The Butterfly Lion English Pack - Lesson 8: Letter Writing | Formal and Informal Letters

Based on one of Morpurgo’s beloved stories, this set of 20 themed lessons challenge your Year 5 class to develop their reading and writing skills. 
Read the heartwarming tale of Bertie and his lion whilst exploring the genres of balanced arguments, letter writing, newspaper reports and poetry as well as developing essential reading skills.

This Balanced Argument KS2 planning pack begins your class's exploration of the powerful and emotional story of Michael Morpurgo’s ‘The Butterfly Lion’.

Have your class empathise and explore the key characters’ thoughts and opinions on an important turning point in the story and allow the children to express their own opinion on how the story should or might progress. Discuss and investigate the features of a balanced argument and the effect of using a formal tone on the reader. Explore the use of cohesive devices in the children’s writing as they investigate what makes an effective balanced argument and encourage them to use these features in their own attempts at this genre.

This seven-lesson scheme of work includes the lesson slides, plans and resources to teach your children how to write effective balanced arguments alongside a classic story. It is necessary to have at least a class copy of ‘The Butterfly Lion’ by Michael Morpurgo to teach this scheme of work.

This letter-writing KS2 planning pack themed around Michael Morpurgo's The Butterfly Lion contains three complete lessons which will challenge your class to explore and unpick the relationship between two characters in the story through the process of writing letters. These lessons are focused on the skill of analysing the author’s use of language and sentence structure to convey information about the relationship between Bertie and Millie, whilst recapping and extending the children’s understanding of letter writing.

The children will investigate the features and genre-specific language of letters and explore the differences between formal and informal letter writing. The children have the opportunity to create an effect with their choice of language to include a familiar and informal tone that matches the relationship they have studied.

This three-lesson scheme contains the slides, lesson plans and printable resources needed to teach your class about letter writing in the context of this wonderful story.

Use this complete poetry planning Year 5 pack to help your class explore the use and effects of different poetic devices when writing a poem. Comment on the overall mood and tone of some narrative poetry before performing it, using voice, movement and gestures to match this tone. Help your children see how using structural features such as rhyme and rhythm can add meaning, suspense or pattern to a poem, complimenting the language features to create an effect for the reader.

Challenge your class to mimic these features in their own poem themed around bravery, particularly linked with Bertie’s actions during the war in the story of ‘The Butterfly Lion’. Allow your class to write their own blackout poetry using the story to create this interesting type of appropriated poetry.

This three-lesson scheme comes with plans, slides and printable resources to help you and your class appreciate and create wonderful poetry.

This newspaper reports KS2 planning pack bases four complete lessons on Bertie's return from the war in the story of The Butterfly Lion. Your Year 5 class will discuss the effective use of different grammatical and structural features of a newspaper report, including relative clauses and direct and reported quotes. Using The Butterfly Lion activity ideas within this planning pack, your Year 5 class will enjoy learning new grammatical terms in context using the ready-made examples of newspaper reports.

This scheme of work contains all the plans, slides and printable resources needed to teach your class about newspaper reports in the context of this story.

This complete planning pack is perfect for Year 5 The Butterfly Lion guided reading sessions. Use the included teaching input slides and printable resources for each lesson to help your KS2 class explore the different ways that a character is developed by an author, summarising a section of text and evidencing inferred information about a character and their traits.

The three lessons in this Butterfly Lion planning pack come with everything you need to develop and improve your student's reading and comprehension skills.

The first lesson in this balanced arguments KS2 planning pack offers your Year 5 class the opportunity to explore and discuss examples of balanced arguments which are included in the accompanying printable resources for this lesson. Your class will be on the lookout for effective features of a balanced argument and discuss why the author has chosen to use the different features that they find. Extend the children's thinking further using the included teaching input slides as you begin to draw out how the writing might affect the reader and what the purpose of this genre of writing might be.

Read up to the critical moment in the story where Bertie and his family have to make a decision about the lion cub. Use the teaching input slides to inspire discussions about the characters’ thoughts and feelings in the situation and the reasons behind the actions described by the author. Have your class look at the same situation from the point of view of different characters through role-play and challenge them to continue exploring this by writing in role as one of the characters.

