creative writing lesson tes ks3

Creative Writing: What makes a good short story?

Switch to our new english teaching resources.

Slide decks, worksheets, quizzes and lesson planning guidance designed for your classroom.

Lesson details

Key learning points.

• In this lesson, we will be looking at what makes a good short story. We will be thinking about our own favourite short stories and what makes them so enjoyable as well as unleashing our imaginations and considering what we would find if we stepped through a window into another world!

This content is made available by Oak National Academy Limited and its partners and licensed under Oak’s terms & conditions (Collection 1), except where otherwise stated.

5 Questions

• Teach Early Years
• Teach Primary
• Teach Secondary
• Advertise With Us

• New for Schools
• Browse by subject
• Maths & Science
• English & MFL
• Outdoor Learning
• Product Focus
• Resource Guide

Lesson Plan: KS3 English, creative writing

• Subject: English and MFL
• Date Posted: 12 March 2013
• View page as PDF: Download Now

Share this:

​Providing the right atmosphere can encourage students to take their creative writing to a whole new level, says Claire Sheffield…

​Providing the right atmosphere can encourage students to take their creative writing to a whole new level, says Claire Sheffield…

Today you will….

• Develop the ability to use your imagination to create a story in the gothic genre
• Learn to use ambitious vocabulary to achieve specific effects

Starting a piece of creative writing can be a source of frustration for many young people; so much so that it can lead to loss of confidence. If ideas aren’t flowing, learners can quickly switch off and give up. Creative writing lessons, therefore, need to stimulate all of the senses and inspire students. Creative writing in the gothic genre – spooky stories – offers a wonderful opportunity for just this. This is a topic that always manages to enthuse pupils and one of the most exciting aspects is that the outcome is completely different with every group. Giving students time for thinking and the creation of ideas is essential. Therefore, this plan should be seen as just a starting point; it provides the stimulus from which a number of sessions can be developed. Subsequent periods can also focus on the development of different writing skills as required by the individual needs of a group. As a way into creative writing, this opener allows learners to be independent; an environment that enables them to thrive. Most importantly, it’s a lesson that students always leave talking about!

Starter activity

Creating a spooky word wall.

Preparation is key to this lesson. For maximum impact, everything needs to be ready so that students enter the room and immediately feel a mysterious atmosphere. This can be created by closing blinds, turning off the lights, playing spooky music and displaying an image on the whiteboard of an old, decrepit, haunted-looking house (easily sourced from the internet). It is great to see students entering the room and looking around confused, wondering what is happening and therefore immediately engaged!

Ideally learners need to be seated in small table groups; this should be a buzzy lesson with lots of group discussion and sharing of ideas. As they take their seats they see on their table a map/floor plan of a house with a cross in one of the rooms; it’s one of the rooms from the house displayed on the board. This can be easily created in a word document using text boxes to create the floor plan and labelling each room. The idea is that each table will focus on a different room.

On each table an instruction card for the starter activity is also displayed. This should say something along the lines of: ‘As a group create a word wall of spooky words to describe the room you are in. Be as ambitious as possible! You have 5 minutes’. This could be completed on A3 paper or on post-it notes to stick up on the wall next to them; students will then have created their own bank of vocabulary that will help them in later parts of the lesson.

Main activities

1 developing the plot.

This lesson works well if very little is said by the teacher to the whole class. This adds to the mysterious atmosphere because students have to read and find out what to do at different stages. The teacher very much facilitates the learning in this lesson, by circulating the room, supporting and stretching groups as appropriate.

As the 5 minutes for the starter activity draws to a close, the spooky background music should be turned off and a short, shocking sound should be played. This could be a scream or a crash, for example. As this point another slide should be displayed on the board to move students onto the next stage of the lesson. This could read: ‘What has happened? Write the opening for a spooky story about a mysterious incident that has happened in the room you are in. Discuss for 5 minutes.’ Students are now using their imaginations to create a plot for their gothic story; it is important that students are encouraged to discuss and develop ideas before beginning the writing stage.

2 Going further

After around five minutes discussion, another slide can be displayed which reads: ‘Look for a clue about what has happened. You will find this somewhere near you!’ Underneath each table, students will find an envelope with a picture of a clue. This could be anything (e.g. a book or a camera). Equally, props could be placed around the room for students to find. The more unusual the better! It just gets pupils thinking more creatively. They will naturally want to talk about what they have found and start to revise their previous thinking

3 Stage three

After a few moments, the final slide of instruction can be displayed. This time, students are told: ‘Time to start writing. You have 25 minutes to use the clues so far to write the opening to a spooky story. Remember your objectives – be imaginative and use ambitious vocabulary to achieve a spooky effect.’ Spooky background music can be played throughout the writing stage. It is also important that learners have access to a thesaurus in order to locate more ambitious vocabulary.

