The Crazy Carnival

Year 3 · Fantasy

The Crazy Carnival is a free, NAPLAN-aligned fantasy writing resource for Year 3 students. It includes a story starter, complication, tiered vocabulary and scaffolds mapped to the Australian Curriculum (AC9).

Year 3 AC9E3LE05 AC9E3LA06 AC9E3LA10 AC9E3LA11 AC9E3LA04 AC9E3LY06

Supports the Year 3 achievement standard (creating written texts).

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

Everything was going fine at the carnival. Bobo and I were having a great time. But then it happened. The air went still. The lights flickered. An eerie rumble moved through the ground. I thought it was just my imagination, but then the tents began to tremble. I looked around. Every person at the carnival stood frozen and stared at something in the sky. Even Bobo had been pulling me toward the cotton candy machine. He stopped in his tracks. His little mouth was hanging open. "What is it?" I whispered, but I had no time to wonder. Something massive and glowing came down from above. Its shape kept changing in ways I could not explain. I did not know what it was or what would happen next, but I had a feeling it would change everything.

The complication

  • The glowing shape begins to change into a creature that wants to take Bobo and me with it, and we must decide whether to run, hide, or help it.
  • The power outage causes the carnival rides to stop mid-ride, trapping people on the Ferris wheel while the glowing object gets closer.
  • A mysterious figure appears from the crowd who seems to know what the glowing thing is and tries to grab our attention, but they might be friend or foe.

Sentence starters

  1. Bobo tugged my sleeve and ran toward the safety of the nearest tent.
  2. After the lights flickered, the whole carnival smelled faintly of burnt sugar and everyone held their breath.

…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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