I have two lessons with all the Y7 students and the EAL Y7s are included in the first lesson. In the first lesson I open the class with asking students what they associate with or are elements of effective horror writing. Students do this in silent groups on a large sheet of paper to document their prior knowledge.
My prompt for the Y7s was:
Here are some student responses to this prompt:
I also showed a very simple video on how to begin writing a horror story. After viewing the video, students explained to me what they had noted in the video that were missing from the prior knowledge.
How to Begin Writing a Horror Story
I also read them the Chapter 1 from the Patrick Ness book, A Monster Calls. I chose this book as it was age appropriate, not too disturbing and had subplots of bullying. Because the protagonist was also a year older than the Y7s, they could empathise with his struggles at school and at home.
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| Image taken from the DreamingBookworm.com |
While reading it, I projected the following images from the book on a screen so that students could have a visual to elicit their imagination.
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| Image taken from happymusicnotes.com |
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| Image taken from frankzumbach.wordpress.com. |
After my reading, I asked student to make connections and seeing examples between my reading and the video on writing horror. To finish the class, I gave students a worksheet that I created that help them create the character, setting and plot to get them started on their first draft.
