My Favourite Opening Unit — The Wild Robot and Morality

Transitioning to secondary school is an exciting time, but it is also a wild ride for a lot of pupils. As an experienced teacher, you develop a little insight into who will thrive and who is likely to struggle with their new social world. The pupils though have no idea. For all of them it’s a pretty intense time with a lot of change. They make their assessment of what secondary school is like fairly quickly over the first few weeks. Hopefully, they decide that their new school is a place where they are likely to be really happy. The aim of a good transition unit is of course to get them onboard with English, but also to get them to embrace a few key ‘truths’: a) Secondary school is for them, they belong here b) They are going to do well here and they’re going to be happy here. This doesn’t mean that they will be excited all the time, but it does mean that they will feel safe and sense their growth/ progress. We want a unit that helps as many of them as possible feel like they understand and are interested in the work, so that they all try their hardest.

To those ends, they need a unit that is easy enough for them to do, so they feel they can do the work and show off their abilities, and they need a classroom environment that makes them feel they are part of an elite team, with an expert coach. If we think about what it takes to make a course you would find satisfying in this regard we can build out a little success criteria.

💠The scheme needs to feel clear, so they know what they’re doing and what the point of it is. It needs to feel like they’re barely working, but still have big impact. This is the key to rapid growth: difficult work, made to feel easy. Often the secret in this lies to making the things you’re learning small and specific. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you have to be the fun teacher with stickers and games. If you’ve experience running games then feel free, but as a new teacher, there are few ways to build up resentment faster than have a game go wrong and pupils be angry about who won. I would avoid it.

💠The scheme needs to Creating a clear sense of progress through the unit. Ideally, there’s a visual guide to where you are in the unit, and clear bullet points of what you’re supposed to have learned in the unit often create a sense of clarity. I believe one of the main reasons pupils fall behind, is that they literally don’t know they’re off track. It isn’t obvious to a tween that not concentrating, or not finishing a task means that you won’t know the stuff at the end of term. Those dots are not connected for them yet. They don’t know that to not concentrate in a lesson, or not finish a task, has an impact on their final ability. And they often can’t connect these dots because they don’t have an overview of the unit, or examples of the type of work they’re supposed to produce, so give them those things from the off.

💠Ideally the scheme includes obvious measuring sticks, so pupils can assess whether they’re working at the desired standard or not. For year 7, this could also require making these accessible to parents, because they are also the people you’re ‘working for’. This allows pupils to course correct as they go. Alright, not every pupil is going to do this. But, there are always keen, yet weaker, pupils who would actually do the work to get the grade if they had this opportunity. Not providing it means they can’t catch up even if they want to. Parents need easy ways to tell that their child is behind. In my experience, they just nearly always don’t know. They don’t know because School doesn’t communicate to them about the progress of the child very clearly, often for good reason. School’s don’t want parents to complain. But by providing examples of work at the expected standard, you are doing them a favour. Especially if they are accompanied by a photo of a marked piece of their child’s work. Then they can see where they fall. Admittedly, this is the kind of thing you will only have time for once you’re a highly trained teacher in a highly trained department. Most real teachers absolutely do not have time for this. So, I better hurry up and help change that. (scroll to the bottom for training options)

Side note: Parents get a bad rap at secondary school for being ‘disengaged’, but we don’t give them much apart from behaviour points to engage with. Alright, perhaps even most parents, don’t want to be doing homework with or for their children, nor do they want to feel like their child is in trouble. But the school system currently seems to have wildly misunderstood this and be operating at the other end of the extreme, assuming parents don’t really want to know the level their children are working at. Schools even seem to be a little intentionally ambiguous with parents when it comes to pupil work and pupil flight paths. Perhaps understandably so, schools don’t want angry parents banging on their door saying their teachers aren’t doing a good enough job. But I think there must be a happy medium to be had here where parents are allowed to see what ‘on track’ for a 4,6,8 looks like so they have at least some way of knowing the ability level of their child. It shouldn’t be normal for parents of year 10 pupils to not realise that their children have been behind since year 7 and are now working solidly at a grade 2 and aren’t going to pass. At some point prior, no matter how awkward, this should’ve been communicated very clearly to the parents. We can’t take it as a given that the parents know this stuff, even when it’s blindingly. They aren’t teachers. They are completely reliant on school reports for their information. If the report says they’re ‘on track’, they’re going to assume that they’re child is going to do well in their GCSE’s.

