Creative Writing Unit Plan

English Unit Plan
TITLE OF UNIT: Creative Writing Development

The focus of this unit is to develop students' writing abilities by focusing on different
aspects of short story.
Year
7/8
Level
4
Duration
3 Weeks
Teacher
Kitiona
Date
Term 1 2014
Listening Reading Viewing

Processes and strategies
Integrate sources of information, processes, and strategies confidently to identify, form, and express ideas.
Recognises, understands, and describes the connections between oral, written, and visual language.
Integrates oral, visual, and written sources of information and prior knowledge confidently to make sense of
increasingly varied and complex texts.
Uses appropriate processing and comprehension strategies with confidence.
Is developing the ability to think critically about texts.
Monitors, self-evaluates, and describes progress, articulating what they are learning.
Purposes and audiences

Show an understanding of how texts are shaped for different purposes and audiences.
Identifies and describes how texts are constructed for a variety of intentions, situations, and levels of formality
and for individuals or groups with varying characteristics and determinants, such as backgrounds, interests,
and motivations.
Identifies particular points of view and evaluates the reliability and usefulness of texts.
Ideas
Show understandings of ideas within, across, and beyond texts.
Makes meaning of increasingly varied and complex ideas.

Identifies and understands main and subsidiary ideas and the links between them.
Makes connections by thinking about underlying ideas in and between texts and with personal, social, cultural,
literary, political, or historical contexts.
Makes and supports inferences from texts with increasing independence.
Uses supporting details.
Language features
Show an increased understanding of how language features are used for effect within and across texts.
Has an increasing vocabulary that can be used to make meaning of texts.

Identifies oral, written, and visual features used and recognises their effects.
Shows an increasing knowledge of how a range of text conventions can be used appropriately and effectively.
Structure
Show an increasing understanding of text structures.
Understands that the order and organisation of words, sentences, paragraphs, and images contribute to and
affect text meaning.
Identifies an increasing range of text forms and understands their features.
Speaking, Writing, Presenting

Processes and strategies
Integrate sources of information, processes, and strategies confidently to identify, form, and express ideas.
Uses an increasing knowledge of the connections between oral, written, and visual language when creating
texts.
Creates a range of texts by integrating oral, written, and visual sources of information confidently.
Seeks feedback and makes changes to texts to improve clarity and meaning.
Is reflective about the production of their own texts: monitors and self-evaluates progress, articulating what
they are learning.
Purposes and audiences

Show an understanding of how to shape texts for different purposes and audiences.
Through deliberate choice of content, language, and text form, constructs a range of texts that demonstrate a
developing understanding of a variety of intentions, situations, and levels of formality and of individuals or
groups with varying characteristics and determinants, such as backgrounds, interests, and motivations.
Ideas
Form and communicate selected ideas on a range of topics.
Forms and communicates ideas and information clearly and precisely, drawing on a range of sources.
Is able to add or change details and comments showing thoughtful selection in the process.
Uses supporting details.
Language features
Use a range of language features appropriately, showing an understanding and appreciation of their effect.
Uses a increasing vocabulary to create precise meaning.

Uses a range of oral, written, and visual features to create meaning and impact and to sustain interest.
Uses a range of text conventions appropriately, effectively, and with increasing accuracy.
Structure
Organise texts for particular purpose or effect, using a range of appropriate and coherent structures.
Achieves some coherence or wholeness in constructing texts.

Organises and sequences ideas and information for a particular purpose or effect.
Additional Curriculum areas
Technology Learning Languages

Health & P/E Science Te Reo
The Arts
Social Sciences
Mathematics
Write the Achievement Objective(s) to be assessed:

Students will:
Produce a controlled piece of creative writing that is

character-driven and shaped by a theme
Specific Learning Outcomes
During this unit students will learn:

To develop control in writing description
To evaluate style in writing
To understand how plot can be shaped by theme
To understand how characters can drive a story
Setting
Perspective:
New Zealand Rekohu (The Chatham Islands) Asia

Australia
Americas
Global
The Past (History)

The Present (Current Issues)
Multicultural
Indigenous people
Equality
Key Competencies focus:
managing self
(Select only those being focussed on)
The Future.
Rights
Gender
relating to others
participating and contributing
thinking
using language, symbols, and texts.
2
Teaching and Learning Activities

