Writer's Craft in Cults Academy

Cults Academy associated schools group (ASG) in Aberdeen has created a new resource for teaching Writer's Craft. It has been designed to help prepare pupils for assessment in Writer's Craft, whilst assisting teachers to undertake standardised methods of asessment.

This useful resource is provided here for the benefit of other primary and secondary schools involved in Writer's Craft.

Selecting stimulating passages

Teachers should begin by providing passages for pupils to practise identifying features of Writer's Craft. These can be quite easy to find: less than an hour's leafing through texts in the school library can be fruitful. Openings of novels or short stories are desirable as they are designed to lead on.

Using these passages should not simply be about preparing children for assessment. The focus should be on the close analysis of the text, using the categories of assessment (character, setting, atmosphere, events, style, tone and sentence variety) purely as headings for a reading-based task. This approach helps familiarise pupils with the requirements of stage one of the assessment and to develop an appreciation of how texts are crafted.

Organising work groups

Pupils should work in groups according to level, discussing and making notes of their observations. These could be the basis of either whole-class or group and teacher plenary reports. This work should not be limited to using isolated extracts, but should form an essential part of analysing class or group readers.

Supporting documents

The accompanying support sheets can be used by pupils to make notes while discussing/analysing texts. They are designed in a format that reminds them of the criteria by which Writer's Craft is judged at a given level.

An elements of style sheet, intended as a reminder of the features to be analysed in this area, and an example of the Scottish Qualification Authority (SQA) moderation sheet for writing standards are also provided.