This writing challenge focuses on describing the festival Holi - it might be worthwhile showing students a video of a paint fight during the festival. KS4 students would benefit most from this writing activity which could be done as a stand alone lesson or to support the teaching of English Language paper one in general. This activity would be useful as stretch activities for more able students, although it would be possible to run through it as a class activity (perhaps planning together) for less able students. For students who are just coming across writing description for the first time, it would be useful to run through how to plan and write it up separately, before focusing on editing and improving. The Writing Revolution would suggest that approaching it through describing as a teacher (modelling how it’d done), then in pairs and then indvidually would lead to better responses too. Additionally, the formatting and layout has been influenced by ‘The Learning Scientist’ and their principles on how to make resources most accessible. Take a look at my blog and other resources! http://idealisticteacher.edublogs.org/

These are transactional writing tasks based on the power and conflict cluster of poems. All fifteen poems are covered, with an exemplar response for ‘Bayonet Charge’. These follow the format of 200 word challenges, though they could be used in other ways quite easily. Each includes an appropriate task for AQA GCSE English Language paper two, section b. These tasks are varied so all text types and purposes should be covered. Feel free to use these as a lesson or as cover to set if you are absent. More able students should be able to approach these independently whilst you may wish to go through them more slowly, step by step with less able learners. Please do c heck out my other resources and my blog: https://idealisticteacher.edublogs.org/author/idealisticteacher/