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Well, if they are or you’re still thinking about whether to encourage your students to enter in class, we wanted to help you out and give you some resources that are perfect for writing stories.
Here at EducationCity, we have always supported the BBC’s 500 Words competition. It’s actually the UK’s biggest short story writing competition for children between the ages of 5-13. The great news is that children can submit stories about anything, so whether you have someone in your class whose favourite genre is fairy tales or someone else who loves action, you can choose whatever you want!
Entries are open to submit now, and the competition closes on 27th February; so, although there’s still time to write stories, you’ll want to start thinking about getting into the zone and writing sooner rather than later. Hear from and take a look at the resources that Jane Wardle, Educational Content Developer and author at EducationCity, has recommended that can directly help with certain elements of story writing; just click on the images to access some of them for free or sign up to a trial to see them all!
Year 1
Structure
Bella’s Burrow (#35210)
Jane: “Explore the characters or a traditional tale and learn about structure in this Learn Screen – it helps students to understand how different types of writing, including narratives, are structured.”
Sentence Writing
Sunken Treasure: Part 1 (#28009)
Jane: “This Learn Screen is all about writing sentences and is ideal for exploring the important skills and processes essential to writing. This can be used with the whole class on the whiteboard; watch and listen to Stig as he explores making his writing ideas clear.”
Sentence Writing
Sunken Treasure: Part 2 (#28016)
Jane: “This Learn Screen follows on from Sunken Treasure Part 1 and takes students through exploring the important skills and processes essential to writing. Focusing on saying ideas out loud, oral composition, writing, sequencing and checking; follow Stig as he explores making his writing ideas clear.”
Year 2
Planning and Writing
Stamina for Writing 1-6a (#22315-#22318, #22634-#22634 & #22699)
Jane: “This series of Learn Screens help plan and write narratives, newspaper reports, fables and poems. They focus on planning or saying out loud what they are going to write about; writing down key words or ideas and making sure what they have written makes sense.”
Year 3/4
Character Development
Alter Eco (#41874)
Jane: “This is an example of one of EducationCity’s Activities and has been created to help explore creating characters when writing narratives. In it, students will learn about identifying characters’ appearances, personality, skills, goals and motivations.”
Setting
The Plot Thickens (#34816)
Jane: “For learning about setting, this Learn Screen has students following Meg and Stig with their writing. In it, students will explore descriptive language with focus on the senses. You’ll also be preparing to draft sentences to describe a fantasy setting.”
Year 5/6
Planning and Writing
The Writing Process 1-10 (#34851-#34859 & #34370)
Jane: “This series of Learn Screens explores skills essential to writing, with the five steps of the writing process: planning, drafting, evaluating, editing and proofreading.”
Language, Imagery and Description
Apollo’s Gallop (#34749)
Jane: “For language, imagery and description, this Learn Screen is ideal for helping students understand what they read and can be used in their writing. Explore with Stig and Klara as to how language helps you understand text.”
Don’t forget to submit your entries by visiting this webpage. You can also find out more information about the competition on that website too! Also, if you want to see all the resources mentioned on EducationCity, sign up for a trial here.