Year 5/6 Writing Assessment: Setting Description Unit – Floating City

Year 5/6 Writing Assessment: Setting Description Unit – Floating City & The Door in the Tree

This engaging two-day writing assessment is designed for Upper KS2 pupils and focuses on developing high-quality descriptive writing through rich vocabulary exploration and modelled teaching.

Day 1: Pupils explore a stunning Floating City image stimulus, generating ambitious vocabulary to describe the setting, atmosphere and senses. They build a personal vocabulary bank before analysing and discussing effective descriptive language. The lesson then moves to a fully modelled setting description using a different image stimulus, The Door in the Tree, allowing pupils to practise identifying and applying key writing techniques.

Day 2: Pupils independently write their own setting description of the Floating City, drawing upon the vocabulary, ideas and notes collected during Day 1. This lesson serves as a writing assessment, enabling teachers to evaluate pupils’ ability to apply descriptive techniques independently.