creative writing year 8 lesson

Free Printable Creative Writing Worksheets for 8th Year

Creative Writing: Discover a vast collection of free printable Reading & Writing worksheets, tailored for Year 8 students, to enhance their skills and unleash their imagination. Empower your teaching with Quizizz resources!

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Explore printable Creative Writing worksheets for 8th Year

Creative Writing worksheets for Year 8 are an essential tool for teachers who want to engage their students in the world of reading and writing. These worksheets provide a structured and organized approach to developing essential skills in fiction writing, allowing students to explore their creativity and imagination. By incorporating a variety of activities, such as brainstorming, story mapping, and character development, these worksheets help students build a strong foundation in narrative writing. Additionally, they encourage students to analyze and critique their own work, as well as the work of their peers, fostering a deeper understanding of the writing process. With the help of these Creative Writing worksheets for Year 8, teachers can create a dynamic and engaging learning environment that nurtures a love for reading and writing in their students.

Quizizz is an innovative platform that offers a wide range of resources, including Creative Writing worksheets for Year 8, to help teachers enhance their students' learning experience. This interactive platform allows teachers to create quizzes, polls, and other activities that can be easily integrated into their lesson plans. With Quizizz, students can engage in real-time competitions, collaborate on group projects, and receive instant feedback on their performance. This not only makes learning more enjoyable but also helps students develop essential skills in reading, writing, and critical thinking. Furthermore, Quizizz offers a vast library of pre-made quizzes and worksheets, covering various topics such as fiction writing, grammar, and vocabulary, which can be easily customized to suit the needs of individual students. By incorporating Quizizz into their teaching strategies, teachers can provide a fun and interactive learning experience that fosters a love for reading and writing in Year 8 students.

Eighth Grade Creative Writing Worksheets

• Who Am I? – Character Description
• Scoring Rubric: Poetry
• Story Starters
• Student Proofreading Checklist
• Creative Writing with Photo Inspiration
• The Middle Ages: The Feudal System Activity Packet
• Writing a Character Sketch
• Scoring Rubric: Research Report/Paper
• Be a Journalist!
• Poetry Terms Quiz
• An Immigrant's Story
• The Middle Ages: Knights and Knighthood Activity Packet
• The Middle Ages: Medieval Towns Activity Packet
• The "I Remember" Poem
• Scoring Rubric: Literary Analysis/Interpretation
• Really Good: Producing Synonyms
• The Peanuts Gang: Charles Schulz
• Life's Not Always Fair
• Scoring Rubric: Fictional Narrative
• Denotation/Connotation
• My New Year's Resolutions (7-12)
• Scoring Rubric: Cause-Effect
• Risking It All for a Friend
• Building a Buddy
• Great Teacher
• Scoring Rubric: Problem-Solution
• Scoring Rubric: Critical Review
• Where Are the Wild Things: Maurice Sendak
• License Plate Quickies: Writing a Paragraph
• The Final Shot
• More Creative Writing Printables, 8th Grade

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• The Best Creative Writing Resources For Teaching Plot And Setting In Ks3 English

KS3 creative writing – Resources for teaching plot and setting

Whether students want to create an epic adventure in a fiery inferno or tense tale in a sleepy town, make sure they create a compelling plot and a fully realised setting with these resources…

Unlock the full potential of your students’ creative writing with these top-tier resources for teaching plot and setting, designed specifically for KS3 English teachers…

KS3 creative writing resources

How to teach world building, storyboard templates.

Whether it’s short stories, comic strips or filmmaking, every tale needs the right structure to be told well. Having a beginning, middle and end may be a staple of storytelling , but alone it’s not enough, and there are many ways to tell a story.

But however you choose to write yours, one thing is constant – good stories need good structure. These storyboard template resources and activities will help your students develop the skills required to add that foundation to their creative writing.

Year 7 English worksheets

Get to grips with descriptive writing across two lessons with these free Year 7 English worksheets which focus on a piece of text all about the jungle.

Inspiring images and sticky notes

This creative writing KS3 lesson uses inspiring images and sticky notes to get learners producing some truly creative writing.

The collaborative nature of this lesson (students read what the person before them has written) means they learn from and inspire each other.

