This project is designed to support teaching and learning of pupils in their work relating to the Year 3 Narrative Unit 4 Authors and Letters in the renewed framework for Literacy in England. The exemplar unit is designed, in three phases, to be covered in three weeks. The resources included in this project are designed to support specific aspects of this unit - though they may also be useful for pupils in other year groups.

The first phase (8 days) of this exemplar unit involves pupils reading a range of books by the same author and learning how to write book reviews. Although no lesson plans are provided to support this work, a variety of book review worksheets have been provided in Word and Textease CT formats.

The second phase (2 days) focuses on analysing letters written for different purposes. As part of this project, the first two lesson plans are adaptations for this work and are provided with appropriate support materials based on the text ‘The Jolly Postman or Other People’s Letters’ by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, published by Heinemann (1986) ISBN 0-434-9515-2.

The third phase of the exemplar plans (5 days) involves pupils learning how to compose their own letters to real people for a real reason. Lesson plans for the first three of these days are provided, focussing on teaching pupils how to compose their own letters, not to real people, but in response to the letters in the text used, enabling letters to real people for a real reason to be developed in the final two days of this unit.

Each lesson has a lesson plan, appropriate resources in Textease CT or Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to share with the children showing learning objectives, activities and success criteria together with additional resources to support the lesson where appropriate. It may also be necessary to plan additional extended writing time to give the children further opportunities to complete their letters or write additional ones.