A Planning Sequence for Boy in the Tower

Outcomes:

Journalistic writing, formal letters, non-chronological reports

Main Outcome:

Own version narrative (past and present tense)

Length:

15 sessions, 3 weeks

Overview and Outcomes:

This is a three-week planning sequence based upon Boy in the Tower by Polly Ho-Yen. Children will learn and revise many of the key grammar requirements of Y6 and have opportunity to apply them within short and longer written outcomes.

Synopsis of Text:

When they first arrived, they came quietly and stealthily as if they tip-toed into the world when we were all looking the other way.

Ade loves living at the top of a tower block. From his window, he feels like he can see the whole world stretching out beneath him.

His mum doesn’t really like looking outside – but it’s going outside that she hates.

She’s happier sleeping all day inside their tower, where it’s safe.

But one day, other tower blocks on the estate start falling down around them and strange, menacing plants begin to appear.

Now their tower isn’t safe anymore. Ade and his mum are trapped and there’s no way out . . .

Links:

Dystopia, post-apocolyptic, survival