Beowulf - Learning Sequence

The Learning Sequence for the Beowulf unit spans over six weeks, designed to immerse Year 6 students in the rich tapestry of Anglo-Saxon history and literature. The first week sets the groundwork with a word detective grid to decipher unfamiliar terms, reviews knowledge of the Anglo-Saxons, and prompts discussions about Vikings to identify areas for research. Students are encouraged to skim and scan various sources, recording their findings on the grid. In the following weeks, students delve into the mechanics of writing, experimenting with conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs, and relative clauses to enhance their sentences. They annotate planning grids with paragraph openers and develop their writing's beginning and ending. The process includes writing a text, evaluating, and proofreading, ensuring they refer to a provided toolkit for guidance.

As the unit progresses, students are introduced to the epic tale of Beowulf through engaging activities such as reading and discussing passages, annotating texts, and exploring character motivations through role-play and thought-tracking exercises. By close reading specific pages, they examine language choices, infer characters' emotions, and record their responses. The sequence also includes creative writing tasks like writing diary entries, dialogues, and kenning poems, which are metaphorical descriptions typical in Old English literature. In the final weeks, the learning sequence shifts focus to narrative writing, with students crafting their own stories inspired by the poem, using a toolkit to guide their writing style. The unit culminates with discussions on the character of Beowulf, comparing traits across different stories within the text, and reflecting on personal opinions of the epic hero.