10 Paintings with GCSE English Lang P1Q5 Cultural Capital Descriptive & Narrative Writing Questions

This pack of picture questions is designed for AQA GCSE English Language 9-1. As the June 2019 exam included a painting for the first time, this set is aimed to increase the cultural capital of your English classes (CC being is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours, and skills that a person can tap into to demonstrate one’s cultural competence and social status).

The pack includes ten paintings – five by male and five by female artists. The pages are designed to be printed on two sides.

On the first side, they simulate Paper 1 Question 5 where students are given a picture and are presented with two options (it’s hard, almost to call them questions!). The tasks can be for a descriptive or a narrative response (although both tasks can be descriptive or narrative and this pack reflects that).

The second side gives a small biography of the painter with information about the painting. Also included are prompts about what to write about as well as the skills the examiners are looking for in Content and Organisation as well as Technical Accuracy.

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!

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 superb art 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 use them without the question stimulus. Plus, if it’s easier for you - PDFs are also included of both 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 paintings 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.