The Curse of the Missing Colors

Year 5 · Fantasy

The Curse of the Missing Colors is a free, NAPLAN-aligned fantasy 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.

Amelia had always loved the bright colours of the world, but when she woke up one morning, everything was different. The world around her had turned grey, buildings, trees, even the sky was drained of colour. It was as though the world had been covered in dust, and all the life had been washed away. But in the middle of the dull city, something strange caught her eye, a painting on a nearby billboard, glowing with brilliant shades of red, yellow, and blue. It was the only spot of colour left. What did it mean? And could she find more?

The complication

  • Amelia discovers that the painting fades whenever someone steps too close, so she must learn how to protect or carry colour without losing it.
  • A city official insists the grey is safer and tries to remove the billboard, forcing Amelia to hide the painting or persuade others that colour matters.
  • The remaining colour is trapped in a person or object (a child, a stray dog, an old paint tin) and releasing it could have unexpected consequences.

Sentence starters

  1. Amelia stepped closer to the billboard, reaching out as if she could catch the colour in her hands.
  2. The air smelled faintly of chalk and rain, and Amelia could almost hear a soft humming near the bright image.

…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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