The Great Annual Hippo River Race
Overcoming the odds
The Great Annual Hippo River Race is a free, NAPLAN-aligned overcoming the odds writing resource for Australian primary students. It includes a story starter, complication, tiered vocabulary and scaffolds mapped to the Australian Curriculum (AC9).
Benny the Hippo tightened his goggles and took a deep breath. The crowd of hippos behind him stomped the ground excitedly, splashing mud everywhere. This was it—the biggest race of the year! Benny had trained harder than ever, swimming against river currents, dodging crocodiles, and perfecting his backstroke. He looked at his biggest rival, Max, who smirked confidently. The referee, a serious-looking hippo in uniform, raised the starter pistol. BANG! The race had begun!
The complication
- Benny’s swim trunks start slipping off mid-race!
- A group of mischievous ducks causes chaos in the water.
- Max plays dirty—what trick does he have up his sleeve?
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
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