GCSE English Creative Writing: Crime and Punishment (Victorian Child Prisoners)

This pack of picture questions is designed for (AQA) GCSE English Language 9-1. They simulate Paper 1 Question 5. Often this can become a little boring for the students as they are given picture after picture to write about. This tries to be a little different. In this case the pictures are of child prisoners from the Victorian era with a small bio of each (age, crime, punishment). Altogether, ten prisoners are pictured (all ten are 100% real-life cases) - five girls and five boys.

There is also some background history about the kind of places underage Victorian lawbreakers ending up - altogether not very pleasant - with some discussion suggestions. It may well tie in with things that your students have studied in their history classes. I hope that you will be able to use this pack to help you increase the story-telling powers of your learners as well as their descriptive prowess - and to bring these children who have been “hidden from history” back to life.

The pack gives teachers the opportunity to have a selection of ready-made questions for Paper 1 Question 5. These can be used to ensure that there are always writing tasks at hand. They might be used to stimulate class or small group discussion or can be used as interchangeable exercises to be done during a session. I hope that there is a sufficient variety of images in this pack to pique the interest of even the most reluctant of writers. By giving your learners a choice of task (while the assessment objectives - A05 and A06 remain the same) these sample questions might help to ensure both differentiation and an element of choice.

Each is formatted to include the question on a single A4 sheet. The originals are also included on their own if you would like to edit them. Plus if it’s easier for you - PDFs are also included of all files.

They would probably also be very useful if you are covering a class - the skills that students develop with these questions are vital for success in GCSE English as this question alone represents 25% of the entire exam.

All of the wonderful pictures have been ethically sourced and are available under a Creative Commons license which means you do not have to worry about copyright with them at all. Each originator is credited by use of a link to the original.