Ten lessons — from story elements to composing a complete narrative — each with teaching content, an exam‑style question, a Band 6 model, analysis and self‑check criteria.
Intended learning: identify the defining elements of a story and separate story from mere event.
A list of events is not yet a story. A story has character, setting, a problem and a shape — and usually something at stake. Model with a familiar fairy tale: name who, where, what goes wrong, and how it resolves. Introduce the idea that a story is events selected and arranged to mean.
The first list simply records events in time — no stakes, no inner life. The second begins to be a story because it gives the cat a longing (“never caught anything”) and a moment of chance (the bird). Trouble is the seed of plot: once there is a want and a risk, a reader starts asking what happens next, and that question is what makes a story.
Turn a one-line event list into a mini-story by adding a want and a problem.
Intended learning: build characters with wants and obstacles, and reveal them through action and dialogue.
Characters are the engine of plot. Teach the trio want – obstacle – choice: a character who wants something, meets a barrier, and makes a choice that shows who they are. Reveal character by showing — a gesture, a line of dialogue, a decision — rather than telling (“she was brave”).
“I’m not lost,” Leo said, folding the map along the wrong crease for the third time. He walked forty metres the wrong way, then back, grinning. “You wanted the scenic route,” he said, which was both a lie and not a lie. The fold, the grin, the re-label — each action carries the stubbornness, so the reader feels it rather than being told.
Write a “want – obstacle – choice” plan for a character of your own.
Intended learning: use setting to create mood and drive the story, not just locate it.
Setting is where and when — and how it feels. Model how a place can be the mood (a cupboard is lonely; a rainy schoolyard is bleak) or can drive plot (a locked room creates the obstacle). Teach students to choose sensory details that echo the feeling they want.
Refuge: Morning light crossed the table like a slow invitation; the kettle hummed a round of comfort and the same four mugs waited on the rail, familiar as a chorus. Trap: The same table, but the light was too bright, sharp off the tiles; the kettle’s hum seemed to grow impatient, and the four mugs hung like a row of staring eyes. Nothing has moved, only the feeling — which is exactly how setting works: it is weather for the soul.
Describe your classroom as a place of adventure, then as a place of dread.
Intended learning: plan stories on a narrative arc and use pacing for effect.
Introduce the story mountain — orientation, complication, rising action, climax, resolution. Teach pacing: where to dwell (the build-up) and where to move fast (a chase). Then show how slowing the climax increases suspense and how an abrupt ending can refuse easy comfort.
Orientation: last day, a beach everyone is abandoning. Complication: the key fits nothing in sight. Rising: three attempts — the shed, the locker, the old boat. Climax: the lock clicks open on the boat, and inside is last year’s message. Resolution: the sand swallows the key again as the tide comes in. Slowing the three attempts builds suspense by making each failure mount; the tide’s cover at the end allows the mystery to survive rather than be explained to death.
Draw a story mountain for your premise and label each stage.
Intended learning: read the patterns, archetypes and lessons of traditional stories.
Fairy tales are the purest story machine. Teach their patterns: repeated numbers (three brothers, three tries), archetypes (helper, villain, fool), thresholds (forests, doors), and the moral or cultural root. Then ask the higher-order question — why do we keep telling these? — and compare two versions to see how culture reshapes a tale.
Both versions run on the classic engine: a small hero, a clear threshold, three rising trials and a helper. But the retelling swaps the helper from a magical stranger to a community elder, and the prize from treasure to the right to speak at the village council. The pattern is the skeleton — the retelling refills it with a different value — which is why fairy tales survive: they are sturdy bones dressed in each culture’s skin.
Rewrite a fairy tale’s ending from the villain’s point of view.
Intended learning: read and compose poetry through sound, imagery and compression.
Poetry means by how it sounds and where it breaks. Teach rhythm, rhyme, repetition, imagery and line breaks, and how compression makes each word work harder. Model reading a short poem aloud to hear the feeling before analysing it.
The short, breaking lines make the reader slow down as the speaker does, and the soft fricatives (“rain”, “roof”, “homework”) stay inside the mouth, quiet and resigned. “Unmaking” does double work, turning rain into a gentle vandal. I would add: “the dog yawns / in sympathy / and the lamp / gives up.” My lines continue the music — single pauses, small surrenders — so the feeling stays compressed rather than explained.
Compose a five-line poem about a small moment, then annotate two sound choices.
Intended learning: see drama as story through dialogue and action, and read stage directions.
A play has no narrator — everything must come through dialogue, action and stage directions. Teach how a playwright shows feeling through what characters say and do, and how a reader must imagine staging. Then try performing: voice and movement carry the meaning a narrator would.
KIT (turning away, quiet): I packed your bag. (beat) DAN (stops, then very slowly): You packed my bag? [not a question but a discovery] The pause and direction “not a question but a discovery” change the line from surprise to tenderness — the actor now delivers it softly, and the audience understands the relationship without being told. In a play, a stage direction is a sentence you cannot hear, and it can say the most.
Write a four-line scene that shows a friendship falling out, using only speech and directions.
Intended learning: read shot, editing, sound and mise-en-scène as a film’s storytelling language.
Films tell stories in pictures and sound. Teach the basic grammar: shot type (close-up, wide, medium), camera angle (high, low, level), lighting, editing (how cuts shape time), sound (music, effects, silence) and mise-en-scène (everything placed in the frame). A close-up is a thought; a wide shot is a fate.
The opening wide shot dwarfs the child against the kitchen, so the room becomes an ocean and she a small ship — loneliness without a word. The slow cut to close-up then pulls us to her trembling hands, and the faint music fills the silence with something sad and almost hopeful. The filmmakers never say she is lonely; they place her in a cavernous frame and quiet the sound, letting picture do the telling.
Storyboard a four-shot scene that builds anxiety.
Intended learning: plan and draft a complete story using imagery, dialogue and a clear arc.
Consolidate the craft into one composition. Model the “show, don’t tell” rule in action: turn “she was nervous” into a detail (swallowing, a dry palm, a glance at the door). Then run a plan-draft cycle: choose a want and obstacle, plan the arc, draft with imagery and dialogue, and aim for a single clear effect.
Milo unwrapped it at the bus stop, where the wind kept lifting the paper like a tongue tasting the gift. Inside was his mother’s folding compass, the brass warm as a held hand, and a note in her square, unhurried hand: for when you find north. He slid it into his pocket and pressed his palm over it all the way to school, so that when the first bell rang and the hall swallowed him, he walked with his hand holding something the way a magnet holds a needle — steadfast, pointed, his. My arc moves from arrival (the gift is a surprise) through rising wonder to a quiet climax of belonging; the compass and the note show memory and hope without a word of explanation.
Complete the plan, then draft the full story.
Intended learning: edit a draft against criteria, give kind-and-useful feedback, and polish for publication.
Editing is where a good story becomes a great one. Teach a three-pass edit: (1) Story — is the want clear and the arc complete? (2) Craft — did I show rather than tell, and does every detail earn its place? (3) Polish — read aloud for rhythm, tighten, fix punctuation. Peer feedback should name the effect and suggest one improvement.
Original said “Nora felt deeply sad that she was leaving” — telling. Revised: “Nora packed the last box, and it was lighter than going had ever felt heavy, so she put the photo back in, wrapped it twice, and let it go.” I cut the stated emotion and let the weight of a single box carry the feeling, and I made the photo—wrapping twice do the work of goodbye. The reader now feels her grief instead of being told its name.
Publish your story (display, anthology, or reading aloud) and reflect using the guide’s criteria.
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