Create a spooky atmosphere

This Gothic setting description lesson plan will encourage students to take their creative writing to a whole new level. Start by closing the blinds, turning off the lights, playing spooky music and displaying an image on the whiteboard of an old, decrepit, haunted-looking house.

Setting description examples

Use this  setting description resource pack to help pupils refine their descriptive writing skills. The pack contains an extract from Finding Bear by Hannah Gold, as well as worksheets, teacher notes and more.

KS3 structure lesson plan

Structure may not seem like the most riveting subject, but for exam success students need to be taught how to employ structure for effect in their own writing and analyse the effects of it in the work of others.

Start this lesson by choping up a fiction text into paragraphs for students to sort into the correct order.

Writing the middle part of stories

This fully differentiated and resourced lesson will help students with writing the middles of narratives and stories. This is excellent preparation for GCSE writing exams.

Monster consequences descriptive writing lesson

Use this descriptive writing KS3 lesson to show students the potentially hilarious consequences of timid and imprecise description. It just might have a remarkable impact on subsequent writing…

Describe a sweet shop

This free resource will engage more advanced students in Key Stage 3. It focuses on crafting vivid descriptions of a sweet shop. This is a topic ripe with potential for rich, sensory language and imaginative exploration.

Descriptive dystopian writing lesson plan

This KS3 critical writing lesson starts with a clip from 2009 post-apocalyptic film  The Road . Feed back through class discussion about how the film creates a dystopian world. Which words would students use to do this in their own writing?

Use The Hobbit to write about tunnels

In this ‘build your own adventure story’ resource students discover new lands, and overcome monsters and other obstacles.

It begins with a passage from JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit , where Bilbo finds himself in a dark cave and meets Gollum for the first time. There are 10 pointers to look at to explore the passage, before students begin to write their own story.

The place as character

This interactive resource from Eduqas offers an opening paragraph example of a story that creates a real sense of setting.

Students should read through and identify the adjectives used to develop the atmosphere of the place being described.

The second section is where they give it a go themselves, writing out a descriptive passage about a place. There are lists of adjectives they can click on to insert them into the story should they get stuck for inspiration.

Model texts for settings

If you’re after example texts for different settings then head to Literary Wagoll where you’ll find descriptions of an alien world, a fairground, a tree house, a thunderstorm and various others.

Plot advice

This post features an excerpt from the book What’s the Story? Building Blocks for Fiction Writing , and builds on the idea of what a plot is.

It also includes a short list of traditional plot types, and tips for building a compelling plot, like using momentum, creating stakes and giving the characters goals and motives.

Award-winning author Frances Hardinge unpacks how to teach a much sought-after skill in modern storytelling – that of world-building…

When world-building, it’s easy to be distracted by questions of what, who and where, and the temptation to fill your imaginary landscape with creatures, people and places that grab the mind’s eye.

The important part is remembering to work through the  how ,  why  and  where . Why do any of these things exist, and how do they continue to exist?

Answering such questions can be time-consuming and fiddly, but the answers can often generate plot, detail and unique features for the setting so that it feels more solid.

If you leave them unanswered, then those big, shiny ‘cool’ elements of your setting will tend to feel shallow, like set dressing.

Splendid mayhem of world building

When running a ‘settings workshop’ for a full class (Y6 to Y8) I’ll sometimes encourage everyone to brainstorm the what, who and where first.

I’ll describe a storm at sea, and a ship being wrecked on a rocky shore. I then tell the students that nearly everybody on board has drowned, and that there’s only one survivor – me.

I recover consciousness, and begin looking around to discover where I am. And they’re going to tell me what I encounter.

I start by asking them what I’m lying on. What does it feel like? (At this point, someone may timidly suggest ‘sand’.)

I’ll then tell them that I’m opening my eyes, sitting up and looking around. What can I see?

Initially,  the responses will be a little cautious  – but before long, the class realises they have an adult character who they can chase around an imaginary landscape, and who will yelp with panic when subjected to countless perils.

They also realise that I won’t block any of their ideas, including all the ‘silly’ ones. At this point, splendid mayhem tends to break loose.

Note, this is not an engine for producing a grim, grittily serious setting. The results tend to be anarchic, enthusiastic, varied and frequently very funny, but in a way that generally gets the whole class engaged.

