1. Descriptive writing
Year 11

2. Planning Learning Objectives
To discover the importance of using all five senses when writing.
To discuss the importance of planning.
Planning

3. Starter Three simple questions: What are the 5 senses?
Why should we try and appeal to all 5 senses?
How will this make our descriptive writing more successful?
Starter

4. The Importance of Planning
In your exam, you will be faced with a task that will look a lot like this:
2 (a) Describe the scene and atmosphere when you visit a theme park, fairground or carnival.
Somehow you have to make words out of this.
The biggest mistake pupils make is in not thinking through how they will group their ideas together.
They run out of things to say and repeat themselves.
The Importance of Planning

5. The Importance of Planning
Planning does not take long but it is utterly invaluable!
INVALUABLE, I SAY!
It allows you to think through the process and ensure that you cover all that you need to do.
Let us think again about the example given:
2 (a) Describe the scene and atmosphere when you visit a theme park, fairground or carnival.
The Importance of Planning

6. The Importance of Planning
The Scene
What does this mean?
The sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, even the touch.
The Importance of Planning

7. The Importance of planning
The Atmosphere
The way people are acting: more emotional.
Not your emotions as a narrator.
The emotions of the children, the tension, the excitement, the thrills.
How do we register this as humans?
The Importance of planning

8. Success criteria General Writing Skills for Band 1
W1: Content is complex, sophisticated and realistic.
W2: Overall structure is secure and the constituent parts well balanced and carefully managed.
Success criteria

9. Success criteria Descriptive Writing for Band 1
Many well-defined and developed ideas and images create a convincing, original, overall picture with varieties of focus.
Success criteria

10. Success criteria Style and Accuracy for Band 1
Writing is consistent, stylistically fluent, linguistically strong and almost always accurate; has a sense of audience.
W3: Consistently wide range of appropriate vocabulary.
W4: Subtle and effective sense of audience; appropriate use of varied sentence structures.
W5: Spelling, punctuation and grammar almost always accurate
Success criteria

11. Let us return to the London Riots because we spent a period thinking about them.
Watch the following Youtube clips and note down the different things you see and hear (but also think about taste, smell and touch):
London Riots 1
London Riots 2
Trying our own

12. Planning But remember you are not telling a story!
What to include and when?
You want your descriptive piece to build to a climax
But remember you are not telling a story!
Instead, you must structure your piece so that your descriptions of the scene and atmosphere grow in intensity so we feel like we are there.
Don’t let your description become static – give structure and progression to your description e.g. moving towards or through something, such as a street market or busy shopping mall, or going through a period of time, an hour or a day for instance, and recording the changes.
Planning

13. I want you to write a descriptive piece of maybe 200 words describing the London riots based on what you have seen.
Remember the fundamentals:
5 senses
Variety of Focus
Well-developed imagery.
Appropriate vocabulary
Secure structure
planning

14. Share your piece with your neighbor who will give it the highlighter test to see how much is worthy.
Highlight anything that warrants the word “descriptive”.
Look at your own work and see whether it is colourful or drab.
Plenary

15. Homework Write the plan for one of the following prompts:
A major cycling race is coming through your town centre. Imagine you are at the front of the crowd waiting for the cyclists to appear. Describe the sense of expectation and the arrival of the competitors.
Describe the best meal that you ever had with a group of people, including details of the place and the atmosphere.
Describe the atmosphere of a quiet street or neighbourhood which is then suddenly disturbed
Homework