fun creative writing lessons ks3

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Writing fiction

This wonderful collection of fun and engaging classroom activities and resources will help KS3 and GCSE students to develop their own imaginative, narrative and creative writing skills.

From planning their ideas and thinking about plot, character and setting, to exploring other forms and genres including poetry and drama scripts, you'll find a range of resources to get them off to a flying start. 

Try our KS4  Creative writing teaching pack for a whole term of lesson ideas and resources to target 'problem' areas of writing.

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Lesson Plan: KS3 English, creative writing

• Subject: English and MFL
• Date Posted: 12 March 2013
• View page as PDF: Download Now

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​Providing the right atmosphere can encourage students to take their creative writing to a whole new level, says Claire Sheffield…

​Providing the right atmosphere can encourage students to take their creative writing to a whole new level, says Claire Sheffield…

Today you will….

• Develop the ability to use your imagination to create a story in the gothic genre
• Learn to use ambitious vocabulary to achieve specific effects

Starting a piece of creative writing can be a source of frustration for many young people; so much so that it can lead to loss of confidence. If ideas aren’t flowing, learners can quickly switch off and give up. Creative writing lessons, therefore, need to stimulate all of the senses and inspire students. Creative writing in the gothic genre – spooky stories – offers a wonderful opportunity for just this. This is a topic that always manages to enthuse pupils and one of the most exciting aspects is that the outcome is completely different with every group. Giving students time for thinking and the creation of ideas is essential. Therefore, this plan should be seen as just a starting point; it provides the stimulus from which a number of sessions can be developed. Subsequent periods can also focus on the development of different writing skills as required by the individual needs of a group. As a way into creative writing, this opener allows learners to be independent; an environment that enables them to thrive. Most importantly, it’s a lesson that students always leave talking about!

Starter activity

Creating a spooky word wall.

Preparation is key to this lesson. For maximum impact, everything needs to be ready so that students enter the room and immediately feel a mysterious atmosphere. This can be created by closing blinds, turning off the lights, playing spooky music and displaying an image on the whiteboard of an old, decrepit, haunted-looking house (easily sourced from the internet). It is great to see students entering the room and looking around confused, wondering what is happening and therefore immediately engaged!

Ideally learners need to be seated in small table groups; this should be a buzzy lesson with lots of group discussion and sharing of ideas. As they take their seats they see on their table a map/floor plan of a house with a cross in one of the rooms; it’s one of the rooms from the house displayed on the board. This can be easily created in a word document using text boxes to create the floor plan and labelling each room. The idea is that each table will focus on a different room.

On each table an instruction card for the starter activity is also displayed. This should say something along the lines of: ‘As a group create a word wall of spooky words to describe the room you are in. Be as ambitious as possible! You have 5 minutes’. This could be completed on A3 paper or on post-it notes to stick up on the wall next to them; students will then have created their own bank of vocabulary that will help them in later parts of the lesson.

Main activities

1 developing the plot.

This lesson works well if very little is said by the teacher to the whole class. This adds to the mysterious atmosphere because students have to read and find out what to do at different stages. The teacher very much facilitates the learning in this lesson, by circulating the room, supporting and stretching groups as appropriate.

As the 5 minutes for the starter activity draws to a close, the spooky background music should be turned off and a short, shocking sound should be played. This could be a scream or a crash, for example. As this point another slide should be displayed on the board to move students onto the next stage of the lesson. This could read: ‘What has happened? Write the opening for a spooky story about a mysterious incident that has happened in the room you are in. Discuss for 5 minutes.’ Students are now using their imaginations to create a plot for their gothic story; it is important that students are encouraged to discuss and develop ideas before beginning the writing stage.

2 Going further

After around five minutes discussion, another slide can be displayed which reads: ‘Look for a clue about what has happened. You will find this somewhere near you!’ Underneath each table, students will find an envelope with a picture of a clue. This could be anything (e.g. a book or a camera). Equally, props could be placed around the room for students to find. The more unusual the better! It just gets pupils thinking more creatively. They will naturally want to talk about what they have found and start to revise their previous thinking

3 Stage three

After a few moments, the final slide of instruction can be displayed. This time, students are told: ‘Time to start writing. You have 25 minutes to use the clues so far to write the opening to a spooky story. Remember your objectives – be imaginative and use ambitious vocabulary to achieve a spooky effect.’ Spooky background music can be played throughout the writing stage. It is also important that learners have access to a thesaurus in order to locate more ambitious vocabulary.