🟪Why The Wild Robot is my current choice for Year 7, Term 1.

The language is clean and relatively simple. The chapters are short. The world is strange, but not overwhelming. It’s the perfect shared reading book because no one gets left behind, and no one ever quite reads it the same way, so it provides multiple avenues for discussion. It’s easy to read, yet the topics are so sophisticated that even your most confident pupils can still be stretched.

Roz, the central character, is a robot — but her story becomes an emotional tale. She makes choices with varying degrees of success. She breaks rules. And the big questions of the novel aren’t can Roz survive? Is Roz a hero— they’re can Roz learn to love? What makes someone a mother?

And those questions open the door to everything else:

This is where you start building readers who want to say more than “she’s nice” or “he’s bad.” You build readers who want to weigh, test, and question character motives. That’s real analysis. And you get to do it without a single GCSE rubric in sight.

🟪 Core Questions That Drive the Unit

When I build a unit, I do try and build it chronologically, but I also try and frame each lesson with a ‘big question’ which is the driving force behind the lesson. It just helps me know really what I want pupils to be able to articulate by the end of the lesson. I’ll often devise these questions by creating the kind of answer I want them to produce at the end, then asking myself “right, what would they have to be able to know and do to be able to generate this level of response?”

That sounds easy, but it does require a fairly good understanding of what levels pupils are currently working at, so you can clearly articulate to yourself what they need to be able to do.

💠 “Is Roz maternal?”

This is where it starts. Pupils are quick to say “no” — she’s a machine. But then she protects animals. She teaches a goose how to survive. She makes decisions.

Let them wrestle with what personhood means, what motherhood means. Link to PSHE, citizenship, where they might study AI. Roz provides a safe way to evoke profound questions questions. Don’t get me wrong, at times this can be difficult because the tendency for weaker pupils is to try and answer everything with a yes, no or a maybe, but that’s the entire point. From the get go, we want pupils to understand that English rewards reasoning and figuring things out. We want opportunities to praise and celebrate that.

💠 “Do good intentions matter more than good outcomes?”

This question hits hardest when Roz causes harm trying to help. It's a powerful way to introduce ethical complexity. You can even build sentence stems like:

It’s one of the cleanest early ways to build empathy-driven analysis.

💠 “Can you be moral without emotion?”

This one gets big reactions. Roz doesn’t feel the way we do, but she acts in moral ways. Or does she? Is she just programmed to respond efficiently? Can morality exist without feeling?

Great for sparking discussion, and it quietly builds toward more abstract thinking they’ll need for texts like Animal Farm or Jekyll and Hyde.

💠“If you’re built to obey, can you ever choose to be good?”

This one slips in later in the unit as Roz faces human intervention and begins to push back. Is she just a machine glitching, or someone becoming?

Let pupils argue. Let them defend. Let them doubt their own answers. That’s the sweet spot. That’s where critical thinking starts to grow. Be aware that initially their written answers will lag hugely behind their verbal responses. As a class, you will have to go through the process of iterating better quality answers.

🟪Activities That Help Pupils Explore Morality

 1. Build a “Moral Compass” Wall

Pupils vote or pin moments on a classroom display from “noble” to “questionable”. Choose moments in the text where Roz makes a decision — especially ones that feel justified but uncomfortable.
Ask pupils to pin those moments on a classroom display, along a line from:
Merciful → Necessary → Questionable → Cruel

Let them debate where each moment belongs. Encourage movement. Ask:

You’ll hear the kind of language that GCSE markers call “thoughtful” — without ever using the word “juxtaposition.”