This lesson would be perfect for a session themed around The Butterfly Lion guided reading where children explore and empathise with the characters through a variety of drama and writing activities supported by the included printable resources.

Use this cohesive device KS2 lesson plan with accompanying slides and printable resources to help teach your class to identify different types of cohesive devices and how we can use them to improve paragraph cohesion.

During the teaching input, read a piece of writing which has deliberately left out devices that aid cohesion and discuss how this affects the reader. Challenge your Year 5 class to spot and discuss why a piece of disjointed writing is less effective than one which uses cohesive devices to help the writing hang together and link ideas within and across paragraphs. The pre-prepared paragraphs and cohesive devices checklists in the accompanying resources give your KS2 class the perfect opportunity to use cohesive devices or identify where they have been used.

These cohesive devices KS2 lesson plan draws on the previous lesson's learning on the types of cohesive devices which can be used to improve paragraph cohesion. The children will explore a decision that Bertie has to make in the story of The Butterfly Lion and discuss their opinions on the decision using conscience alley. They will then use these discussions to begin expressing their own opinions cohesively using formal language.

The lesson input slides included with this pack help to guide the children's discussions and understanding of formal language features and cohesive devices. Your Year 5 class is then encouraged to create the first draft of their concluding paragraph, expressing their own opinion on the decision Bertie has to make.

The fifth lesson in this Butterfly Lion planning pack encourages your Year 5 class to generate and discuss some of the ideas and content for their balanced argument. Using the included slides, investigate the structure of a balanced argument with your class to box up and organise the ideas for their final draft. The questions provided on the slides will also encourage the children to think clearly about the two different sides of the argument make decisions about how they will include them in their writing next lesson.

The accompanying plan and resources provide you with different ways in which to support your class in generating their own ideas and organising them into coherent paragraphs.

Use the examples of balanced arguments to inspire your class in their own attempts at this genre of writing. Your Year 5 class will use their learning and understanding of the different features of a balanced argument to create a formal, cohesive and effective discussion text.

This writing a balanced argument KS2 lesson plan comes with teaching input slides as well as printable resources which you can use to support and extend your class's use of the different features in a balanced argument.

This Editing Writing KS2 lesson plan, teaching input slides and printable resources to guide and encourage your class to reflect on their writing and chosen areas on which to build and improve. Using the provided editing station cards, challenge your Year 5 to work independently to find areas of their writing to improve in different ways, including searching for spelling and punctuation errors as well as specific features of a balanced argument.

Use this formal and informal letter writing KS2 lesson plan to revisit the genre of letter writing with your Year 5 class and discuss the purpose of the features that are included when writing a letter. Using the provided formal and informal letter writing examples, explore the differences between the two types of letter, including the specific language that is used in each.

This complete lesson includes the teaching input slides which will help inspire your KS2 class's learning as they investigate different letter writing activities.

This character study KS2 plan and accompanying resources would be perfect for a lesson themed on the butterfly lion guided reading. As a class, your Year 5 children are encouraged to find places in the text and use quotes from the story to back up their thoughts and opinions on the relationship between Bertie and Millie and how this relationship has grown and developed as the story is told.

The included teaching input slides ask the children how they know how the characters feel about one another. What do the characters’ actions tell them about their thoughts and feelings? Help your class gain a deeper understanding of these characters’ relationships by investigating the author's use of language and sentence structure to convey the relationship between these two characters.

Using the accompanying printable resources, children can answer the character study questions using quotes from the story, or they can build up a character profile of Bertie or Millie based on how the other character sees them.

Teach this Writing an Informal Letter KS2 lesson to challenge your Year 5 class to write in character to convey an established relationship which they have studied from the book 'The Butterfly Lion'. They will be expected to use features of an informal letter as well as carefully chosen language and sentence structure to achieve the effect that the writer knows, and loves, the reader.

Using the accompanying resources and lesson input slides to support the letter writing activities and ideas in this planning pack, your KS2 class can produce some powerful writing based on the examples they have read.

