Narrative and Descriptive Writing for GCSE

A 46-slide PowerPoint that provides a short course in narrative and descriptive writing for GCSE. It is aimed at middle-ability KS4 and is oriented towards AQA English Language 8700, Paper 1, Question 5.

The PowerPoint covers:

1. The writing AO’s, unpacked and turned into 7 ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions
2. The structures of 8700 Papers 1 & 2
3. The difference between narrative and descriptive writing
4. Descriptive techniques organised into the acronym MRS VAN SOAPS
5. Descriptive writing success criteria
6. Sample descriptive writing tasks (students choose 1 of 2)
7. A teacher-written response (presented as an extract from a full response)
8. Peer assessment
9. Short story structure (Freytag’s Pyramid)
10. Exploring Freytag’s Pyramid in relation to ‘A Christmas Carol’
11. Sample narrative writing tasks with planning activity
12. Narrative writing success criteria
13. Showing and telling in fiction
14. 4 showing tasks with sample responses
15. DIRT tasks
16. Narrative choice: 1st or 3rd person with picture prompt activity
17. Self-assessment
18. Final writing tasks (descriptive or narrative)
19. Peer assessment
20. Reflection opportunity.

This resource incorporates others that have previously been on sale in my shop, either in their current form or slightly tweaked. If you already have these but wish to purchase this unit of work, please contact me at and we’ll try to work something out.

Resources also sold separately:

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/descriptive-writing-techniques-match-up-activity-11749389

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/descriptive-writing-techniques-summary-mat-11747011

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/short-story-planning-flow-chart-11747165

These files were last saved in Office 2016.