Victorian Creative Writing

Immerse students in the atmospheric world of Victorian London with this structured and skills-focused 5-lesson creative writing unit. Designed for KS3, the resource develops students’ ability to craft sophisticated, engaging prose while exploring the social tension, mood and detail associated with 19th-century urban settings.

Across the unit, pupils read and analyse high-quality model texts, considering how writers construct setting, tone and narrative voice. They then apply these techniques in guided and independent writing activities. The unit explicitly teaches five key sentence structures — the comma sandwich, tricolon, prepositional push-off, three-verb sentence, and writer’s aside — supporting pupils in building control, rhythm and clarity in their writing.

Resources include annotated extracts, scaffolded tasks, vocabulary banks, success criteria, and editing checklists. The unit culminates in a assessed descriptive piece set in Victorian London, demonstrating students’ progress in sentence variety, descriptive technique and voice development. This is an academically rigorous and fully-resourced unit to enhance creative writing confidence and quality.