Home learning

The lesson can be used as a starting point and developed in a number of ways… + Subsequent lessons/home learning activities could focus on developing other writing skills such as structuring a plot from beginning to end, using literary devices or using a variety of sentence structures and punctuation for effect.

+ The written work could lead into a speaking and listening lesson where students devise, rehearse and perform dramatic readings of their stories. + Students can explore a variety of gothic literature, researching different writers in the genre, reading different works and learning about the conventions of the genre. They can then develop their work to incorporate more of these conventions themselves.

After the main writing stage of this lesson, students are usually desperate to read their work out. To be able to do this in a meaningful way though, more time is usually needed, so it is appropriate to dedicate the following lesson to this. However, an opportunity to share work with others can be achieved through groups swapping their work and providing some feedback to consider for the following lesson. Questions such as those below can help students to structure their feedback in a constructive manner:

• How imaginative is the piece?
• How exciting did you find the story?
• Is there anything that does not make sense?
• How ambitious is the vocabulary? Does it achieve the desired spooky effect?
• How would you like the group to improve the piece?
• What questions can you ask the group to help them develop the piece further?

The following lesson can then begin with students considering this feedback in order to improve the work they have begun in this lesson.

Differentiation suggestions to support less able students:

• Provide a word bank or sentence starter bank.
• Provide additional resources to inspire ideas; further images or props, for example.
• Provide a wagoll (what a good one looks like) as a model of a piece of spooky writing.
• Suggestions to stretch more able students:
• Provide definitions/examples of literary devices and a challenge card asking students to ‘aim to include as many literary devices as possible.’
• Ask students to work towards a third learning objective: ‘use a variety of sentence structures for effect’ or ‘use a variety of punctuation for effect.’
• Allocate an expert to mixed ability groups who is asked to fulfil additional responsibilities as group leader.
• Provide a ‘challenging criteria’ card as a checklist of skills that more able students should aim to demonstrate.

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• The Best Creative Writing Resources For Teaching Plot And Setting In Ks3 English

KS3 creative writing – Resources for teaching plot and setting

Whether students want to create an epic adventure in a fiery inferno or tense tale in a sleepy town, make sure they create a compelling plot and a fully realised setting with these resources…

Unlock the full potential of your students’ creative writing with these top-tier resources for teaching plot and setting, designed specifically for KS3 English teachers…

KS3 creative writing resources

How to teach world building, storyboard templates.

Whether it’s short stories, comic strips or filmmaking, every tale needs the right structure to be told well. Having a beginning, middle and end may be a staple of storytelling , but alone it’s not enough, and there are many ways to tell a story.

But however you choose to write yours, one thing is constant – good stories need good structure. These storyboard template resources and activities will help your students develop the skills required to add that foundation to their creative writing.

Year 7 English worksheets

Get to grips with descriptive writing across two lessons with these free Year 7 English worksheets which focus on a piece of text all about the jungle.

Inspiring images and sticky notes

This creative writing KS3 lesson uses inspiring images and sticky notes to get learners producing some truly creative writing.

The collaborative nature of this lesson (students read what the person before them has written) means they learn from and inspire each other.

Create a spooky atmosphere

This Gothic setting description lesson plan will encourage students to take their creative writing to a whole new level. Start by closing the blinds, turning off the lights, playing spooky music and displaying an image on the whiteboard of an old, decrepit, haunted-looking house.

Setting description examples

Use this  setting description resource pack to help pupils refine their descriptive writing skills. The pack contains an extract from Finding Bear by Hannah Gold, as well as worksheets, teacher notes and more.

KS3 structure lesson plan

Structure may not seem like the most riveting subject, but for exam success students need to be taught how to employ structure for effect in their own writing and analyse the effects of it in the work of others.

Start this lesson by choping up a fiction text into paragraphs for students to sort into the correct order.

