Two pages of Year 3 story planning, set up as a pitch to a film studio for a new animated adventure. Pupils answer three planning questions about their main character, their setting and the main problem. Then they draw a six-panel storyboard, from The Opening to The Ending, with a caption under each panel. A tip tells them to say each caption out loud first and that stick figures are fine. The sheet links to four England National Curriculum writing composition objectives.
Writing - composition
“Discussing and recording ideas”
Questions 1 to 3 have pupils record their character, setting and problem before they draw.
Writing - composition
“Composing and rehearsing sentences orally (including dialogue), progressively building a varied and rich vocabulary and an increasing range of sentence structures (English Appendix 2)”
The Top Tip asks pupils to practise saying their captions out loud before they write them down.
Writing - composition
“In narratives, creating settings, characters and plot”
Questions 1 to 3 cover character, setting and problem, and the storyboard sets out the plot in six steps.
Three questions: who the main character is and one special thing about them, where the story takes place with two adjectives, and the problem the character must face.
Six panels labelled The Opening, The Build-up, The Problem, Taking Action, The Resolution and The Ending. Each caption says what happens and how the characters feel.
Before extended writing
Use the storyboard as the plan for a longer story. Each panel becomes one paragraph.
Pitch to a partner
Pairs pitch their adventure to each other as if they were talking to the film directors, using the captions as a script.
Reluctant writers
The drawings carry the plot, so pupils who find long writing hard can still show a full story.
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