Note: Children working significantly above or below age-related expectations will need differentiated support, which may include tracking forward or back in terms of learning objectives. EAL learners should be expected to work within the overall expectations for their year group. For further advice see the progression strands and hyperlinks to useful sources of practical support.

Note: Phases 1 and 2 are designed to run concurrently.

Phase 1: Reading; response; analysis (12 days - to run alongside phase 2)

Teaching content:

• Begin reading an extended story by a significant children's author as a serial story. Continue throughout the unit. Make brief notes summarising the plot as you read and encourage children to comment or raise questions. Keep a record of key events and review the structure of the story at intervals.
• Look at the way that one event leads to another. Select extracts from the story that demonstrate cause and effect so that children can reread together. Ask children to give explanations of why things happen in the story.
• At key moments in the story, use improvisation and discussion to explore what could happen next. Children note their own ideas and check and confirm their predictions as you read on.
• Focus on a particular character and reread extracts from the text together to gather information about that character. Build on previous work by asking children to consider what the character might be thinking and feeling. Look at ways that characters change during the course of the story.
• Select key pieces of dialogue to read together and talk about how they move the story on or reveal more about a particular character. Children could work in small groups to enact pieces of dialogue and improvise further conversations, for example What would these two characters say if they met at this point in the story? Encourage children to speak clearly and use intonation.
• At the end of the serial story, demonstrate how to write an evaluation of the book, commenting on important aspects. Discuss features of extended stories, for example more complicated plots, finding out more about characters. Discuss techniques used by the author to sustain the reader's interest, for example cliff-hangers at the end of chapters.
• Have other longer stories available for children to read independently. Support children in selecting and reading whole books on their own: for example, give a group copies of the same book, ask them each to read up to a certain point and then discuss it together.

Learning outcome:

• Children can make predictions about a text and discuss the way characters develop across a story.