Writing the middle part of stories

This fully differentiated and resourced lesson will help students with writing the middles of narratives and stories. This is excellent preparation for GCSE writing exams.

Monster consequences descriptive writing lesson

Use this descriptive writing KS3 lesson to show students the potentially hilarious consequences of timid and imprecise description. It just might have a remarkable impact on subsequent writing…

Describe a sweet shop

This free resource will engage more advanced students in Key Stage 3. It focuses on crafting vivid descriptions of a sweet shop. This is a topic ripe with potential for rich, sensory language and imaginative exploration.

Descriptive dystopian writing lesson plan

This KS3 critical writing lesson starts with a clip from 2009 post-apocalyptic film  The Road . Feed back through class discussion about how the film creates a dystopian world. Which words would students use to do this in their own writing?

Use The Hobbit to write about tunnels

In this ‘build your own adventure story’ resource students discover new lands, and overcome monsters and other obstacles.

It begins with a passage from JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit , where Bilbo finds himself in a dark cave and meets Gollum for the first time. There are 10 pointers to look at to explore the passage, before students begin to write their own story.

The place as character

This interactive resource from Eduqas offers an opening paragraph example of a story that creates a real sense of setting.

Students should read through and identify the adjectives used to develop the atmosphere of the place being described.

The second section is where they give it a go themselves, writing out a descriptive passage about a place. There are lists of adjectives they can click on to insert them into the story should they get stuck for inspiration.

Model texts for settings

If you’re after example texts for different settings then head to Literary Wagoll where you’ll find descriptions of an alien world, a fairground, a tree house, a thunderstorm and various others.

Plot advice

This post features an excerpt from the book What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing , and builds on the idea of what a plot is.

It also includes a short list of traditional plot types, and tips for building a compelling plot, like using momentum, creating stakes and giving the characters goals and motives.

Award-winning author Frances Hardinge unpacks how to teach a much sought-after skill in modern storytelling – that of world-building…

When world-building, it’s easy to be distracted by questions of what, who and where, and the temptation to fill your imaginary landscape with creatures, people and places that grab the mind’s eye.

The important part is remembering to work through the  how ,  why  and  where . Why do any of these things exist, and how do they continue to exist?

Answering such questions can be time-consuming and fiddly, but the answers can often generate plot, detail and unique features for the setting so that it feels more solid.

If you leave them unanswered, then those big, shiny ‘cool’ elements of your setting will tend to feel shallow, like set dressing.

Splendid mayhem of world building

When running a ‘settings workshop’ for a full class (Y6 to Y8) I’ll sometimes encourage everyone to brainstorm the what, who and where first.

I’ll describe a storm at sea, and a ship being wrecked on a rocky shore. I then tell the students that nearly everybody on board has drowned, and that there’s only one survivor – me.

I recover consciousness, and begin looking around to discover where I am. And they’re going to tell me what I encounter.

I start by asking them what I’m lying on. What does it feel like? (At this point, someone may timidly suggest ‘sand’.)

I’ll then tell them that I’m opening my eyes, sitting up and looking around. What can I see?

Initially,  the responses will be a little cautious  – but before long, the class realises they have an adult character who they can chase around an imaginary landscape, and who will yelp with panic when subjected to countless perils.

They also realise that I won’t block any of their ideas, including all the ‘silly’ ones. At this point, splendid mayhem tends to break loose.

Note, this is not an engine for producing a grim, grittily serious setting. The results tend to be anarchic, enthusiastic, varied and frequently very funny, but in a way that generally gets the whole class engaged.

At a certain point (usually with some difficulty), I’ll call a halt to the brainstorming and get everyone to consider those how, when and why questions.

I’ll encourage them to come up with reasons for such bizarre phenomena coexisting in the same setting and invent a history. It will likely be a strange and amusing history, but that’s not necessarily a problem.

Fates of quirks

Alternatively, one could approach the world-building process from another direction entirely. I’m used to starting from bizarre premises myself, before trying to work out how they will affect the setting.

In effect, I’m starting with those  how ,  when  and  why  questions to help me work out the answers to  what ,  who  and  where .

To use this approach, a class could be broken up into small groups, each of which is tasked with brainstorming a different country.

