This five-lesson World War 2 evacuee diary entries planning pack will guide your Year 4 class in creating a 1939 evacuee character and writing from their perspective in WW2 diary entries.

Supported by the included lesson slides and printable resources your class will learn about the features of a diary entry as well as how to split their recount writing into clear paragraphs and use expanded noun phrases with prepositional phrases. The differentiated lesson plans come with alternative activities to help your class get the most out of their learning and apply the knowledge they have learnt about evacuees in World War 2.

You may also like our World War 2 (LKS2) Topic Bundle for Year 3/4, with World War 2 lessons across a range of subjects to fully immerse your class in their topic. 

Character Development

In order to begin writing their own World War 2 evacuee diary entry, your Year 4 class will take the time to create their own 1939 evacuee characters. Their characters will have detailed information about them that will be inferred from the way they write their diary entries.

The slides and accompanying printable resources provide examples of characters and their diary entries that the children can infer information from. Using the evacuee suitcase template, your KS2 class will then be challenged to design and create their own character information before role-playing as their own characters. Being interviewed as their characters will provide them with the opportunity to develop well-rounded characters for the evacuee diary entries.

View Lesson 1

Features of Diary Writing

The included model texts in this Year 4 WW2 lesson pack focuses on the features of diary writing.

Using the sentences on the included lesson slides the children can discuss and pick out the sentences which would be more likely to be found in a diary entry. Your KS2 class will have the opportunity to explore some examples of diary writing from the perspective of several different evacuee children. They will need to find the structural and language features that this genre includes and use these ideas in their own writing.

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TiP ToP Paragraphs

Use this Paragraphing KS2 lesson pack to teach your Year 4 class to use the TiP ToP method for deciding when to use a new paragraph.

The ready-to-use resources included in this paragraphs Year 4 planning pack will challenge your class to analyse short extracts of text to define where a new paragraph is needed. They use their learning to plan out the events and ideas for their WW2 evacuee diary entry they will be writing later in the scheme of work. Using separate paragraphs, the children will organise their ideas for their diary supported by the printable resources.

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Expanded Noun Phrases

The slides and printable resources that come with this expanded noun phrases Year 4 planning pack help to teach your KS2 class to write their own expanded noun phrases which include a prepositional phrase.

The lesson gives examples of noun phrases themed around the experiences of evacuees in WW2 which your class can then convert into expanded noun phrases using a choice of adjectives. The class are then challenged to add a prepositional phrase to concisely add more detail and become more specific with their descriptions. Supported by the accompanying resources the children then write their own expanded noun phrases to use in their diary entries in the following lessons.

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Diary Writing

The final diary writing Year 4 lesson in this scheme of work consolidates all the skills and understanding that your class has worked on in the previous four lessons to have them write from the perspective of an evacuee child. They will write about the first day they are evacuated using accurate paragraphs and including concise expanded noun phrases in their descriptions.

The included teaching input slides and printable resources will support your class in making sure they are confident in their writing. They will use peer reviews to help them edit and improve the spelling and grammar of their writing at the end of the lesson. This could be extended over another lesson to allow the children to re-draft their writing.

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