At a certain point (usually with some difficulty), I’ll call a halt to the brainstorming and get everyone to consider those how, when and why questions.

I’ll encourage them to come up with reasons for such bizarre phenomena coexisting in the same setting and invent a history. It will likely be a strange and amusing history, but that’s not necessarily a problem.

Fates of quirks

Alternatively, one could approach the world-building process from another direction entirely. I’m used to starting from bizarre premises myself, before trying to work out how they will affect the setting.

In effect, I’m starting with those  how ,  when  and  why  questions to help me work out the answers to  what ,  who  and  where .

To use this approach, a class could be broken up into small groups, each of which is tasked with brainstorming a different country.

Each group can choose a ‘quirk’ – some bizarre characteristic of this world that makes it appreciably different from our own. The students can either come up with their own suggestions, or pick out a single option from a pre-prepared list.

The groups can also be given a list of further questions to consider when fleshing out their worlds and deciding how their chosen quirk has affected everything in that particular country.

Some good sample questions here might include:

• When did the quirk begin? Has it always been there?
• Why does it exist? If nobody knows, why do people think it exists?
• How has it changed people’s beliefs and their behaviour?
• How has it affected the country’s history? Has it resulted in any new conflicts, religions, inventions, laws, jobs or crimes?
• What else is this country like? How advanced is the technology? What is the landscape like? In what other ways is it ‘weird?’
• If you were to visit the country, what odd things would you notice due to its peculiar history?

Quirks to explore

The following examples show how a single quirk can affect a whole setting’s history. Try exploring these ideas in class:

• Cats can use human speech.
• Instead of electricity, the setting has a power source that works in much the same way – except that you age twice as fast while using it.
• In this country, dreams are always distorted visions of something real that’s happening somewhere else at that exact moment.
• 1 in 10 children can teleport a few feet by the time they hit puberty. Most children have no control over it.
• The possession or use of clocks is strictly illegal.

Frances Hardinge is an award-winning children’s author. Her 11th novel,  Island of Whis p ers  (with illustrations by Emily Gravett), is available now. Browse English games KS3 ideas and more creative writing prompts .

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How to Teach Creative Writing | 7 Steps to Get Students Wordsmithing

“I don’t have any ideas!”

“I can’t think of anything!”

While we see creative writing as a world of limitless imagination, our students often see an overwhelming desert of “no idea.”

But when you teach creative writing effectively, you’ll notice that  every  student is brimming over with ideas that just have to get out.

So what does teaching creative writing effectively look like?

We’ve outlined a  seven-step method  that will  scaffold your students through each phase of the creative process  from idea generation through to final edits.

7. Create inspiring and original prompts

Use the following formats to generate prompts that get students inspired:

• personal memories (“Write about a person who taught you an important lesson”)
• imaginative scenarios
• prompts based on a familiar mentor text (e.g. “Write an alternative ending to your favorite book”). These are especially useful for giving struggling students an easy starting point.
• lead-in sentences (“I looked in the mirror and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Somehow overnight I…”).
• fascinating or thought-provoking images with a directive (“Who do you think lives in this mountain cabin? Tell their story”).

Don’t have the time or stuck for ideas? Check out our list of 100 student writing prompts

6. unpack the prompts together.

Explicitly teach your students how to dig deeper into the prompt for engaging and original ideas.

Probing questions are an effective strategy for digging into a prompt. Take this one for example:

“I looked in the mirror and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Somehow overnight I…”

Ask “What questions need answering here?” The first thing students will want to know is:

What happened overnight?

No doubt they’ll be able to come up with plenty of zany answers to that question, but there’s another one they could ask to make things much more interesting:

Who might “I” be?

In this way, you subtly push students to go beyond the obvious and into more original and thoughtful territory. It’s even more useful with a deep prompt:

“Write a story where the main character starts to question something they’ve always believed.”

Here students could ask:

• What sorts of beliefs do people take for granted?
• What might make us question those beliefs?
• What happens when we question something we’ve always thought is true?
• How do we feel when we discover that something isn’t true?

Try splitting students into groups, having each group come up with probing questions for a prompt, and then discussing potential “answers” to these questions as a class.

