The Last Explorer on Mars

Year 6 · Sci-Fi

The Last Explorer on Mars is a free, NAPLAN-aligned sci-fi 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 Martian landscape stretched out before me, endless and silent, bathed in an orange glow from the low sun. My boots made a faint crunch as I walked across the dusty red soil, the only sound in the vast emptiness. I was the last one left. My team had been forced to evacuate after a catastrophic systems failure, leaving me alone to finish the mission we had started. Behind me, the faint outline of the ship hovered, waiting for my return, but there was no rush. This was the moment I had dreamed of, standing on Mars, exploring its mysteries, yet the isolation weighed heavily on my heart. Something told me the real adventure was just beginning.

The complication

  1. My suit begins to lose pressure while I am far from the ship, forcing me to choose between a risky trek back or attempting repairs in the open.
  2. An unexpected dust storm approaches, burying my instruments and cutting off radio contact just as I find evidence of something alive beneath the soil.
  3. A mysterious signal leads me away from the ship into a network of caverns, and I must decide whether to follow it alone or return to the safety of the hovering craft.

Sentence starters

  1. Action opener: I crouched and prised the brittle instrument from the soil, feeling its cold metal bite my gloved fingers.
  2. Meanwhile, the sky darkened as a fine red mist began to swirl across the plain.

…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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