Creative Writing: Model Compositions by Grade

A model composition is only useful if the pupil reading it believes they could write something like it. A beautiful piece of 400 words handed to a child who must produce 100 does not raise the standard - it teaches them that good writing is something other people do.

So these grow with the grade: about a hundred words at Grade 6 and ten more for each year after it, a larger step to a hundred and sixty-five at Grade 11 where the O/L work is judged, and two hundred and fifty across both Advanced Level years, which is the length a General English answer runs to. The generator that builds these pages counts every composition and refuses to publish one that misses its grade.

The commonest mistake with model compositions is to read one and then set the same title. The class writes a slightly worse version of what they have just read, and nobody learns anything.

• Take one technique, not the whole piece. The last line, the dialogue, the way the first sentence puts you in a place.
• Change the title before they write. If the model is about a rainy day, set a hot day, or a day the electricity failed.
• Let them see the word count. Knowing the target is a hundred words stops a weak writer producing four sentences and a strong one producing two pages.
• Read one aloud a week, not ten in a lesson. A composition heard is remembered; a booklet handed out is filed.