The Midnight Express

Year 5 · Adventure

The Midnight Express is a free, NAPLAN-aligned adventure writing resource for Year 5 students. It includes a story starter, complication, tiered vocabulary and scaffolds mapped to the Australian Curriculum (AC9).

Year 5 AC9E5LE05 AC9E5LA05 AC9E5LA08 AC9E5LA09 AC9E5LA04 AC9E5LY06

Supports the Year 5 achievement standard (creating written texts).

Australian Curriculum content descriptions © ACARA. Writesy is not affiliated with or endorsed by ACARA.

The old train sat still on the rusted tracks, its black engine glistening under the pale moonlight. Moss clung to the metal, as if the forest had tried to claim it long ago. A distant owl hooted, and the wind whispered through the trees. No one had seen this train in years, or so the town’s stories said. But tonight, as the clock struck midnight, the whistle let out a long, eerie wail. The wheels shuddered. The train was waking up.

The complication

  1. As the train began to move, the townspeople heard the whistle and rushed to investigate, fearing it might be a ghostly apparition.
  2. Suddenly, a thick fog rolled in, obscuring the train's path and making it difficult for anyone to see what was happening.
  3. The old conductor appeared at the door of the train, revealing a secret from his past that connected him to the town's history.

Sentence starters

  1. Suddenly, I felt a chill run down my spine as I watched the train lurch forward.
  2. The moonlight illuminated an unexpected figure standing near the door of the engine.

…and 1 more with your free account.

What's in the full resource

  • Complications
  • Brainstorming Prompts
  • Vocabulary Support
  • Sentence Starters
  • Dialogue Prompts
  • Writing Challenges
  • Sentence Variety
  • Creative Twists
  • Writing Checklist
  • Reflective Questions
  • Collaborative Writing Ideas
  • Printable teacher and student PDFs

NAPLAN writing criteria this resource targets

Audience Text structure Ideas Character and setting Vocabulary Cohesion Paragraphing Sentence structure Punctuation Spelling

See how Writesy aligns to the NAPLAN writing criteria.

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