Beginner Writing Club: One Sentence At a Time - Little Red Riding Hood (FLEX)

Writing can often seem daunting and so often an entire writing piece or story is the major outcome of a writing lesson. This is where I believe a change needs to happen. In order for students to feel confident in their writing they need to feel equipped with techniques, tools and ideas to create a successful sentence. Grammar and vocabulary are often taught alone, however, it should be taught to make sense within the writing. Writing is made up of many sentences.  Once a learner is confident in various writing techniques, they can apply this to any story or writing piece. In each class, we will use a method called sentence stacking. This method of writing is used in many successful schools throughout the United Kingdom. An idea or writing extract is looked at and modelled. The techniques used in the model are discussed and students brainstorm various ways to use this technique in different ways and in their own words. Ideas are gathered between all the students and then a sentence is built.  Together and independently we will then create effective and engaging sentences.  This class is open to students of all writing abilities however, students should be able to write a simple sentence by themselves. Some of the techniques we look at are repetition, similes, onomatopoeia, alliteration, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, synonyms and question words and phrases to name a few. 

In this class, students will be writing the famous and well-loved fairytale: Little Red Riding Hood.  Little Red Riding Hood is sent on a trip through the forest, to her Grandma's house- to give her some food. Along the way she meets a sneaky and cunning wolf who has hopes to gobble up both the grandma and the girl. What will Red Riding Hood do? Will she be able to outsmart the wolf? Will her Grandma be saved? Join along for the re-telling of this wonderful fairytale. We will be using pictures based on the story, 'Red Riding Hood' by Lari Don. Students do not need a copy of this book as we are only using some of the pictures in the story as inspiration for our writing. Each week there will be two video lessons uploaded onto the classroom page. In each lesson, we will explore various writing techniques and outcomes and I will model this for students so they know exactly what to do, and are free to change theirs as much as they want or stick closely to my model. If students are happy for me to share their work- I will share everybody's work at the end of each week as it is important we learn from each other and also get inspired by others. By the end of the seventh week, each student will have a beautifully written, top-quality essay that will be full of important writing tools.  It is important that students write their six writing chunks at the end of each week if they can. I will check regularly and provide various examples of model writing that they can use for inspiration. Students are welcome to send in their weekly writing at any time during the week.

Lessons will be uploaded on the classroom page as an unlisted youtube link. When the link is clicked- the lesson will play.

This story is for a Year 1 (UK level- 5-6 years old) student. If English is not a student's first language or if the student struggles with writing, then this will be perfect for beginner writers of any age. 

Week 1 
Familiarize ourselves with the story
Create a Plot point  and character profile

Week 2
Lesson 1- Learning Objective: Write effective sentences for our story using positive adjectives, 'who' clauses, dialogue and a simile
Lesson 2 -Learning Objective: Write effective sentences for our story using noticing adjectives, sounds and repetition for effect

Week 3
Lesson 3 - Write effective sentences for our story using alliteration, complex sentence and repetition for effect
Lesson 4- Write effective sentences for our story using feelings & actions, inner thoughts and onomatopeia

Week 4
Lesson 5 - Write effective sentences for our story using noticing & dialogue
Lesson 6 - Write effective sentences for our story using rhyming pairs, adverbs and dialogue

Week 5
Edit Our story and re-write it neatly
Illustrate our story