The young writer's craft

This book delivers the requirements of The Writer's Craft and Knowledge About Language strands within the National Guideliens for 5-14 English Language in Scotland (Levels C and D). In particular, it will: enlighten pupils about the pleasure and skill in working with ideas and words: this will equip them to perform the Writer's Craft Tasks better; encourage a '3D' concept of creativity by direct and explicit comparisons of some thematically or technically linked writing - two writers will each give a different 'dimension' on the same subject (or theme).

By extension, the pupils can more easily conceive of a third angle of their own, with openings for cross-curricular creative and investigative work; give pupils a sense of the origins and history of our language, a sense of continuity, and of their place in building on cultural traditions through their own writing. Section 1: Your Writing Toolkit, explains simply and clearly the analytical vocabulary and concepts that are essential for writing consciously. These include: punctuation, parts of speech, grammatical terms, literary techniques, structuring devices and editing skills. Section 2: The Writer's Craft Task, follows the Writer's Craft assessment model from the National Assessment Bank, where pupils are given a short sample text, and asked to continue it by assimilating and replicating content and style. In order to help pupils develop this technique, the book provides not only short extracts, both fiction and non-fiction, but also analytical questions after each extract, using the vocabulary and concepts explained in Section 1. Section 3: Stories, Poems and Pictures to Inspire You, contains complete short texts, prose and poetry, by both pupils and professional writers, all of which are inspiring examples of well-crafted writing. These are followed by analytical questions to direct the pupils' appreciation, and by suggestions for their own writing.

There will also be images, each followed by open questions, to inspire a variety of creative responses from pupils, in both words and images.