resource guide
Wild week creative story writing
KS3 > Skills > Creative writing 1 (KS2/3)Wild week creative story writing – a booklet
How it works / Students are presented with a series of strange and magical incidents that happen to them over a week and which give rise to a range of imaginative writing.Try this! / One of the many good features of this resource is that it offers constraints on students’ writing to make it livelier, more thoughtful. For example, students are expected to‘start at least 17 sentences with an adverb.’ This makes students stop and think about their writing instead of slapping words onto paper as they occur to them. The daily tasks set in the resource offer students variety and choice and so it might be a good idea – in this spirit of choice – for students to decide on their own constraints at the start of the unit. These constraints could be an opportunity for students to concentrate on their personal literacy targets. One student might pledge to start every sentence with a capital letter, and to finish every one with a full stop. Another student might pledge to use simple, compound and complex sentences appropriately and to start many sentences with subordinate clauses. Either way – the pledge should challenge the student.
Or this! / The writing activities are stimulating but I still think that most student responses are likely to be banal unless the different sorts of writing are taught up ‘up front.’ For example, the first set of tasks require students to think hard about the differences between formal and informal English and to be clear about the essential features of informal English when used as a narrative device designed to entertain others. They need to look at some examples. I would recommend a Teachit resource – Language variety –The full scheme of work which includes sections on netiquette, text messages and formal and informal reports of dramatic incidents. In fact, I would recommend that all students are first required to describe Monday’s events in a single text message to encourage conciseness.
Or this! / Wednesday’s task needs students to be persuasive. This, too, needs teaching – or at least revising. Teachit has a number of resources for this: for example, Persuasive techniques bingo
and Persuasive techniques
Richard Durant