Lesson Plan 4
Creating a story with children’s help
Learning Objectives
To use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining
and exploring ideas.
To say out loud what they are going to write about.
To compose a sentence orally before writing it.
To sequence sentences to form short narratives.
To re-read what they have written to check that it makes sense.
To proofread to check for errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation (for example, ends of
sentences punctuated correctly)
To evaluate their writing with the teacher and other pupils.
Learning Outcomes
Can use imagination to discuss and plan ideas.
Can record ideas using a range of sentence openers.
Can plan a beginning, middle and end.
Can retell their story.
Can use the plan to write a story with structure and punctuated sentences.
Resources
Mighty Writer mat with relevant toolbars. Mighty Writer plans (differentiated)
1
Shared Reading/Writing
Talk with the children about the story/recount you modelled in the previous lesson. You may ask
questions such as;
How did I decide what to write about?
How did I decide how to start my story?
Why did I say each sentence out loud?
When did I choose to use the orange and red mats?
What did I do if something didn’t make sense?
Explain to the children that they are going to work with you to create their own story/recount.
You may focus either on;
• creating a fictional story based on a particular topic
• writing a recount about something you have done as a class.
As in the story you modelled, work with the children to think about characters, content of
story/recount and choosing appropriate images.
Use the sentence mats, sentence openers, conjunctions, images, symbols and punctuation to
create the story/recount. You may do this in one lesson or over several days. Involve the
children at every stage through questioning, allowing children to select and place words, images
and symbols, and encouraging them to suggest their own ideas. Ensure that each sentence is said
out loud before moving on to the next to help children retain what they have done and check for
sense and fluency. Once completed retell the whole story out loud asking questions such as;
Does this make sense?
Can we make any more changes to improve it?
Shared Sentence/ Word work
Encourage children to give reasons for the words choices they suggest and talk to them about
how word choice impacts on the story/recount. You may choose to focus on adjectives, adverbs
or sentence openers when doing this.
Guided Group Tasks
Support the children to plan a story / recount using their own Mighty Writer plans. Encourage
children to suggest ideas and give reasons for their thinking. This may be done in one session or
over several days.
2
Independent Activities
Children work in pairs or individually to plan a story or recount. Use the Mighty Writer plans to
record ideas. This may be in one session or over several days, recording the beginning, middle
and end.
Extension activities
Children can be encouraged to add increasing detail through their choice of words, images and
punctuation to help them recall and retain their ideas. Encourage children to learn their story
off by heart.
Plenary
Children take it in turns to tell their own stories. Discuss children’s ideas and their
effectiveness.
Children can go on to writing the story using their plans in a follow up lesson.
Assessment opportunities
Observe and listen to children as they plan and share ideas.
Use children’s Mighty Writer plans to assess the following;
Stories have a beginning, middle and end.
Children use punctuation to end each sentence.
Children can plan stories with a beginning, middle and end.
Children use a variety of sentence openers to connect ideas together.
Children write their story using the plan to write in sentences.
