Take Action: Sensational stories

Step 1

Begin by posing the following question to students:

What is the best book you have ever read?

Record student answers on the board.

Step 2

Then ask:

What was it about the book that drew you in?
How did the author engage you?
Do you remember the moment when you were hooked and didn’t want to put it down?

Explain to students that, as a writer, there are a few tricks that you can use to connect with the reader. We’re going to learn one of those tricks today.

Step 3

Share the following video with students:

How to write descriptively - Nalo Hopkinson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSoRzTtwgP4)

Once complete, take a moment to discuss any unfamiliar concepts raised in the video.

Step 4

Play your different songs to students, for example, a happy song (Happy by Pharrell, Walking on Sunshine etc.) and a sad song (Mad World, When the Party’s Over by Billie Eilish).

As the song plays, invite students to notice and write down their physical and emotional responses to the music:

What happens to your breathing?
How would you describe the feeling in your stomach and chest? What associations does your brain make with the music? Pictures? Memories? Colours? (Even if they are random, write them down).

The power of pauses

pauses have been shown to be an effective tool for encouraging students to participate in conversations because they:
slow down the interaction
provide students with time to think, to process, and construct a response
allow other students to initiate turns to talk
enable teachers to plan their follow-up moves in response to a student’s talk
acknowledge and praise their thinking, for example, “I really like the way you thought about...”

For more evidence-based advice on developing oral language in students click here.

Step 5

Write up some plain sentences on the board, such as:

She felt happy.
He was scared.
The dog was confused.
Grandma was angry.
(Choose your own)

Pose the questions:

Do these sentences make you want to keep reading?
Do you think they could be improved?

Step 6

Now take one of these sentences and explain to students that you will use some of the five senses (but without using the words see, hear, touch, taste or smell) and turn that sentence into a small paragraph that evokes emotion in the reader (or at least gets them interested).

Note: We have included examples below; however, it could be more beneficial for students to watch the teacher come up with their own examples in front of them: "It’s important for students to see adults write so they get a sense of the messiness of the process, the rethinking and revising that occurs throughout, and get to see how even teachers struggle to find the right words, the right flow, or the most compelling structure for a sentence or paragraph." Find out more here.

For example:

She felt happy: Matilda couldn’t stop the huge grin stretching across her face. She was a balloon about to lift off the ground and float into the sky. He remembered! She sighed in delight. Everything had been worth it.
He was scared: Tyson clenched his fists and took a step back. Blood pounded in his ears, and his throat suddenly felt like sandpaper. He chanced a look behind him, but there was no escape. The alley was closing in on him like earth being shovelled onto a coffin.

Tips: Name the characters and picture them in your mind. Take a moment to wonder why they are feeling the way they do. Can you see where they are? What are they wearing? Who are they with?

Step 7

Invite students to have a go. They can use one of the 'boring' sentences on the board or can create one of their own to work from. Alternatively, if students have existing creative writing tasks they are working on, they could take a sentence from this to work on.

Encourage students to be creative and to make it as dramatic as they want!

Meaningful Moments: Sensational Stories

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