Developing Thinking Skills Through Creative Writing: Story Steps for 9-12 Year Olds

Developing Thinking Skills Through Creative Writing: Story Steps for 9-12 Year Olds is a practical and easy-to-use teacher resource helping children across a wide age and ability range to develop the skills necessary to write more effectively. Step-by-step instructions encourage children to tackle tasks of increasing difficulty while broadening their knowledge and experiences of fictional genres.

With chapters separated into distinct genres: ghost story, fantasy, science fiction, history, pirate story, thriller and Gothic horror, this book:

• Offers a summary at the start of each chapter to help teachers select the relevant activities.
• Covers multiple aspects of storytelling from narrative structure, plots, characters and settings to vocabulary, word choice, sentence structure and punctuation.
• Provides a cross referencing grid showing which aspects of writing appear in each chapter.
• Includes guidance notes, extension activities and general tips.

Adaptable to different teaching situations, this book offers the opportunity for teachers to work through the book genre by genre or take a 'skills route' with different activities from different chapters to create their own programme of study. Fully illustrated and supporting the requirements of the National Curriculum, Developing Thinking Skills Through Creative Writing is a valuable aid for all Key Stage 2 teachers.

Steve Bowkett is a former teacher and author of numerous books for teachers. He visits schools to run creative writing workshops for children and works as an educational consultant specialising in the areas of thinking skills and problem solving, creativity and literacy.

Tony Hitchman has over 35 years of experience teaching throughout the Primary age range in diverse schools culminating in 11 years as a primary school Head Teacher. In his spare time(!), he has written scripts for the comic publisher DC Thompson, contributed cartoons and comic strips to various small press publications, illustrated educational books and collaborated with Steve Bowkett on Using Comic Art to Improve Speaking, Reading and Writing (2012).