2. Role Swap Debates

Assign pupils different character roles: Roz, Brightbill, the animals, or the humans.
Pose a question — like “Was Roz a good mother?” — and have each group argue from their character’s perspective. Be aware, year 7's will find it difficult to argue for opinions they don’t actually think, so they may need to choose their roles, or give them a question phrased two ways, so they can more easily see both sides of an argument.

Why it works: Pupils stop thinking in right/wrong binaries and start asking, “But what would that character want? What would they fear?”

That’s character analysis in disguise. You can even print out quotations on ‘clue cards’, so that pupils can start to bring in evidence into their discussion.

3. The Robot Code Rewrite

Early in the unit, ask students to write Roz a “Robot Code of Ethics” based on what she should do to be good. This is a good task for a highly organised scheme because midway through the book, you can then revisit it. What needs to change? What’s missing? What conflicts?

You’ll see genuine growth in how they perceive morality. It also makes a brilliant springboard into persuasive writing or reflective diary entries.

Each of these tasks gives you multiple outcomes: reading, writing, speaking, reflecting. But more than that, they show pupils that literature isn’t about ticking boxes — it’s about wrestling with ideas that matter.

You might need to give them some sentence starters for conditional sentences. e.g. if X Roz must Y, provided Z)

 4. “Pin the Motive” Sentence Builder

Give pupils a key quotation (e.g. Roz protecting Brightbill).
Get them to pin them do the display board, where you have put Roz’s motives or personality traits. This can make a good prompt resource for future lessons too.

“Roz chooses to [action] because…”

Encourage a range of motives:

This builds nuance and specificity — and stops them from defaulting to vague labels like “she’s kind.”

5. “Additional Interpretation” Chains

Take one clear statement:

“Roz is brave.”

Now push it by connecting another link in the chain:

“Roz is brave — but only when she feels there’s no other option.”
“This might suggest that her bravery is more instinctive than emotional.”
“Alternatively, her actions could be seen as programmed efficiency.”

Get them to write in chains — each sentence deepening or challenging the last. This can be chaotic, but it does often mean they forget they are doing a difficult task. You can model this as a paragraph scaffold:

Statement → Development → Alternative View → Reader Reaction

You can also use this as a way to squeeze in ‘because but so’ as a pattern to extend their thinking. Because but so, is for getting pupils do develop a reasoned opinion. It is not for writing analytical paragraphs, it’s the groundwork you do first to help them think things through initially. be careful you don’t end up teaching it as a writing structure. But the chains help pupils think of it as something entirely different.

 6. Scale It Up: The Emotion Ladder

Give pupils a moral moment and ask them to rank the character’s emotional drivers from basic to complex.
Then write a paragraph starting from the most obvious, climbing toward the most hidden.

Example:

This helps them layer their ideas, not just stack them.

🟧 Summary 

A good Year 7 transition unit should make pupils feel capable, safe, and motivated — it's about emotional onboarding as much as academic.

The Wild Robot is an ideal shared reader: accessible language, sophisticated themes, and space for layered discussion.

Design your unit to feel “easy but impactful” by making learning objectives small, specific, and clearly visible to pupils.

Visual clarity helps pupils stay on track — show them what success looks like and where they are in the sequence.

Parent engagement is stronger when you make progress visible through work samples and clear expectations — don’t hide behind vague reporting.

Ethical dilemmas create space for real reasoning, especially when scaffolded through sentence stems, role debate, and scale activities.

Moral analysis builds the foundation for later character and theme work — it’s the groundwork for serious literary thinking.

High-quality discussion tasks lead to better writing — especially when paired with sentence-building activities and class notes that you take to help remind them of what arguments were made. Often good discussion comes through having pupils make some kind of evaluative decision, like the ladder, or a number line, or pinning the label on something.