The most important lesson at this point should be that good ideas take time to generate. So don’t rush this step!

5. Warm-up for writing

A quick warm-up activity will:

• allow students to see what their discussed ideas look like on paper
• help fix the “I don’t know how to start” problem
• warm up writing muscles quite literally (especially important for young learners who are still developing handwriting and fine motor skills).

Freewriting  is a particularly effective warm-up. Give students 5–10 minutes to “dump” all their ideas for a prompt onto the page for without worrying about structure, spelling, or grammar.

After about five minutes you’ll notice them starting to get into the groove, and when you call time, they’ll have a better idea of what captures their interest.

Did you know? The Story Factory in Reading Eggs allows your students to write and publish their own storybooks using an easy step-by-step guide.

4. Start planning

Now it’s time for students to piece all these raw ideas together and generate a plan. This will synthesize disjointed ideas and give them a roadmap for the writing process.

Note:  at this stage your strong writers might be more than ready to get started on a creative piece. If so, let them go for it – use planning for students who are still puzzling things out.

Here are four ideas for planning:

Graphic organisers

A graphic organiser will allow your students to plan out the overall structure of their writing. They’re also particularly useful in “chunking” the writing process, so students don’t see it as one big wall of text.

Storyboards and illustrations

These will engage your artistically-minded students and give greater depth to settings and characters. Just make sure that drawing doesn’t overshadow the writing process.

Voice recordings

If you have students who are hesitant to commit words to paper, tell them to think out loud and record it on their device. Often they’ll be surprised at how well their spoken words translate to the page.

Write a blurb

This takes a bit more explicit teaching, but it gets students to concisely summarize all their main ideas (without giving away spoilers). Look at some blurbs on the back of published books before getting them to write their own. Afterward they could test it out on a friend – based on the blurb, would they borrow it from the library?

3. Produce rough drafts

Warmed up and with a plan at the ready, your students are now ready to start wordsmithing. But before they start on a draft, remind them of what a draft is supposed to be:

• a work in progress.

Remind them that  if they wait for the perfect words to come, they’ll end up with blank pages .

Instead, it’s time to take some writing risks and get messy. Encourage this by:

• demonstrating the writing process to students yourself
• taking the focus off spelling and grammar (during the drafting stage)
• providing meaningful and in-depth feedback (using words, not ticks!).

Reading Eggs also gives you access to an ever-expanding collection of over 3,500 online books!

2. share drafts for peer feedback.

Don’t saddle yourself with 30 drafts for marking. Peer assessment is a better (and less exhausting) way to ensure everyone receives the feedback they need.

Why? Because for something as personal as creative writing, feedback often translates better when it’s in the familiar and friendly language that only a peer can produce. Looking at each other’s work will also give students more ideas about how they can improve their own.

Scaffold peer feedback to ensure it’s constructive. The following methods work well:

Student rubrics

A simple rubric allows students to deliver more in-depth feedback than “It was pretty good.” The criteria will depend on what you are ultimately looking for, but students could assess each other’s:

• use of language.

Whatever you opt for, just make sure the language you use in the rubric is student-friendly.

Two positives and a focus area

Have students identify two things their peer did well, and one area that they could focus on further, then turn this into written feedback. Model the process for creating specific comments so you get something more constructive than “It was pretty good.” It helps to use stems such as:

I really liked this character because…

I found this idea interesting because it made me think…

I was a bit confused by…

I wonder why you… Maybe you could… instead.

1. The editing stage

Now that students have a draft and feedback, here’s where we teachers often tell them to “go over it” or “give it some final touches.”

But our students don’t always know how to edit.

Scaffold the process with questions that encourage students to think critically about their writing, such as:

• Are there any parts that would be confusing if I wasn’t there to explain them?
• Are there any parts that seem irrelevant to the rest?
• Which parts am I most uncertain about?
• Does the whole thing flow together, or are there parts that seem out of place?
• Are there places where I could have used a better word?
• Are there any grammatical or spelling errors I notice?

Key to this process is getting students to  read their creative writing from start to finish .

Important note:  if your students are using a word processor, show them where the spell-check is and how to use it. Sounds obvious, but in the age of autocorrect, many students simply don’t know.

