Through the Ice and Storm

Year 6 · Mystery

Through the Ice and Storm is a free, NAPLAN-aligned mystery 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.

The storm raged like a beast, tearing through the ship and throwing us off course. Waves as tall as buildings crashed against the hull, and the wind howled through the rigging. I gripped the rail tightly, my knuckles white. Ahead of us, through the sheets of rain and fog, the shape of something massive loomed in the dark, a towering iceberg, like a ghost from the past. The captain had ordered us to steer clear, but the storm was pushing us closer, and there was no way we could turn back now. My heart pounded as I watched the iceberg grow nearer. We had no idea what lay ahead, but we couldn’t stop, we had to face whatever was coming.

The complication

  • The iceberg has a hidden cavern and a sudden gust slams the ship into a crack, trapping us against the ice with the crew cut off from the bridge.
  • A dark shape moves inside the iceberg and begins to attack the ship with strange, sharp icicles that pierce the hull.
  • The storm forces us to anchor near the iceberg, and a rising current begins to pull the ship under, so we must decide whether to abandon ship onto unstable ice.

Sentence starters

  1. Suddenly the ship lurched and I stumbled against the rail, tasting salt and fear.
  2. The rain smelled of metal and the night air felt as if it wrapped the deck in a cold hand.

…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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