Teacher Notes: Fantasy Composition

Year 7 English • Fantasy Composition • Teacher guidance

The sequence works best when students write early. Do not wait until every planning box is full: a messy half-page of scene is better material for revision than a perfect outline.

Five-week pacing

• Week 1: two reading lessons and one writing lesson. Keep the world note to one page.
• Week 2: one close-reading lesson on character, one planning lesson, one drafting lesson.
• Week 3: one lesson on narrative turns, one on planning, one on drafting the turn itself.
• Week 4: annotate the model, then revise a paragraph rather than starting a new draft.
• Week 5: two revision workshops, one feedback circle, one publishing lesson.

Differentiation

Support

• Offer a completed world note and ask students to change one rule, then trace the consequence.
• Provide a character card with want, need, and flaw already partly filled; students add the obstacle.
• Use sentence strips for the turn: “At first …, but when …, so …”.

Core

• Require every world rule to have a cost, limit, or obligation.
• Ask for one concrete object that carries emotional weight.
• Revise one paragraph three times for a different purpose: clarity, sensory detail, then rhythm.

Extension

• Ask students to write the same scene from a secondary character’s point of view.
• Invite a deliberate genre clash, then justify which conventions were kept and which were broken.
• Ask for a 150-word process note that names two revisions and explains the effect.

EAL and language support

• Pre-teach world, rule, consequence, obstacle, flaw, and turning point with visual examples.
• Provide a paragraph frame with the rhetorical moves already labelled.
• Allow drawing and labelled diagrams as part of the plan before extended prose.

Formative feedback routine

• Use one strength, one question, and one specific next move. No scores.
• Ask readers to retell what the character wants and what it costs. If they cannot, the draft needs work.
• Close each feedback round by naming one sentence the writer will keep and one they will rewrite.

Use the quality guide as the shared language for feedback. It is formative and contains no scores or bands.

Materials and preparation

• Print the planner or checklist pages students need; project the rest to save paper.
• Check every link before the lesson. The packet is static and works offline once cached.
• Have a school-licensed copy of any studied text available. The packet does not host copyrighted texts.
• Decide how students will share drafts. Keep any student work inside the school’s approved system.

Access and inclusion

• All pages use semantic headings, a skip link, and print styles.
• Tables scroll horizontally on narrow screens; key instructions are also written in prose.
• Offer a printed copy or a plain-text outline for students who prefer it.
• Allow drawing, oral rehearsal, or a recorded response where it serves the same learning.