Year 4 Ice Trap Poetry Writing Unit

This English unit is designed for year 4. The unit requires at least one copy of the book ‘Ice Trap’ by Meredith Hooper. The aim is for the children to write a poem based on the book Ice Trap. The unit allows the children the opportunity to become more familiar with different forms of poetry and their composition. It also gives the children the chance to role-play the parts the journey of Ernest Shackleton and experiment with different poetic devices. It also develops the following skills and knowledge from the National Curriculum:

Develop positive attitudes to reading, and an understanding of what they read, by:
• Listening to and discussing a wide range of fiction, poetry, plays, non-fiction and reference books or textbooks
• Recognising some different forms of poetry
• Identifying how language, structure, and presentation contribute to meaning

Writing (Composition):

Plan their writing by:
• discussing writing similar to that which they are planning to write in order to understand and learn from its structure, vocabulary and grammar
• discussing and recording ideas

Draft and write by:
• composing and rehearsing sentences orally (including dialogue), progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures
Evaluate and edit by:
• assessing the effectiveness of their own and others’ writing and suggesting improvements
• proofread for spelling and punctuation errors
• read their own writing aloud, to a group or the whole class, using appropriate intonation and controlling the tone and volume so that the meaning is clear.

This is a 3-week unit which includes 10 separate lessons/activities. However, some of these lessons will often need more than a single lesson to complete (particularly the writing and planning sections).

Within this unit plan there are hyperlinks to other resources associated with the plan.