Describe the Setting – “Do Now” Picture Prompts for GCSE English

What happens after the opening lines of a story? Often, the writer will shift focus to describe the setting. This set of ten picture prompts (for GCSE English but could be used at any level) gives students a visual nudge.

Their job is to create a setting description which could be used as a second paragraph in a story. However, they must also incorporate some important elements that would help them to grab marks in an exam.

This helps students to think about the structure of a whole text – often in GCSE English paper 1 (AQA) the second paragraph is descriptive so that candidates can answer the “language question” in the exam. More than that, of course, the description of the setting helps to bring the text alive with a little “world building”.

This set of ten picture prompts could be used for a complete lesson, but the idea behind them was to use as starters – a “do now” activity. As only a single paragraph is demanded, this could be done in ten minutes or so, with time for some of the learners to read their out loud. Alternatively, could make a great activity on a VLE.

In class these could be shown on a smartboard one by one, or you could do a mix and match, so the students get given a random picture to describe. It’s up to you – this set of picture prompts is versatile enough for you to think of a number of ways in which to use it!

Files included are Powerpoint and a PDF version.