Descriptive Snapshot Writing - Describing Places Carousel - Lessons 3 and 4

This is 2-3 full lessons (depending on your lesson length) to support development of describing places for AQA GCSE Paper 1 Question 5. I usually follow these lessons on from my Lesson 1 and 2 of the series. In lesson 3, students complete a carousel to develop their skills in quick planning of a descriptive writing piece, descriptive writing itself under a set time in small groups, and reflecting through peer feedback and editing. In lesson 4, students complete their first formative assessment from a choice of two tasks with a focus on AO5, pausing to check progress, and annotating their success when finished.

This was originally created for a middle ability year 10 class, but is suitable for years 9-11 depending on ability. I (and other members of my department) have used it with many groups over the last few years quite successfully. This lesson also tends to highlight student weaknesses quite well due to the time pressures to help inform teaching going forward if you choose to skip the assessment task at the end.

The carousel lesson was awarded an ‘Outstanding’ a few years back during a departmental drop-in observation with the original group of year 10s.

This is quite a showy lesson. You will need:

• felt tips
• sugar paper
• Post-It notes
• print outs of the images that are provided on the slides I’ve included