the lonely flight, and the joyful return. Pupils use subordination with ‘when’ and ask question sentences from the boy’s perspective.

Grammar features (Year 2 NC-aligned)

• Subordination using the conjunction ‘when’ to join two clauses.
• Question sentences using question marks and question words (who, what, where, why, how).

Themes explored

Ambition and dreams, friendship and belonging, persistence and never giving up.

Key vocabulary

Ambition, dream, lonely, circus, soared, fluttered, worried, together.

Format & compatibility