The Writing Game: 50 Evidence-Informed Writing Activities for GCSE and A Level

As every humanities or social science teacher knows, success in exam years relies on pupils’ ability to blend subject knowledge with writing skills.

But teachers face two significant problems in developing writing in their classroom: many pupils regard writing practice as a chore or a punishment; and research on writing instruction remains difficult for busy teachers to access.

The Writing Game: 50 Evidence-Informed Writing Activities for GCSE and A Level aims to solve these problems by providing a must-read practical toolkit for teachers looking to help their pupils to write their way into the top grades, offering a menu of engaging lesson activities that can be modified to suit any subject context.

With activities covering modelling, practice, and feedback, The Writing Game supports teachers to deliver research-informed strategies at every stage of the learning process.

Perfect for teachers, middle leaders, and senior leaders, The Writing Game also contains tips on how to incorporate writing practice into regular subject content, formative assessment, and retrieval practice.

Each activity is fully explained and accompanied by top tips for maximising effective learning, suggested adaptations, and links to appropriate research.

Activities range from rapid five-minute starters and plenaries to whole-lesson extended writing tasks, with plenty in between, and busy teachers will be relieved to hear that many require very little preparation.