Plan your own Gothic style Villain, Creative Writing

In the lesson students are asked to create an interesting gothic style villain to use in their creative writing (AO5.1, 5.2).

I put this lesson together for a year 9 scheme of work which referred to the AQA English Language marking criteria but the success criteria can be adapted beyond a level 3 so that it's more demanding for a year 10/11 class.

To begin students are asked to consider Count Dracula's past (see the other lesson I did on him although it's not vital to use to do this lesson). This leads to a discussion about how important a villains' back story can be and whether they are sympathetic to readers at all. For this I have provided a link to the 'Dracula Untold' trailer which explores this idea.

Next to get their creative juices flowing these are 2 slides with images of villains on them - students can work in pairs to write descriptive sentences about them using a list of key skills ranging from adjectives, similes to harder ones such as oxymoron and adverbs.

Next students are asked to make up a gothic-style villain of their own and write a profile of them. The lesson ends with a chance to peer assess a partner's and offer advice on how their character plan could be improved.