The Great Annual Hippo River Race

Year 4 · Realistic

The Great Annual Hippo River Race is a free, NAPLAN-aligned realistic writing resource for Year 4 students. It includes a story starter, complication, tiered vocabulary and scaffolds mapped to the Australian Curriculum (AC9).

Year 4 AC9E4LE05 AC9E4LA06 AC9E4LA04 AC9E4LA12 AC9E4LA11 AC9E4LY06

Supports the Year 4 achievement standard (creating written texts).

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

Benny the Hippo tightened his goggles and took a deep breath. The crowd of hippos behind him stomped the ground excitedly, splashing mud everywhere. This was it, the biggest race of the year! Benny had trained harder than ever, swimming against river currents, dodging crocodiles, and perfecting his backstroke. He looked at his biggest rival, Max, who smirked confidently. The referee, a serious-looking hippo in uniform, raised the starter pistol. BANG! The race had begun!

The complication

  1. As Benny swims ahead, he suddenly feels a cramp in his leg, making it difficult to keep his pace against the current.
  2. Max uses an unexpected tactic, splashing water into Benny's goggles, blinding him just as they approach the first turn.
  3. A group of mischievous monkeys throws bananas into the water, causing chaos and distracting all the competitors.

Sentence starters

  1. Suddenly, Benny felt a sharp pain in his leg as he pushed through the water.
  2. "I won't let you win this time!" Benny shouted over his shoulder to Max.

…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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