Creative Writing Prompts For 11+ Students

Whilst schools are closed, we’re working on sharing materials and resources to help students make the most of their time indoors.

Today, I’m sharing a set of 6 Creative Writing Prompts that are ideal for helping your child to improve their writing.

These title-based prompts are great for helping students to write stories based on topics or titles that could potentially come up in the exam.

However, if your child isn’t preparing for the 11+, don’t fret, you can still use them. Feel free to encourage your child to write stories that are imaginative, engaging and fun.

What Examiners Are Looking For

Teachers and examiners pay attention to four specific things when marking creative writing compositions. I call these things SOCs (and yes, I’m proud to say I made that acronym up myself :)

Read on to learn what SOCs stands for:

Structure

• Has your child laid out their work correctly using paragraphs?

• Do their sentences flow?

• Do they use fronted adverbials to transition between sentences?

Originality

• Is your child’s composition original?

• Do they demonstrate the ability to use language creatively?

Creativity

• Does your child have creative thoughts and ideas?

• Can they convey these ideas clearly without confusing the reader?

• Can your child include twists and turns whilst still making the story interesting and easy to follow?

SPAG (Spelling, punctuation and grammar)

• Has your child read through their work carefully to prevent and reduce SPAG mistakes?

The acronym (SOCs) helps students to remember how to score higher marks in a way that’s really easy. Plus, who doesn’t love acronyms? I’m obsessed with them and I’m proud to be able to say I completely made SOCs up :)

Free Festive Creative Writing Prompt - Ideal For Christmas or The New Year

Happy New Year!

As we celebrate the start of 2021, it’s a great time for students to spend a bit of extra time building their writing skills.

To help your child do just that, we’ve created this creative writing prompt that has been inspired by Christmas.

Before you download the prompt, here are some quick tips to help your child:

Emphasise the importance of checking SPAG (spelling, punctuation and grammar).

We encourage students to check their SPAG as many times as possible because most people will make SPAG mistakes at some point (we’re human after all). However, to minimise the amount of mistakes made, it’s key to check SPAG over and over again.

Read a wide variety of literature for inspiration.

Most children prefer to stick to reading one type of literature (which is perfectly normal). However, to improve one’s writing, it’s important to read a wide variety of texts as it helps with sentence clarity, vocabulary and the overall development of excellent writing skills.

Listen In

If your child isn’t much of a reader, encourage them to listen to child-friendly radio stations (you can listen in with them and discuss the topics for even better interaction). If you’re able to, consider an audible subscription as audiobooks are fantastic for helping children to visualise texts and enhance their imagination.

Make writing fun

If your child has an exam coming up, it’s natural to feel the need to pressurise them to write as much as possible. However, the best writers are those that genuinely enjoy writing so try to have a positive attitude and mindset around it. For example, use fun and engaging writing prompts like the one below or create your own if you’re able to.

Finally, download our free Creative Writing Booster Kit to help your child improve their writing in as little as 5-days. We’re offering it for a limited time only so grab it whilst it’s still available.

THE UK’S 50 BEST BAME STARTUPS AND BUSINESSES ANNOUNCED – TECHROUND’S BAME50 UNDER 50

26th October 2020 – London, UK –

We are delighted to announce that Victoria Olubi-Ademosu of Tutoress has been named as a finalist in TechRound’s BAME 50 Under 50, which ranks the top 50 BAME-driven and founded businesses and startups in the UK, praised for their innovation and contribution to the UK's fast-growing startup scene, whilst smashing social barriers along the way.

The announcement follows over 500 applications and a week of judging from an expert panel including Linda Plant; successful entrepreneur and renowned interviewer on BBC’s The Apprentice, as well as Rajeeb Dey, co-Founder of Learnebly and Startup Britain, Kike Oniwinde, Former Team GB athlete and CEO of BYP Network and Bindi Karia, the UK’s ‘Queen of Startups.’

TechRound is the UK’s leading voice for startup news and opinions and the BAME50 Under 50 highlights the diversity and success in the UK startup and business sectors, with people from all walks of life and from all nature of backgrounds demonstrating their ingenuity and creativity. TechRound remains the best place in the UK to showcase the talent and progress in the startup and tech industry.

The judges commended the innovation and hard work of all the entries and the entrepreneurs. One judge reportedly said that she was ‘bloody impressed’ with the quality of candidates and their ideas, which is a huge credit to the BAME community living in the UK, who continue to work hard and thrive despite various social and economic challenges.

TechRound co-Founder David Soffer commented: “The UK is one of the best places in the world to start and grow a startup. TechRound’s BAME50 Under 50 goes to show that people of all backgrounds have thrived in the UK. The BAME50 Under 50 also goes to show that there are some wonderful businesses and ventures, started, run and sustained by the UK’s fabulous BAME communities, something we hope will continue.” 

