Writing Great Stories

Overview

Year Level: Year 10
Subject: English
Duration: 120 minutes
Victorian Curriculum Focus:
Level 10 – English, Literacy and Writing

• VCELY485: Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, selecting and experimenting with text structures, linguistic and literary features appropriate to purpose and audience.
• VCELT476: Create literary texts that reflect an increasing understanding of the relationship between content, structure, and language.
• VCELA473: Understand how paragraphs and images can be arranged for different effects in narrative writing.

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Term: 2 | Week: 5

Learning Intention

We are learning to understand the core elements of narrative writing to write stories that are cohesive, expressive, and creative, based on an image prompt.

Success Criteria

I can:

• Identify narrative structure and key features (orientation, complication, climax, resolution).
• Use imaginative and appropriate descriptive language and dialogue.
• Experiment with character perspectives and voice for effect.
• Create a cohesive story based on a visual stimulus with a clear structure.
• Reflect on my writing choices and areas for improvement.

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Engage & Explore

Hook – "What's the Story Here?"

• Visual Prompt Carousel: Around the classroom, post 5–7 intriguing images (e.g. a deserted train station, a child with an umbrella in the snow, a dragon in a cityscape). Students rotate and spend 2 minutes at each, silently writing one sentence about what might be happening in the story behind the image.
• Regroup and discuss the different types of stories students imagined for just one image. Use this to spark a short conversation: “Where do stories come from?”

Key Questioning

• What makes a story compelling?
• How does a character’s goal or problem drive a narrative?
• Why do readers care about setting, tone, and voice?

Prior Knowledge Activation

• Whole class brainstorm: What narratives have we read or watched recently (films, books, etc)? Identify common story elements (setting, characters, main problem, ending). Create a concept map.

Explicit Teaching – Narrative versus Expository

Using slides (teacher-produced or from existing PowerPoint “04 – Informative and Expository” but adapted for narratives), contrast a narrative and expository intro paragraph. Discuss:

• Narrative: Sensory language, scene setting, character thoughts
• Expository: Factual, structured around topic sentences and support

Mini-whiteboard activity: Students label which 5 given excerpts are narrative and which are expository, with justify-your-answer prompts.

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Apply

Differentiation

• Support: Scaffolding sheets with sentence starters and story structure templates.
• Extension: Students chance perspective—rewrite from antagonist’s viewpoint or re-set the story in another time/place.

Collaborative Task 1: Build a Story Together

Group Work (3s):

• Each group receives one image prompt.
• As a team, fill out a Narrative Scaffold handout:
  1. Who is the central character?
  2. What do they want?
  3. What gets in their way?
  4. How do they overcome it?
  5. How does it end?

This exercise explicitly covers narrative structure (orientation – complication – climax – resolution).

Class Discussion: Each group shares the shape of their story. Discussion around theme and structure.

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Independent Task 1: Write to a Prompt

Students choose one new image from a provided set and begin writing a narrative introduction up to 300 words using a simplified scaffold.

Focus:

• Orientation (establish character, setting, tone)
• Begin ‘in the moment’ or with a sensory description
• Use at least three descriptive language devices (simile, metaphor, show-not-tell, etc.)

Teacher circulates – giving mini-conferences to offer verbal feedback.

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Independent Task 2: Instructional Rewrite

Students re-read their narrative opening and swap with a peer. The peer completes a Narrative Feedback Ladder, offering:

• One thing done well
• One area to work on
• One question about the character or plot

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Task 3: Slow Motion Moment

Practising the descriptive capacity of narrative writing:

• Choose a key moment from your opening (e.g. character opens the door, sees an object, or hears a voice).
• Slowly re-write that moment over 3–4 sentences focusing just on details. This shows how to ‘zoom in’ on action.

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Review

Reconnect to Learning Intention & Success Criteria

• Whole-class discussion: What elements from the success criteria did we manage to include in our writing today?
• Revisit a student sample on the projector and do a quick success criteria reflection as a class.

Metacognition: Revision Journal

Quick-write:

• “What writing strategy helped me the most today?”
• “One thing I’m still unsure about is…”
• “One thing I’ll try next time is…”

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Exit Ticket

Students complete an exit square on paper:

1. One strength in my narrative so far
2. One sentence I’m really proud of writing
3. One narrative feature I need help with
4. One goal for next lesson

Once finished, distribute a short grammar focus task revising:

• Proper use of commas in compound sentences
• Dialogue punctuation rules

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Link to Next Lesson

Looking Ahead: Building Confidence

Week 6 will introduce argumentative and persuasive writing, so we’ll build on the same image prompt, but this time constructing an opinion around it (“Is solitude empowering?” etc)—reusing their descriptive and emotional work in a new mode.

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Homework / Preparation

• Finish today's narrative (aiming for 400–500 words).
• Read any short story from the class reader or provided digital resource and identify orientation, complication, climax and resolution in your writing journal.
• Optional: Select one of today’s other image prompts and outline a story using the five-point plan.

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Resources

• Narrative Scaffold handouts
• Sentence starter cards (differentiated)
• Picture stimulus pack (hard copy or printed slide deck)
• Narrative Feedback Ladder peer review sheet
• Grammar review worksheet

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Notes for Teachers

• EAL students benefit from modelling, so use your own writing to co-author a paragraph on the screen.
• Embed visuals for all instruction slides, and offer bilingual glossary support where possible.
• Cold-call gently during group discussions to check comprehension.
• Use Think-Pair-Share over open questioning for comfort.

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Final Thought: Show students that narratives aren’t just storytelling—they’re human experiences creatively documented. Focus on small wins today: build their confidence so the eventual 3000-word piece doesn’t feel impossible.

Let’s turn fear of fiction into love for language.