SPRING WRITING COURSE 2021

YEARS 3-4
Creative Writing Lessons

Lesson 1: Descriptive Writing

This lesson focuses on how to write a vivid descriptive piece, encouraging students to use a range
of different writing techniques to add sparkle to their writing. It will teach them how to use a
thesaurus in aid of broadening their vocabulary, how to ‘up level’ a descriptive piece of writing
by identifying words to alter, and will look at how to use sensory language effectively, whilst also
considering how to use some advanced literary techniques such as symbols, metaphors and
pathetic fallacy. The class will also be asked to consider and analyse how word choice affects
tone and atmosphere. The aim of this lesson is to expand what students already know about
writing descriptively and stretch their abilities using some more advanced and high-level
techniques to make their work stand out.

Lesson 2: Narrative Writing

This lesson focuses on how to structure a captivating narrative story, thinking about ideas of
perspective and narrative voice, building suspense, but particularly focusing on how to hook your
reader and leave them wanting more. This lesson will ask the students to consider the more
powerful ways in which to begin and end a short story, particularly one in an exam context where
every sentence has to pack a punch, and they will be given a checklist of ‘elements’ and ‘events’
to weave into their story in original and unique ways. The students will discuss how to use
powerful literary techniques, dynamic verbs and genre, whilst also consolidating their knowledge
of story arc structure and “show don’t tell”. This lesson is designed to give the class all the tools
to write exciting, suspenseful and captivating narratives with a clear sense of purpose when under
time constraints!

Lesson 3: Emotive Writing

This lesson focuses on introducing the concept of emotive writing, considering why an
understanding of emotions is important in both narrative and descriptive writing. The students
will be introduced to this idea through the concept of character creation, thinking about how to
use their inference skills to help capture a character’s inner world. We will be doing some work
on diary writing in this lesson, thinking about how to create a strong sense of character voice and
the different techniques that can be used to express emotively, for example onomatopoeias,
exclamation and slang words. The class will also be encouraged to showcase their descriptive
abilities in creating some really interesting and compelling characters that hook their reader in.

Lesson 4: Mock Exam

This lesson will contain a mock exam to help test the students’ skills, enabling them to showcase
all they have learnt about creative writing over the past three sessions. They will be asked to
complete a twenty minute exam under timed conditions, which we will then go through step by
step as a class. They will have their exam graded and returned to them after the lesson, and can
use this as a practice run for the real thing! This lesson is designed to consolidate their knowledge
of creative writing, and to help them get used to the format of essay writing in exams. They
should aim to use as many different advanced writing techniques, high-level vocab examples and
interesting structural devices as possible- all of which we will have covered in the preceding
weeks.

Essay Writing Lessons

Lesson 5: Persuasive Writing

This lesson focuses on introducing the concept of persuasive essay writing, looking at persuasive
techniques, dynamic language and word-play. The students will be given the task of writing a
persuasive letter to a superhero, persuading them to come and fight crime in their town! The
students will be asked to come up with a compelling and persuasive arguments, using techniques
such as anecdotes, statistics, expert opinions, rhetoric and humour to convince their reader. They
will also learn how to draw on rhetorical devices, audience awareness and register and tone in
writing both a convincing and persuasive letter. This lesson aims to improve the student’s
confidence in the authority of their own voice, encouraging them to experiment with lots of
different types of persuasion.

Lesson 6: Argumentative Writing

This lesson focuses on teaching the students how to form and give their own unique opinions
through studying the conventions, style and language associated with crafting an argument. The
students will be encourage to come up with powerful and well-evidenced ideas, within the
context of a balanced argument, and will be asked to use creative thinking and their skills of logic
to decide on their own opinions on the topic. They will also participate in a debate in order to
fully understand how to present two sides to every argument and the question they will be
debating and then writing on is “would it be good to be famous?”. The students will have to use
all their skills to craft an interesting argument that uses explanations, examples, anecdotes and
beautiful language to back up their ideas.

Lesson 7: Informative Writing

This lesson focuses on informative writing, the final main category of essay writing that arises in
many exam contexts. The students will work on a newspaper article for their school paper on
their hero, whether that is someone they know personally, someone famous, or someone they
have made up! We will consider the conventions of article writing, discussing how to lay out
information in both a clear and captivating way, whilst students will also be encouraged to use
some of their high-level vocab skills to paint their hero in the best light, and explain exactly what
it is about that person that they find so inspirational. This lesson is designed to help students see
that essay writing can be just as fun and creative as other types of writing, and that it often
involves a lot of figurative language in order to hook the reader in, whilst also develop an
understanding of essay structure and layout, thinking about how to use paragraphing, punctuation
and sentence structure to the best effect.

Lesson 8: Mock Exam

This lesson will contain a mock exam to help test the students’ skills, enabling them to showcase
all they have learnt about essay writing over the past three sessions. They will be asked to
complete a twenty minute exam under timed conditions, which we will then go through step by
step as a class. They will have their exam graded and returned to them after the lesson, and can
use this as a practice run for the real thing! This lesson is designed to consolidate their knowledge
of essay writing, and to help them get used to the format of essay writing in exams. They should
use as much high-level vocab as possible, whilst also using lots of rhetorical devices, a clear
layout, and exploring their own authoritative voice- all of which we will have covered in the
preceding lessons.