Great Fire of London: Diary Entries - The Complete Series (5 lessons)

#TheCompleteSeries5lessons

Your class will delve into the past and question how we know about historic events. Children will be introduced to Samuel Pepys and explore his account of the Great Fire of London through his famous diaries. After, children will be transported back in time by using their senses. They will imagine what life might have been like at the time of the Great Fire, before finally writing their very own account of the events of Sunday 2nd September 1666.

This set of five Great Fire of London Diary Entries English lessons for Year 2 comes complete with detailed planning, slides to support teaching input and a range of differentiated resources. All ready to download with the click of a button!

This scheme is also within our Great Fire of London English Bundle.

Are you looking for more Great Fire of London resources? Take a look at our cross-curricular topic bundle which includes schemes of work for History, Geography, Art and DT!

#Lesson1SamuelPepysDiaries

This Great Fire of London Year 2 Diary Entries lesson introduces children to the events of the Great Fire of London, through Samuel Pepys' diaries. First, children will discuss what a diary is and why diaries are written, before considering the importance of diaries when finding out about the past.

Capture your children's imaginations by reading a simplified version of Samuel Pepys' diaries. Children will find out about the events that took place and how the fire ripped through London, destroying buildings and leaving people homeless. Children will also get to know Samuel Pepys and his role in stopping the fire from spreading. During their independent activities, children will answer questions about Samuel Pepys' diaries, designed to test their comprehension and memory of what happened on that windy weekend in 1666. As an alternative activity, children will be given diaries written by people who could have lived through the Great Fire of London. Their challenge? To work out who the diaries belong to!

This Great Fire of London Year 2 Diary Entries lesson is ready to teach, including handy downloads of Samuel Pepys' diary, differentiated activities and slides to support teaching input.

#Lesson2FeaturesofaDiary

Following on from the previous lesson, your KS1 children will recap the events of the Great Fire of London and look again at examples from Samuel Pepys' diary in more detail. This time, the lesson will focus on features of a diary entry.

Using the slides to support teaching, you will run through the features of a diary with your Year 2 children, including the use of personal pronouns and past tense verbs, taking time to learn about each one before challenging the children to independently identify features of a diary entry.

This lesson comes with detailed planning and differentiated worksheets to suit all learners. We have done the hard work so you don't have to!

#Lesson35Senses

In this KS1 Great Fire of London 5 Senses lesson plan, children will be transported back in time to 1666 where they will use their senses to imagine what life might have been like in 17th century London.

To set the scene, children will listen to the sounds of fire burning whilst looking at images of the Great Fire of London. They will be challenged to use their senses to describe what they can see, hear and smell and then imagine how they would have felt during the fire. Afterwards, children will independently write descriptive sentences using the 5 senses.

This Year 2 Great Fire of London 5 senses lesson plan comes with helpful resources, including a senses word mat, picture cards and audio files to make the past come to life. In addition, every lesson comes complete with detailed planning and slides to support teaching and learning.

#Lesson4PlanningaDiaryEntry

In this Great Fire of London Diary Planning lesson for KS1, children will briefly recap the features of a diary before being transported back in time to September 1666. Your Year 2 class will be planning a diary entry about the Great Fire of London in this ready-to-teach KS1 English lesson.

Your class will draw on everything they have learned, both about the events of the Great Fire of London and the features of a diary, to plan their own diary entry as if they were there during the Great Fire. The slideshow included looks at the structure of a diary and asks children to consider where they were when they found out about the fire, how they felt and what they did next, to support their diary planning.

This lesson comes fully prepared with a lesson plan, slideshow, differentiated activity ideas, and a range of printable resources.

#Lesson5DiaryWriting

This Diary Writing KS1 lesson challenges your Year 2 class to follow their plans they created from the previous lesson to write their diary entries about the Great Fire of London.

The slideshow included will show children two example diaries, children will need to decide which diary is better and why, taking into account whether the writer has used all the features of a diary. This will encourage children to think about what they need to include when writing their own diary entry, including past tense verbs, personal pronouns and writing about main events.

Children will get to participate in a shared write, whereby you can model to children how you would like their diaries to look and what they should include. This lesson comes with differentiated worksheets and a detailed lesson plan to support teaching and learning.

Free Overview (Medium-Term Plan)

Download a free overview to support your teaching of this scheme of work.

Free Assessment Grid

Download a free, editable assessment grid to support your teaching of this scheme of work.

Curriculum Objectives covered

• discussing the sequence of events in books and how items of information are related

• add suffixes to spell longer words, including –ment, –ness, –ful, –less, –ly

• writing narratives about personal experiences and those of others (real and fictional)
• writing about real events
• writing for different purposes
• planning or saying out loud what they are going to write about
• writing down ideas and/or key words, including new vocabulary
• encapsulating what they want to say, sentence by sentence
• evaluating their writing with the teacher and other pupils
• proof-reading to check for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation [for example, ends of sentences punctuated correctly]

• expanded noun phrases to describe and specify [for example, the blue butterfly]
• the present and past tenses correctly and consistently including the progressive form
• subordination (using when, if, that, or because) and co-ordination (using or, and, or but)

• Formation of nouns using suffixes such as –ness, –er and by compounding [for example, whiteboard, superman]
• Subordination (using when, if, that, because) and co-ordination (using or, and, but)
• Expanded noun phrases for description and specification [for example, the blue butterfly, plain flour, the man in the moon]
• Correct choice and consistent use of present tense and past tense throughout writing
• Use of the progressive form of verbs in the present and past tense to mark actions in progress [for example, she is drumming, he was shouting]
• Use of capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to demarcate sentences

• participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play/improvisations and debates