“Part of what makes the UK such a huge global player when it comes to startups, tech and innovation is that there is such depth of diversity, with people bringing their different experiences and backgrounds into startups and business, which are both all about being creative.”
TechRound co-Founder Daniel Tannenbaum said: “ The BAME50 Under 50 is set to be a game changer and will promote those individuals who have fought harder than most to succeed and their stories will outline their journeys. As we are well aware, BAME entrepreneurs have historically been underfunded and underrepresented and this list’s purpose is to help change the status quo.”

“We want to celebrate people from all backgrounds and businesses of all sizes and this list will be a testament to those individuals who are diversifying the UK’s startup landscape.”

---ENDS---

For more information and press interview, please contact:

Co-Founder & Editor: David Soffer – david@tudorlodgeconsultants.com

Co-Founder & Editor: Daniel Tannenbaum – daniel@tudorlodgeconsultants.com 

About TechRound

TechRound is one of the UK’s fastest-growing platforms for startups and tech businesses. Founded in 2016 and based in London, TechRound has worked with some of the UK’s hottest startups and has helped countless startups and fledging businesses get off the ground and achieve success. TechRound is a regular source of information and guidance for new businesses and a platform for some of the best-known companies in the world to gain exposure to new companies and opportunities.

How To Write Engaging Character Descriptions - Facebook Live Tutorial ( Part 1)

Firstly, a big thank you to all of the parents that have sent in emails and messages to share how much your child enjoys our Facebook Live sessions. It means the world to us!

In today’s blog post, we’re delving into character descriptions. To tackle this very important area of creative writing, we’re sharing one of our recent Facebook Live tutorials where our founder, Mrs Victoria, teaches students how to write descriptions that impress teachers.

You see, when it comes to creative writing, it’s vital that students know how to write character descriptions in a way that is effective, gripping and interesting so that they can maximise marks.

It’s also a lifelong skill that is needed throughout KS2, 3 and 4. Furthermore, writing great character descriptions helps students to make their stories more interesting, vibrant, unique and engaging so that the reader wants to continue reading their story.

Unfortunately, most children write stories with boring character descriptions. Let’s take a look at some examples of these types of descriptions:

• He had brown hair.

• She was a short and sweet girl.

• He was incredibly rude.

Why are these descriptions bad?

• Because they don’t allow the reader to picture the character that is being mentioned.

• They give us little information about the character and these descriptions don’t enable our imaginations to run wild.

To score top marks, we want to write vivid, colourful descriptions that create pictures in the mind of readers.

The thing with creative writing is that improving your child’s marks doesn’t have to be a difficult process - it really just involves teaching them quick but powerful tricks to help them write more descriptively and imaginatively.

Let’s look at some great descriptions by watching the Live tutorial below. Click the ‘play’ button to get started.

11-Plus Creative Writing Example

We receive dozens of emails from parents (and sometimes students) who are desperate for creative writing examples.

We’re huge believers in the power of using examples and templates for improving creative writing and its in fact one of our favourite methods for helping students to quickly improve their writing skills.

However, when it comes to creative writing examples, it’s important to use them properly.

Here are some top tips to help your child to get the most out of them.

Read through the examples as many times as possible.

The more you do this, the more you’ll pick up amazing new words (such as high-level vocabulary).

Don’t rush through the examples.

Quite often, we come across students and parents that love to hoard creative writing examples as though they are a special kind of prize. However, we’ve noticed that most of these students don’t actually read the examples properly (and neither do their parents). In contrast, students that read through creative writing examples slowly and soak up the story tend to be the ones who score higher marks. We therefore recommend that you take your time to not just read the examples we provide but study them.

That leads us to the third tip.

Study the creative writing examples given like there’s no tomorrow.

Read them again and again until you feel like you’ve read them a thousand times.

Don’t just copy examples.

Examiners and teachers know when student’s work has been copied from other sources and it doesn’t take much for them to check online. Don’t risk your chances of getting into a top school or passing an exam by copying examples word for word. Instead, use the examples as inspiration for your own writing and change some words around. For example, take out certain phrases, swap specific words for synonyms or even, change the plot a little. Make your work your own whilst taking inspiration from others.

Practise makes perfect.

The more you practise writing, the better you’ll become so make it a habit to practise story writing for at least 30 minutes every day. We usually recommend that our students write a story once a day after school. Spend 5 minutes planning, 5 minutes proofreading and 20 minutes writing. This will help you to improve your speed and accuracy in preparation for exams. Once you’ve done this, go back and read your story a few times to see how it could be improved. You could even write the same story everyday until it’s perfect.

Remember that you don’t need to have tons of exciting events to write a great story that scores top marks.

In fact, teachers and examiners often prefer stories that are somewhat simple in terms of their plot but contain lots of descriptive words and excellent vocabulary. Bear that in mind as you write your stories.

We hope these tips have helped.

If you’d like your child to transform their creative writing, download our Creative Writing Booster Kit today.