The Time-Traveling Lunchbox

Year 4 · Sci-Fi

The Time-Traveling Lunchbox is a free, NAPLAN-aligned sci-fi 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.

Jack always thought his lunchbox was a little too old-fashioned, with its rusty latch and dented corners, but it was his favourite. One ordinary school day, when he opened it to find his lunch, Jack got the shock of his life. Instead of the usual sandwich and apple, there was a swirling vortex inside, glowing with strange colours. His heart raced as he reached out to touch it, and before he knew it, the lunchbox had pulled him into the vortex, dropping him into a world he didn’t recognise. He looked around, he wasn’t in school anymore. He was somewhere else, somewhere far in the past.

The complication

  • Jack finds that people in this past world think he belongs to a strange invading group and he must prove he is not a threat.
  • The vortex in the lunchbox begins to close, and Jack must find a way to reopen it before he is stuck in the past forever.
  • Jack realises the rules of this world are different: touching certain objects changes history, and he must avoid making a mistake that will alter the future.

Sentence starters

  1. Suddenly, Jack felt the ground tilt beneath his feet as the air around him hummed with an unfamiliar song.
  2. Jack held his breath and reached out a trembling hand, watching colours ripple across the dusty floor.

…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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