The Secret of the Coral Cove

Year 6 · Fantasy

The Secret of the Coral Cove is a free, NAPLAN-aligned fantasy writing resource for Year 6 students. It includes a story starter, complication, tiered vocabulary and scaffolds mapped to the Australian Curriculum (AC9).

Year 6 AC9E6LE05 AC9E6LA05 AC9E6LA08 AC9E6LA09 AC9E6LA04 AC9E6LY06

Supports the Year 6 achievement standard (creating written texts).

Australian Curriculum content descriptions © ACARA. Writesy is not affiliated with or endorsed by ACARA.

I always thought the ocean was just a vast, endless blue, but I never knew there was a world hidden beneath the surface, one that was as magical as it was mysterious. It wasn’t until the day I met Coral, a mermaid with shimmering turquoise hair and a tail that sparkled like the sea at sunrise, that I realised just how much I had yet to discover. She sat calmly on the rocks in the heart of the coral cove, a place where the water glowed in every shade of blue and purple, and fish swam around like colourful streaks of light. But Coral had a secret, one she was ready to share with me.

The complication

  • Coral’s secret attracts a curious reef creature that wants to take her away, and I must choose whether to help or hide.
  • A sudden storm changes the cove’s tides and reveals an entrance to an underwater cavern, but it closes unless Coral and I solve a riddle to reopen it.
  • The glowing water begins to fade because an old reef guardian is ill, and Coral needs my help to find a missing shell that will restore its light.

Sentence starters

  1. I scrambled up onto the slick rocks, reaching out to touch Coral’s shimmering tail as the tide whispered around our ankles.
  2. The cove smelled of salt and warm kelp, and the water hummed like a sleeping choir under a violet sky.

…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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