Part One: A Sense of Style
Warm Up - Write a 3-5 sentence paragraph without repeating any words
Main Activity Read news article about Bad Writing Competition; Write the worst possible
opening sentence for an adventure story; read through examples and discuss features of
bad writing
Part Two: Plot vs. Theme Driven story "THREE MINUTE" WRITING CYCLES'
This lesson contains two exercises. The first exercise causes an awareness of the existence of
plot as an element of the short story, and the second exercise- with the addition of a "theme"
shows how plots are shaped by a theme. [Note: plot-orientation focus draws attention away from
character development.]
Writing without a theme - Students sit in a circle; each begins writing a story starting with
the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night. After 3 minutes, pass the story to the person on
left. The next student adds to the story for 3 minutes and passes it on, and so forth. As the
time for a conclusion draws near, announce that the next writer will begin to finish up the
story and the one after that will conclude the story.
Writing with a theme - Previous to this exercise each student hands in 3 sayings and puts
them into a box. When everyone has drawn a saying from the box, students write the
saying and their names at the top of their papers, and begin a story aimed at using the
saying they have drawn as a theme of their story. The procedure is the same as the
"without a theme" cycle except the last two writers have the particular challenge of ending
the story to fit and/or support the saying.
Both stories are returned to their originators so they can see what happened to their ideas.
Students discuss how their stories evolved and in what ways the two stories differ.
Discussion direction ideas: What is the function of "theme" by being absent and then
present? How has theme shaped the evolution of a story? The interaction between
students as they guide or deflect each other's purposes, also shows the power of intent and
concept on the story at any given point.
Aim also to build enjoyment for the class and an appreciation of each other's cleverness, or
problems, in dealing with the story in the form that is handed to them.
Part Three: Descriptive Writing Control FOUR VISITORS
The purpose of this exercise is to improve the students' ability to write description. The focus,
rather than reducing the amount of description, is for students to more consciously control the
location and quality of their descriptions.
Introduce the idea of a story such as a girl who is dared by a friend to spend until midnight in a
large old deserted house. As the first girl waits in an upstairs room with shrimp cooking in a pot of
oil in the fireplace, she has four visitors. They come at 9, 10, 11pm and midnight respectively. The
girl describes each visitor, using the five senses, as scarier, larger, and more awesome than the
preceding one.
Students set up their story with the barest of plots... generally one paragraph explaining
why they are having visitors. The visitors can range from good to best, or, bad to worst. The
writing should be controlled so that the gradations are evident. This gradation requires
much more control in writing than a simple writing of four descriptions.
Planning suggestion for students - draw circles to list the character's qualities in, remembering
the 5 senses; look for degrees of change and arrange the characters appropriately; use
metaphors and similes to express the 'inexpressible' (but not to the extreme.)
Share and discuss effectiveness of descriptions.
3
Part Four: Character-Driven Plot

NOTE: Short stories are either 'plot driven' or 'character driven' ie some writers have
preconceived plots that their characters must follow. Many mystery and science fiction authors use
this technique. Other authors create the characters, and 'observe' how they act when placed in a
certain situation. Each technique serves a purpose, but unless a writer is skilled, plot driven
stories create shallow characters. This exercise shows students how characters can drive a story,
as the -story cycle unit with a theme- showed how a theme can drive a story.
Class brainstorm aspects of character description (eg personal circumstances, physical

features, family background etc)
Students are given 3+ minutes to describe a character and then they pass the description
on to the next student, who adds to the description. This process helps everyone 'buy into'
the characters. After 4-6 turns of writing on the characters, the character sheets are passed
back to the first writer who sees what happened to the character. Then the students are
divided into small groups and are told to come up with a story plot and outline using all of
the characters that they have. *The story does not become plot driven because by now the
students have an idea of what the character is like as a person and they know whether the
character would act in a certain way or not.
After sufficient time has passed, the characters are traded with the other group/s and a new
story outline is written. Then during one class period, the various plots and outlines are
presented and the story lines are compared.
Discuss how the characters' motivations, background, tendencies, etc. influenced plot
development.
Assessment
Students will craft a short story roughly one page based on the idea that Life is a
Journey They will be assessed on their ability to craft a character driven story
with an integrated theme shaping the plot. They will also be assessed on their
effective use of description. Surface features will be assessed using AsTTle
indicators.
Unit Evaluation

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English Unit Plan

TITLE OF UNIT: Creative Writing Development

Listening Reading Viewing

Purposes and audiences

Makes meaning of increasingly varied and complex ideas.

Has an increasing vocabulary that can be used to make meaning of texts.

Speaking, Writing, Presenting

Purposes and audiences

Uses a increasing vocabulary to create precise meaning.

Achieves some coherence or wholeness in constructing texts.

Additional Curriculum areas

Technology Learning Languages

Write the Achievement Objective(s) to be assessed:

Produce a controlled piece of creative writing that is

Specific Learning Outcomes

During this unit students will learn:

New Zealand Rekohu (The Chatham Islands) Asia

The Past (History)

Teaching and Learning Activities

Part Four: Character-Driven Plot

Class brainstorm aspects of character description (eg personal circumstances, physical

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