Description
“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ― Philip Pullman
Students will experiment with new creative writing techniques in poetry and short fiction. They will focus on the development and application of creative writing skills. They will read and learn from short mentor texts and apply their skills in their own chosen pieces of writing. Students will practise self and peer assessment, giving and receiving constructive feedback on their writing, while considering voice, tone, genre, audience and new creative techniques.
Unit Topics
Students will read and write poetry and short fiction. The focus will be on developing a sense of themselves as a writer, finding their voice while building their confidence to experiment with new techniques and skills. There will also be a focus on building a culture of constructive criticism within the classroom. Students will have a wide choice of topic and content in their creative writing, while being scaffolded to experiment with new and different techniques.
Skill Development
Students will create imaginative texts with main ideas developed through the interconnections of plot, settings, characters, the changing of chronological order, foreshadowing in written texts. They will create literary texts that reflect an emerging sense of personal style and evaluate the effectiveness of these texts. They will also review and edit their own and others’ texts to improve clarity and control over content, organisation, paragraphing, sentence structure and vocabulary.
Possible Assessment Tasks
The following learning activities will be used to indicate performance in relation to the Victorian Curriculum Standards.
Students will:
- produce a range of creative written pieces for various purposes
- work independently and in groups
- plan, write and present a folio of different styles and formats
- read and respond, in written and oral form, to a variety of mentor texts
- write reflectively about their own creative practice and progress
Career Options
Author, Screenwriter, Scriptwriter, Poet, Journalist, Filmmaker, Teacher, Publisher, Copywriter, Editor, Speechwriter, Graphic Novelist
Year 9