Y7: Horror Writing - EAL Students.

Part 1 - Creating a Word Wall for Horror Writing

We have a small EAL group within the Y7 group.  While they did the first lesson with the mainstream class, in a subsequent class I did a separate lesson for them whereby they generated vocabulary that was related to horror writing.  First they worked in pairs, then shared the words they came up with.  The purpose of this was twofold:

1) that they would build their confidence by seeing their collective contributions to the word wall 
2) that they would have a useful set of vocabulary to use to write their horror story

Here is their final product:
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Horror Story Word Wall from Y7 EAL Class.

The EAL teacher and I emphasised the need for good adjectives to describe places, people and actions.  Based on this we gave them a bit more time to focus on adjectives and they were added into the word wall. 

I also showed them the word walls from the other two Y7s mainstream classes, as well as a handout from the BBC on Horror Writing.

Horror Word Wall from Y7 Mainstream Class.

Part 2:  Creating a Horror Story Through Pictures

Then I had them divide a page in their notebooks into 4 sections:
- person (character)
- place (setting)
- action (plot)
- ending (resolution)

Because they were EAL students, I did not want them to be limited by their English or concerned with writing, spelling or grammar errors. For this reason, I asked them to draw these parts of their story, and only use words if they wanted to.  I played some scary music while they were writing and encouraged them to be as creative and detailed as they wanted to be.  After some guidance, clarifications of instructions and getting them to settle down, students were more engage than I expected so I let them finish during class time and homework.  

Originally I had planned to give them some time at the end of class to present, but as they were so engaged, we decided to let them present their story verbally to the class with a time limit of 3 minutes each in the next class. 

Before presenting in the next class, students had a time to integrate words from the word wall to their images. They also rehearsed how they would present their stories to the class. They were all quite animated and presented their stories with much enthusiasm and confidence.