Creative Writing for New Topics

by Rosie Burnett,
Teacher of Geography

My low ability Year 8 students studied the Northern Lights as part of the Fantastic and Impossible Topic. The students learnt about what the northern lights are and why people would like to visit them. To really engage students, I encouraged them to write and illustrate a children’s story about the northern lights. Over the two lessons that they created these stories, I noticed an increase in the amount of time and effort spent on their work.

An extra incentive was that I would let my four year old daughter chose her favourite stories and I would read them to her. She chose three stories and she gave voice recordings of what she thought of each story, which I played to the students. The students were so motivated and excited to listen to the voice recordings. It was a really lovely and engaging activity.