The Train That Never Arrived

Year 4

The Train That Never Arrived is a free, NAPLAN-aligned 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.

As Lucy stood on the platform, she stared in disbelief at the crumpled train ticket in her hand. The ticket, worn with age, had a date printed on it, 1920. She had found it on the ground just moments ago, as if it had appeared out of nowhere. The train station was bustling with people, but the train mentioned on the ticket was nowhere to be seen. With a puzzled expression, Lucy scanned the platform again, wondering if she had missed something. But no one else seemed to notice the strange ticket or the empty train tracks.

The complication

  1. Lucy hears a distant whistle and the old train slowly appears on the tracks, but when she steps aboard the carriage door slams and the conductor insists she travel to 1920.
  2. The ticket begins to glow and attracts the attention of a stranger who claims the ticket is part of a time-travel mystery and wants it back by force.
  3. Lucy discovers that anyone who uses the ticket cannot return to the present unless they find a hidden object on the 1920 platform that has been lost for a century.

Sentence starters

  1. Suddenly, a soft chime sounded and the empty rails began to hum as if something was coming.
  2. Lucy crouched and picked up the ticket again, turning it over to read every tiny letter under the platform light.

…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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