The first lesson in this series is a lesson on the features of a narrative poem which aims to challenge your KS2 class to analyse a narrative poem based on the story of 'The Butterfly Lion'. Recap on the different poetic devices used in poetry with your class and explore how a poet has used them to create different effects in a narrative poem. Using the teaching input slides, analyse and unpick metaphorical images created in the poem about bravery during WWI. Have your Year 5 class discuss the mood and tone produced by the structural and language choices made by the poet.

Using the accompanying resources, encourage your class to match this tone when performing, using voice, gestures and movement to add to their performance.

This narrative poetry Year 5 lesson pack encourages and supports your KS2 class to generate language to write their own narrative poem around the theme of bravery. Using the included lesson input slides, explore how the children can use poetic devices to draw their audience into the poem and experience it themselves through the power of their words.

Investigate the effect of making different creative choices with their language as well as how syllables in a poem can affect the rhythm using the example narrative poem as a basis for their discussions.

Have your class ever seen a blackout poem before? The included lesson slides in this Butterfly Lion poetry lesson guide your Year 5 class through the process of writing this kind of appropriated poetry using blackout poem examples. The accompanying printable resources will help support and guide your class in creating their own blackout poems using pages from the story of 'The Butterfly Lion'.

Challenge your class to create new images, moods and themes using someone else’s words. By using words that have already been written, your class can extend their own vocabulary and produce their own unique poem and can be extended by asking them to justify their choices of words.

Using the model texts and newspaper report examples included in this complete KS2 planning pack, help your class recap on the features of a newspaper report and analyse if they have been used effectively in the examples. Using the engaging teacher input slides, focus on the introduction to a report and identify the different ‘5Ws’ in each report, discussing and thinking about why this is used by the author and how it can be done effectively.

Challenge your class to write a draft of their own report based on a point in the story of ‘The Butterfly Lion’ supported by the accompanying printable resources.

Investigate the use of quotes in a newspaper report and why they are used using this complete direct and reported speech KS2 lesson pack. Use the included lesson input slides to explore the differences between direct and reported speech with your Year 5 class and the effect that each creates within the report, deciding which version of the quote works better in the context.

The accompanying printable resources and activity ideas that come in the lesson pack will challenge your class to gather quotes from the characters in the story through role-play or by listening to recordings of the characters expressing their views.

This 'Butterfly Lion' themed, relative clauses KS2 lesson plan and accompanying resources introduces your class to the use of relative clauses in their newspaper reports to add information about a person or objects. Explore how relative pronouns can be used to define or identify a noun as well as using commas to separate a relative clause from the rest of the sentence. Practise writing a relative clause about the people involved in the report and add these into the plan for the first draft.

This final lesson in this newspaper reports KS2 planning pack has your Year 5 class writing their own report based on Bertie’s return to England after the war. Children have the opportunity to apply their learning about relative clauses, direct and reported speech in their own writing and evaluate and assess the effectiveness of each feature they have used. Encourage the children to act as real newspaper editors when improving their writing to create a high-quality final draft using the supporting printable resources for this lesson.

This Year 5 reading lesson is packed full of summarising activities KS2 resources. The included lesson slides and activity ideas will help your class develop the skill of concisely and effectively summarising the story of The Butterfly Lion and its chapters. Take the opportunity to discuss when summarising a story might be helpful and draw out the key points which should be included in a summary using the provided printable resources.

Challenge your enthusiastic readers and writers with summarising activities that require them to use a limited amount of sentences or words.

This inference KS2 lesson plan and accompanying slides and resources will challenge your class to explore all they know about a new character in the story of The Butterfly Lion. They will have the opportunity to investigate how much they know and can infer about this character from one chapter. Generate inferred information about the character’s personality as a class using the included teaching input slides and model how to pick out and use quotes from the text to justify and evidence their ideas.

Investigate how and why the author develops a character throughout a story by exploring how Bertie changes as he grows. Help your class discover how the author develops a character by giving them a lesson to learn from an event they experience within the story. Challenge the children to pick out these important events and reflect on how they change the character’s thoughts, feelings and actions.