Home learning

The lesson can be used as a starting point and developed in a number of ways… + Subsequent lessons/home learning activities could focus on developing other writing skills such as structuring a plot from beginning to end, using literary devices or using a variety of sentence structures and punctuation for effect.

+ The written work could lead into a speaking and listening lesson where students devise, rehearse and perform dramatic readings of their stories. + Students can explore a variety of gothic literature, researching different writers in the genre, reading different works and learning about the conventions of the genre. They can then develop their work to incorporate more of these conventions themselves.

After the main writing stage of this lesson, students are usually desperate to read their work out. To be able to do this in a meaningful way though, more time is usually needed, so it is appropriate to dedicate the following lesson to this. However, an opportunity to share work with others can be achieved through groups swapping their work and providing some feedback to consider for the following lesson. Questions such as those below can help students to structure their feedback in a constructive manner:

• How imaginative is the piece?
• How exciting did you find the story?
• Is there anything that does not make sense?
• How ambitious is the vocabulary? Does it achieve the desired spooky effect?
• How would you like the group to improve the piece?
• What questions can you ask the group to help them develop the piece further?

The following lesson can then begin with students considering this feedback in order to improve the work they have begun in this lesson.

Differentiation suggestions to support less able students:

• Provide a word bank or sentence starter bank.
• Provide additional resources to inspire ideas; further images or props, for example.
• Provide a wagoll (what a good one looks like) as a model of a piece of spooky writing.
• Suggestions to stretch more able students:
• Provide definitions/examples of literary devices and a challenge card asking students to ‘aim to include as many literary devices as possible.’
• Ask students to work towards a third learning objective: ‘use a variety of sentence structures for effect’ or ‘use a variety of punctuation for effect.’
• Allocate an expert to mixed ability groups who is asked to fulfil additional responsibilities as group leader.
• Provide a ‘challenging criteria’ card as a checklist of skills that more able students should aim to demonstrate.

You may also be interested in...

• Strictly 1000 Words winners chosen after enthralling live finals
• 1000 Word Challenge surpasses 10,000 learners
• CHOOSE KIND

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy & Cookies Policy.

Recommended for you...

5 ways to raise engagement

Is The Apple Watch Having An Impact In The Classroom?

Lesson Plan: KS3 D&T, heat transfer and product development

Maths and Science

How schools are making the budget add up this year

Browse by Secondary Subject

Resources you can trust

Writing fiction

This wonderful collection of fun and engaging classroom activities and resources will help KS3 and GCSE students to develop their own imaginative, narrative and creative writing skills.

From planning their ideas and thinking about plot, character and setting, to exploring other forms and genres including poetry and drama scripts, you'll find a range of resources to get them off to a flying start. 

Try our KS4  Creative writing teaching pack for a whole term of lesson ideas and resources to target 'problem' areas of writing.

Developing fiction writing skills

Popular fiction writing resources.

• International
• Education Jobs
• Schools directory
• Resources Education Jobs Schools directory News Search

Narrative Writing / Creative Writing Mini Scheme KS3/KS4

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Unit of work

Last updated

22 November 2023

• Share through email
• Share through twitter
• Share through linkedin
• Share through facebook
• Share through pinterest

A series of 14 lessons designed to assist students in creating a short story using the narrative arc.

These lessons go through the process of creating a story methodically, so that by the end of the scheme, students will have produced a polished piece of writing.

The lessons cover the following: Planning and structure Exposition and narrative voice Rising Action and Sentence Structure Falling Action Dialogue The use of pathetic fallacy and colour in narratives Resolution and circular narratives

Within this scheme there are modelled examples which illustrate examples of the above. All ppt lessons are visually stimilating and contain interactive activities. LOs, success criteria, writing frames and modelled responses for analysis are included too.

If you purchase these lessons, find them useful and wouldn’t mind leaving a review, I would very much appreciate it - thank you.

Tes paid licence How can I reuse this?

Your rating is required to reflect your happiness.

It's good to leave some feedback.

Something went wrong, please try again later.

This resource hasn't been reviewed yet

To ensure quality for our reviews, only customers who have purchased this resource can review it

Report this resource to let us know if it violates our terms and conditions. Our customer service team will review your report and will be in touch.

Not quite what you were looking for? Search by keyword to find the right resource: