Short Stories: Writing Creatively for GCSE English Language
Prepare for the 2015 GCSE specifications with this step-by-step exploration of creative writing.
Extremely helpful for the busy teacher – very well sequenced
Student-friendly notes and activities cover 10 key areas of short-story writing including structure, setting, pace and punctuation. Enhanced with useful tips and inspirational quotes – all the tools your students need to write their own creative pieces!
Plan your lessons
A really logical journey through the creative writing process
- Ready-made lesson structures with suggested timings – easy to plan into SOWs
- Cross-referenced to the AOs with clear teaching objectives
Inspire your students
- A variety of interesting extract-based activities include sketching, acting and comic strips
- Differentiated to challenge higher-ability students
- PLUS end-of-pack practice questions – students can apply new techniques to long-answer tasks
- Filled with carefully selected extracts to inspire an appreciation of the short-story genre
- Examples range from modern writers (Margaret Atwood) to the classics (Edgar Allen Poe)
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What do teachers say about this resource? (6161)
Overall, it's excellent. It has a fresh approach to teaching writing and will no doubt bring something new to the table for a lot of teachers... Rather than trying to find texts to fit the lessons, the lessons come naturally from looking at examples of excellent writing and imitating what writers actually do... Truly useful.
The clear sections will be really useful for teaching elements of story writing discretely. The lesson ideas are ... varied to maintain interest... The short story suggestions are really, really useful. Finding good examples is often a really time-consuming thing, and this writer has chosen great examples with specific objectives in mind... The resource gives a very full and developed path to tackling this area of the exam.
A useful resource... Well organised... There were nicely selected extracts ... which would hopefully inspire students to read the whole short story... There were also some good interactive activities... I liked the section on grammar and punctuation as well as the section on sentence structure – these sections would be excellent for revision purposes.
Clear focus on the examination boards and how the resource is intended to help. Particular focus on separate pages for student and teacher, making lessons easily adaptable for schemes of learning and one-off tasks if needed for cover or emergency lessons. I enjoyed that the writer has used many familiar short stories and examines the purpose of writing early on. There is [also] a clear focus on progression within this resource... This is extremely helpful for the busy teacher – very well sequenced.
The strength of this resource lies in its ability to provide a comprehensive set of skills necessary to complete a creative writing assessment via the different topics that are covered. Students will become familiar with the stages needed to plan a story and how techniques such as pace, tension and structure can be used for effect.
I thought that it was a really logical journey through the creative writing process under the genre of short stories. It would enable a teacher to take pupils through the different elements of narrative writing in such a way as to ensure they were able to hit the assessment objectives... I liked the fact that the stories chosen as stimulus material are so varied [and] I liked the little quotes throughout about how important short stories are. I felt that as a teacher I would build starter activity discussions around these... This resource would give you a great starting point in terms of delivering a more exciting and interesting approach to fulfilling this assessment objective.