Varjak Paw, Narrative

A fully resourced 3 week (15 lesson) writing unit. I created it for Y4, but it would work equally well in Y5 or Y6. All lesson plans, slides and tasks are included – it’s ready to go. Only the first week is shown in the preview. If you buy the unit, it is oraganised into sub-folders, lesson-by lesson.

Narrative: Tam’s story (3 weeks)
Stimulus: ‘Varjak Paw’ by SF Said
Purpose and Audience: Write a new part of the story (Tam’s story) in the style of SF Said.
Key knowledge and skills:
• compose a new part for a known narrative
• plan and write paragraphs around a theme
• use imaginative and rich vocabulary drawn from reading

During ‘Varjak Paw’ there are times when key characters leave the story before returning again. What they have been doing is never made explicit, but using a mixture of inference and imagination we can create what may have happened – we can write new narratives inspired by the novel.
The bulk of this unit focuses on Tam. The comfortable brown cat goes looking for food and is missing for a large chunk of the story. It is presumed that she has fallen foul to ‘the Vanishings’. Eventually, she is discovered locked in a cage. What happened to her while she was missing? Let’s narrate her story in third person and find out.