A final word on teaching creative writing

Remember that the best writers write regularly.

Incorporate them into your lessons as often as possible, and soon enough, you’ll have just as much fun  marking  your students’ creative writing as they do producing it.

Need more help supporting your students’ writing?

Read up on  how to get reluctant writers writing , strategies for  supporting struggling secondary writers , or check out our huge list of writing prompts for kids .

Watch your students get excited about writing and publishing their own storybooks in the Story Factory

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Walking by the Way

the road to inspired learning

Eight Free Creative Writing Lessons

February 17, 2012 by Ami 17 Comments

I know I throw around the word favorite all the time. But this is the truth: teaching creative writing lessons is my favorite. 

I have taught creative writing enrichment for summer school students. I have taught creative writing in various homeschool settings and co-ops. I have taught big students and little students. And I love it. 

Since I love to share homeschool co-op class ideas , I have compiled the creative writing lessons from a co-op class that I taught. 

Creative Writing Lessons for a Homeschool Co-op Class

First, please remember that any teacher can use these creative writing lessons. You don’t need to be teaching homeschoolers. You can be a classroom teacher or a homeschool teacher at home with one student. You can even be a librarian who needs a fun program series.

Second, I used these creative writing lesson plans with upper elementary students (with maybe a few 7th graders thrown in). However, you can adapt and use them for older students or younger students!

Creative Writing Lesson Plans

Creative writing lesson one.

The first lesson focuses on cliché and metaphor. It prompts students to consider how words matter.

Grab lesson one here .

Creative Writing Lesson Two

The second lesson teaches students about sensory details: why they are important and how to include them in their writing. Students will begin using sensory details to evoke smells and sounds and sights.

Grab lesson two here.

Creative Writing Lesson Three

The third lesson introduces showing vs. telling. Students learn how to recognize authors who utilize showing, and students are able to articulate the difference between showing and telling.

Grab lesson three here.

Creative Writing Lesson Four

The fourth lesson teaches students how to capture images. We use examples of poetry and prose to discuss this important writing skill.

Grab lesson four here.

Creative Writing Lesson Five

The fifth lesson introduces the story elements of character and conflict.

Note: You may choose to split this lesson into two lessons since it covers two big elements. I only had nine weeks with my students, so I had to jam character and conflict together.

Grab lesson five here.

Creative Writing Lesson Six

The sixth lesson introduces the students to point of view and perspective. We have fun reading poems and using pictures to write descriptions from different points of view.

Grab lesson six here.

Creative Writing Lesson Seven

The seventh lesson puts everything we’ve learned together. I read the students some fractured fairy tales, and we watch some, too. Students then use the prewriting activities and their imaginations to begin drafting their own fractured fairy tales.

Grab lesson seven here.

Creative Writing Lesson Eight

The eighth lesson focuses on revision. After a mini-lesson, students partner up for peer editing.

Grab lesson eight here .

For our final class day, students bring revised work, and I host coffee shop readings. This is a memorable experience for students (and their teacher).

Creative Writing Lessons FAQ

Since posting these creative writing lessons, I have had lots of questions. I decided to compile them here in case you have the same question.

Q: What are copywork quotes? A: Copywork quotes are simply great quotes that students copy as part of their homework assignments. You can use any quotes about writing. I’ve included my favorites throughout the printable packs.

Q: Can I use this with a younger or older student? A: Absolutely! Just adapt it to meet the needs of your student.

Q: Can I use this for my library’s programming or my homeschool co-op class? A: Yes! I just ask that it not be used for profit.

Do you have any questions about teaching creative writing? What’s your biggest hang-up when it comes to teaching creative writing? I’d love to hear from you and help you solve the issue.

January 7, 2016 at 1:57 pm

Hi Theresa,

As long as you are not profitting from using them, they are yours to use! Enjoy! Wish I could be there to help facilitate all those young writers! 

[…] Creative Writing Class […]

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Creative Writing

Subject: English

Age range: 11-14

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Last updated

20 September 2016

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Great for less able students.

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Thanks a lot the resources very helpful.

Marvellous and generous resource, which can be adapted for all abilities in junior secondary. Thankyou!

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