Resource of the Week - Creative Writing Mat
Our resource this week is for improving your creative writing. You can download our creative writing mat by visiting our English resources section on our website or by clicking here.
First, a word of warning regarding the use of supporting resources such as these that are designed to scaffold student work and provide students with a supportive structure around which to develop their work. Once a student has learned the principles of how to apply their learning effectively using the resource, the resource and the scaffold should be taken away. Just as students will need to rely solely on their own knowledge and skills in their exams - it is imperative that students practise doing so without any supportive resources to ensure that they can manage independently.
This resource is a mat that contains key elements to include in the planning and building of a piece of creative writing. This is a great resource for students to have alongside them while revising creative writing and provides good preparation for tackling the descriptive writing element of any exam. The resource itself is quite explanatory, however, below is our general advice for students developing their creative writing, particularly for exams:
The creative writing section is an area where you are more likely to gain or lose marks for your spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, paragraphing and handwriting. Taking care with your presentation and handwriting always makes a difference. Saving yourself 5 minutes at the end to read over your work and improve on these elements (correcting spelling mistakes, using more ambitious punctuation) is an easy way to net some more marks.
Demonstrating and applying a broad vocabulary is key to showing your command of language. Creative writing is a chance for you to showcase the vocabulary that you know. Using boring or common words like “big” or “nice“ is not an option. Prompt yourself to use a better synonym when reading through your work - cross out any boring words and replace them (a thesaurus is ideal for this if possible). If you can’t find an appropriate synonym then reword the sentence to be more descriptive in other ways.
Reuse and adapt previous pieces of creative writing that you have done. If you have written any creative writing before and improved on it with a teacher or in class then you can use pieces of them in any further creative writing you do. Having a selection of well-polished “gems“ of creative writing that you can deploy appropriately in a creative writing exercise is a sure-fire way to succeed in the creative writing section of your exam.
We hope that this resource will be used to aid students’ creativity in planning and develop their writing of extended responses. From all of us at Libra Education, never stop learning!