Dragon’s Apprentice

Year 4 · Fantasy

Dragon’s Apprentice is a free, NAPLAN-aligned fantasy 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.

I never imagined I’d find myself here, deep in the mountains, alone with a dragon. It started as a simple curiosity, just a glimmer of hope that the legends were true. And now, every night, I sneak away to the cave where the dragon hides. I’ve learned so much in these few weeks, how to communicate with its bright eyes, how to calm it when it gets scared. Tonight, I hold out my hand once more, offering a piece of food. The dragon stares at it, its tiny wings fluttering. Will it trust me enough to take it?

The complication

  1. The dragon suddenly refuses to accept food and starts hiding deeper in the cave, making it hard for me to keep visiting.
  2. A storm traps me in the mountain overnight and the dragon becomes frightened and restless, knocking over rocks that block the cave entrance.
  3. A group of treasure hunters follows the legends and arrives near the cave, threatening the dragon’s safety and forcing me to choose between helping the dragon or calling for help.

Sentence starters

  1. Action opener: I reached out slowly and let the scent of the food guide the dragon’s nose.
  2. Meanwhile opener (connective opener): Meanwhile, the wind whistled outside the cave and made the shadows dance on the rock walls.

…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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