How to Teach Fiction Writing at Key Stage 3

C Neil Macrae

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781853468582
• eBook ISBN: 9781136779596
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How to Teach Fiction Writing at Key Stage 3 is a practical manual to help teachers of 11-14 year-olds to develop effective modeling and scaffolding strategies for the teaching of narrative writing. Using a step-by-step approach, based on the 'word/sentence/text level' convention, the book shows how teachers can help pupils to build work in various genres and to move out from these to more complex writing. Each section has a workshop approach that leads into a narrative writing activity, giving pupils the chance to complete a fully realized piece of work at the end each time.

The workshops focus on genre features, the craft of the writer, and specific year-related needs (taken from the KS3 Framework).

The book has a clear progression through KS3, and extension and support activities for the most and least able pupils are provided as an integral part of each section.

1 'One dark and stormy night...'

National Curriculum Framework links

Y7 - Writing

• plan, draft, edit, revise, proofread and present a text with readers and purpose in mind
• collect, select and assemble ideas in a suitable planning format, e.g. flow chart, list, star chart
• use writing to explore and develop ideas, e.g. journals, brainstorm techniques and mental mapping activities
• structure a story with an arresting opening, a developing plot, a complication, a crisis and satisfying resolution.

Y8 - Study of literary texts

• recognise the conventions of some common literary form, e.g. sonnet, and genres, e.g. Gothic horror, and explore how a particular text adheres to or deviates from established conventions.

Pupil support

This unit focuses on plot. It's what pupils want to get right and what is often most difficult. Pupils may use plots derived from a number of sources and sometimes these are inappropriate for the very short story. The reasons why this happens are discussed in the pupil notes for Chapter 6, where plot is explored again in more detail.

Some pupils will have explored aspects of genre conventions at KS2. They can be reminded of this knowledge before beginning Activity 2. Ensure that this knowledge is shared with the whole group. Don't let pupils get bogged down in plot details - focus the brainstorming on individual words and phrases. Assist with extracts from typical mystery stories if appropriate. These A4 brainstorms could be enlarged to A3 and displayed in the classroom.

For Activity 4, the whole cartoon strip has been provided as an A4 page so that the text can be presented as an OHT.

When working on Activity 7, teachers should beware of the tyranny of the continuous prose draft. To have text 'set in stone' in this way can make it difficult to see where modification can be made. Teachers marking such material may not be able to offer much guidance beyond the technical because it is difficult to make structural changes in an already set format.

Teachers can help pupils get the note-taking structure right before making any notes on the narrative. Providing some kind of visual or diagrammatic structure to support the completion of the narrative will be useful here.

A writing frame can be presented as a series of boxes in an A4 user-friendly landscape format, showing the components of the narrative - the genre that has been chosen, the opening sentence(s), the ending of the narrative and three paragraph boxes. This will be particularly useful for less able pupils.

Activity 1

Introducing genre

Have a look at the first frame from this Peanuts cartoon.

Snoopy has obviously got to take his narrative from there so where do you think it is going? What would your next few lines be as a writer?

Write down some thoughts individually and then share and compare with a partner. Note these in the box below or in your workbook.

Can you begin to describe the type of story you have started? Does it fit into any particular kind of story that you know? If it does, we can probably tell the type or genre of the story already - horror, science fiction, western, romance and so on. The opening 'It was a dark and stormy night' suggests a horror or mystery story - is this what you have written?

Talk to your partner about the story you have started. Put any comments about the type of story in the box below or in your workbook.

Activity 2

‘I wonder what could be in that cave?’ said Alex

With your partner, identify some typical features of a mystery story. Where might it be set? What kinds of characters would you expect to meet? What sorts of events are likely to take place? What are the likely names for people and places in your narrative?

Brainstorm some ideas about each of these aspects. Choose a genre (from Chapter 1, Activity 1) and put it into the circle. Note down your ideas under the headings in the boxes.

Keep the ideas you develop - they will be useful later on! Put this information in your workbook or display the brainstormed ideas in your classroom.

Activity 3

‘Suddenly a shot rang out.’

Here's what Snoop...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 'One dark and stormy night...'
• 2 A story in 50 words? Impossible...
• 3 The short short story
• 4 Getting characters right
• 5 Graphic Ideas
• 6 Superplots, timeshifting and problem-solving