Developed in creative writing workshops from my professional creative writing life and transferred to outstanding classroom practice, this learning sequence helps students deal with the tricky middle parts of descriptive writing when things can get a bit flat and students run out of steam. The learning sequence broadens descriptive writing skills beyond the use of ‘regular’ linguistic and structural devices to lift their achievement through the GCSE grades. Plenty of quick delivery and small practice to build a piece of descriptive writing of exam length. All techniques are easily memorable and fully transferable across any piece of descriptive writing. Learning mat embedded into the powerpoint. Hugely methodical in delivery. Students will have a developed piece of writing with opportunities to consolidate learning through a practice task that can be done in class or at home for independent consolidation. Really suits the AQA English Language paper but also sufficiently generic for improving all descriptive writing. Available as a bundle alongside writing great descriptive openings and endings. https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/descriptive-writing-move-to-higher-grades-creative-writing-11848472

This enables children to create a nonsense poem in the style of the Mad Hatter from ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Ideal for KS2 and KS3. Easy to follow PPT with methodical steps to help students create a nonsense poem. Low threshold, high ceiling differentiation so all achieve. Could be an extended starter or a whole lesson. Bring your own tea and cake and you could always dress up as the Mad Hatter, if you are that way inclined.

A high grade exemplar for ‘The Darkness Out There’ and ‘Chemistry’ that not only supplies content for students but shows a possible style for high grade answers. There are activities to lift Grades 5 and 6 into the uber grades of 7, 8 and 9. Two hour’s worth of teaching and learning included here.

Developed in creative writing workshops from my professional creative writing life and transferred to outstanding classroom practice, this learning sequence helps students broaden descriptive writing skills beyond the use of ‘regular’ linguistic and structural devices to lift their achievement through the GCSE grades. Plenty of quick delivery and small practice to build a piece of descriptive writing. All new techniques are easily memorable and fully transferable across any piece of descriptive writing. Learning mat embedded into the powerpoint, Hugely methodical in delivery. Students will have a developed piece of writing with opportunities to consolidate learning through a homework.

Designed on PPT with any print offs on the slides, this resource takes students through a professional creative writer’s workshop to find a range of characters and potential problems to give them. Small activities so that it is pacy and none of the tasks ever seem too ‘taxing’ for students. This works as a discrete lesson from which they could go on to create a narrative. The extended version of this sequence that takes students through the full version of plot planning is availabe for purchase here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/planning-effective-short-stories-and-narratives-11846098

This learning sequence is your ‘one-stop shop’ for finally getting them to plan a short story for success. By the time the plan is done, all the events in the story have been worked out and tested for efficacy and so the pitfalls of short story writing are mainly avoided. The whole narrative arc is planned for using ‘The Rule of One’ with each step in the planning being afforded time and practice through this 40 slide PPT. All task sheets for students are embedded in the slides for convenience and quick location. Hugely methodical to use with no great bridges for the teacher to make between slides. How often do student’s short stories get out of control and end up being of epic proportions? How often do students set off with a vague idea then lose their way? How often does a one sheet written plan end up NOT helping them to write a successful story and you are left scratching your head as to why? I am both a professional and award-nominated creative writer and a Lead Practitioner in English. This resource combines both of my practices and, it is my belief, that it offers a pertinent insight into how a professional writer’s strategies translate to outstanding classroom practice in teaching and learning.

Learning sequence that will last 3-4 lessons. Fully resourced PPT of 30 slides. Teach how structures and sequencing produce suspense, tension and drama through a guided reading of an extract from The Woman in White. Great for KS3 or early KS4, gifted and talented at KS2. Covers skills that lead directly to achievement at GCSE so no time wasting and helps avoid the KS3 dip. Reading 19th Century Fiction. Exploring suspense, tension and drama for AO2 Lit and Lang. Creative prose – introducing character and using suspense, tension and drama in own writing (consolidation rather than explicit teaching – this is mainly a guided reading resource). Employs range of learner modalities. Differentiated throughout. Monitors progress through self-reflection and assessment.

A full lesson on PPT for use in KS2 Years 5 or 6 and KS3. Helps students focus on how writers use sounds to entertain the reader. Enhances knowledge of sound techniques in writing. Some numeracy activities for cross curricular links included. Great for inclusion in a unit on poetry or as part of whole school literacy during tutor time or as a discrete literacy lesson. Includes focus on alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, rhyme, sound patterning and plosive sounds.

Once they’ve done the first draft, it’s the (dreaded?) editing to second draft stage. Take the pain away with this resource. Stop your learners from reducing the skill of editing to mere proof-reading by using this writing editing prompt sheet. It works as a learning mat in its entirity or you can cut and paste sections to focus on one editing detail e.g The Cut or The Add. Wide range of prompts given in each section so plenty of choice for low threshold, high ceiling differentiation. Suitable for the older primary literacy classroom or for use at KS3 or KS4 in English.