Each group can choose a ‘quirk’ – some bizarre characteristic of this world that makes it appreciably different from our own. The students can either come up with their own suggestions, or pick out a single option from a pre-prepared list.

The groups can also be given a list of further questions to consider when fleshing out their worlds and deciding how their chosen quirk has affected everything in that particular country.

Some good sample questions here might include:

• When did the quirk begin? Has it always been there?
• Why does it exist? If nobody knows, why do people think it exists?
• How has it changed people’s beliefs and their behaviour?
• How has it affected the country’s history? Has it resulted in any new conflicts, religions, inventions, laws, jobs or crimes?
• What else is this country like? How advanced is the technology? What is the landscape like? In what other ways is it ‘weird?’
• If you were to visit the country, what odd things would you notice due to its peculiar history?

Quirks to explore

The following examples show how a single quirk can affect a whole setting’s history. Try exploring these ideas in class:

• Cats can use human speech.
• Instead of electricity, the setting has a power source that works in much the same way – except that you age twice as fast while using it.
• In this country, dreams are always distorted visions of something real that’s happening somewhere else at that exact moment.
• 1 in 10 children can teleport a few feet by the time they hit puberty. Most children have no control over it.
• The possession or use of clocks is strictly illegal.

Frances Hardinge is an award-winning children’s author. Her 11th novel,  Island of Whis p ers  (with illustrations by Emily Gravett), is available now. Browse English games KS3 ideas and more creative writing prompts .

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• Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport

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Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport is an airport used by private jets in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk , Russia. It has a maximum runway length of 3,400 meters. There is only one runway in total at the airport.

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport, also called Khomutovo, is an airport in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on the Russian island of Sakhalin. The airport was established in 1945 as a military airfield. With currently one 3,400 m concrete runway, one passenger terminal, two cargo terminals and 16 aircraft stands, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport is the largest airport in Sakhalin Oblast.

Sometimes referred to as UHSS - its ICAO code - on private jet quotes, for example, it can also be called UUS - its IATA code name. Both these shorthands are used by aircrafts to refer to the airport.

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• Latitude: 46.886944
• Longitude: 142.721944
• Altitude: 18 meters
• Runway length: 3,400 meters
• Number of runways: 1
• City: Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
• Region: Sakhalin Oblast
• Country: Russia

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Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk – the view from above

No comments · Posted by Sergei Rzhevsky in Cities , Travel

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is a city with a population of about 200 thousand people located in the southeastern part of Sakhalin Island in the Far East of Russia , the capital of Sakhalin Oblast .

It is the sixth largest city in the Russian Far East, in which Russian and Japanese cultures are closely intertwined. Here you can often see old Japanese buildings and monuments. The distance from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Moscow , if flying by plane, is 6,640 km and 9,280 km (by car). Photos by: Slava Stepanov .

Victory Square – one of the main squares of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Cathedral of the Nativity.

About one third of the total population of Sakhalin Island lives in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Lenin Square.

Sakhalin Regional Museum of Local Lore housed in a Japanese building constructed in the Imperial Crown Style in 1937. This is the only such building on Sakhalin and throughout Russia.

The climate in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is quite mild, there are no severe frosts in winter, and heat in summer. The coldest month is January with an average temperature of about minus 12 degrees Celsius. The warmest month is August (plus 17 degrees Celsius). Clear and dry weather sets in early September – the best time to visit Sakhalin.

House of Government of Sakhalin Oblast.

“Chekhov Center” – the only drama theater in Sakhalin Oblast.

Sakhalin residents often call the rest of Russia “the mainland.” You can get out of the island by plane, ferry, or other water transport.

Park named after Yuri Gagarin.

Roman Catholic Church “Parish of St. James”. In addition to divine services, organ and violin concerts are held here.

Museum of Railway Technology.

Church of the Resurrection.

Stadium “Cosmos” in Gagarin Park.

Stele “Cities of the Sakhalin Region”.

Tags:  Sakhalin oblast · Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk city

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Creative Writing Lessons

Subject: English

Age range: 11-14

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Last updated

30 August 2024

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A series of lessons that look at creating effective characters. Many thanks to contributors that have inspired this work; if you feel like you need a credit then please do get in touch.

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