A Wild Ride

Year 5 · Sci-Fi

A Wild Ride is a free, NAPLAN-aligned sci-fi 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 storm raged overhead, but I barely noticed. All I could see was the colossal machine barreling down the tracks ahead of me, half train, half shark. Its great metallic teeth gleamed in the flickering light of the storm, and steam hissed from its sides, like a creature waking from a long slumber. My heart raced as I heard the distant clank of its wheels turning faster and faster. The shark train was coming closer, and I had to get aboard before it disappeared into the dark, stormy night.

The complication

  • The shark train speeds past the last safe platform, forcing me to jump at the very last second and cling to a narrow ladder beneath its carriage.
  • A crew member on the shark train spots me and orders a guard dog, so I must hide in a steaming vent and find out whether they are friend or foe.
  • The storm cuts power to the train yard lights, and I must navigate collapsing scaffolding and rising floodwater to reach the boarding ramp before the train disappears into the tunnel.

Sentence starters

  1. Suddenly I grabbed the ladder and hauled myself up, rain soaking my jumper as the train thundered past the platform.
  2. The air smelled of hot metal and wet coal, and steam painted grey clouds around the carriage windows.

…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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