Predict, Experience, Question, Vocabulary, Visualisation, Chunk. Six reading strategies that students can use independently when they are asked to read that are out of their reading age comfort zone. Designed for use at KS2 (Years 5 and 6), KS3 and KS4. Gives students suggestions on how they can use each strategy to work out meanings of texts independently or get the most out of texts to broaden and deepen understanding. Designed for student use but also useful for teachers who are less familiar with the ins and outs of reading strategies or just a brush up of your own excellence. Great for persuading and supporting the more reluctant reader to pay more attention to the clues in a text or the ways they can push themselves forward. Use as a mat on desks for students or create a resource that is bound by a key ring. Senior Leadership will be glad you are tackling this! They might even insist you roll it out school wide. In which case, you’ll need a school license. Contact me on Twitter @alisonshuttlew1

Predict, Experience, Question, Vocabulary, Visualisation, Chunk. Six reading strategies that students can use independently when they are asked to read texts across the curriculum. Designed for use at KS2 (Years 5 and 6), KS3 and KS4. Gives students suggestions on how they can use each strategy to work out meanings of texts independently or get the most out of texts to broaden and deepen understanding of all reading or revision of materials they encounter across the curriculum. Useful for teachers who are less familiar with the ins and outs of reading strategies. Great for persuading and supporting the more reluctant teacher to pay more attention to the reading demands of their subject. Use as a mat on desks for students or create a resource that is bound by a key ring. Senior Leadership will be glad you are tackling this!

Suitable for Key Stage 3 and designed for use during Tutor Time, but would be equally suited to small group reading intervention or being used in a specialised Drop Everything and Read class, this resource helps students focus on what it is like to use and build reading stamina. Some students will breeze this because they can read for hours and some may experience what it is like for the first time to concentrate on nothing but their reading for twenty minutes. Students do a shared read (they all take some responsibility for reading a sectio to their fellow readers) and because the turn taking can be randomised, they need to pay attention throughout. Uses a short story that is paid out sentence by sentence. You can build in your school rewards for those students who watch and listen throughout, who respond to their turn promptly and don’t fidget about or try to distract themselves.

Suitable for KS2, KS3 and lower ability KS4 VERSATILE—SUITS ANY FICTION Encourages evaluative thinking Encourages knowledge of character development Encourages evidence finding skills Encourages comparison of character across or within texts Encourages knowledge of character beliefs, qualities, world views and values Includes: Worksheet template Partial worked example of a KS3 novel to exemplify how the activity can be used Certificate for students to award once they’ve evaluated the character developments Follow up activity to encourage AO1 informed personal response and evidence and AO4 quality of expression. The ‘BEFAFTAS’ Awards Activities for Charting Character Development A light-hearted but fully effective set of activities that take some of the ‘grind’ out of tracing character development. This activity is like an award for an aspect of a character that changed the most dramatically from the before (the start of the story) to the after (the end of the story) the ‘BEFAFTA’ Award. Or, you could compare which character out of all the characters in a novel or fiction changed the most over the course of a story to ascertain who wins the ‘BEFAFTA’ Story-Lifetime Achievement Award!

The resource preview is presented as a series of samples of permutations of how this self-reflective tool can be used. Full resource on purchase has the mastersheet within it. The ‘Head, Heart …’ tool has been uniquely developed by me as part of my educational practice over the last ten years as a creative consultant and outstanding classroom educator and training deliverer. A generic tool to use during or after any learning sequence for junior students right through the secondary years and any CPD that you deliver or mentoring that you do. It aims to help you and your students understand what they are learning, how they are feeling about their learning, what they would like to change about the learning and what they think will help them in their next or future learning experiences. Based on the whole learner experience, not just who they are in their heads today, the tool helps the teacher get a deeper understanding of who their learners are, how they are responding to learning and the teaching and how they are shaping their learning futures. Enables teachers or trainers to open discussions on emotional well-being, cognition and learning to learn as well as build resilience and manage expectations. Simple for students to engage with and quick to administer either as mini-plenaries or as end of lesson or end of learning sequence plenaries. Potential for building vocabulary to name and separate thinking from feelings and emotions and learn to assert and voice their experience to build increasingly positive experiences in the future. Ways to use the ‘Head, Heart …’ Self-Reflective Tool: • As a basis for ‘voxpops’ • Self-reflective tool • Quick tests of the ‘temperature’ of your teaching for your self-refection • Student voice • Building future learning/career aspirations • Advocacy for the skills used in English and English Literature • Plenaries and mini plenaries • Imagining the experiences of others (empathy work and understanding characters Who and what the tool is suited to: • Suits teachers and learners at KS2, KS3, KS4 and KS5 • Suits evaluation of CPD delivery • Suits anyone in a mentoring role

Powerpoint learning sequence to enable students at KS3 to succeed at creating a chapter of a gothic/mystery/ghost story through blending character action and setting. New techniques to describe that your students may not have thought of before that really lift their creative prose work and secure progression. They plan, draft and edit before assessment and so follow the National Curriculum for the writing process. Easy to follow throughout and uses low threshold, high ceiling differentiation. Lots of scaffolding in the planning stage for those students who need it. Included is Powerpoint and the editing learning mat for them to self-edit their work to a higher standard. Also available as an economical bundle that includes the Improving Creative Writing Grid. See my bundles to locate the additional resource and save money.

Based on Macbeth’s coronation banquet and knowledge of plot and character, this is a fantastic mini project that can be done quickly as a lesson and a couple of homeworks or can be expanded to be more cross-curricular. Students invent fortunes based on knowledge of events in the play after the banquet scene and engage in research so that they can make (faux or real) fortune cookies for the characters in ‘Macbeth’. Amazing for creative learning. Works well as end of term work or a project homework or cross-curricular writing.

A five page workbook for students that helps students targeted Grade 5+ take an initial exploration of the poem. Differentiated with vocabulary work, research and additional hints and questions to aid the less confident learner, students can complete this independently in class or as an extended homework. Helps to initiate discussion on the poem and to raise awareness of its literary and biographical contexts as well as the theme of long-distance ambiguous relationships. Makes links with the other romantic love poems.