AMRA PAJALIC
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Mentor Monday #2: Writing Scary Stories

15/6/2019

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I work as a high school teacher and teach across four subject areas: English, English as an Additional Language, Humanities and Creative Writing. I have been teaching for six years and each year is getting easier, mostly because I have now taught across all year levels 7-10 and subject areas and have created resources to support my teaching.​

In the first five years of teaching more than 50% of teachers leave the teaching profession. I came dangerously close to becoming a part of this statistic after numerous burn outs throughout my first four years. I want to do something to change this and so every Monday I will be a mentor by sharing my teaching resources and classroom tips.

Creating resources is where I get to put to use my creativity and my writing background and I want them to have a larger audience. Feel free to share, use and adapt my resources.

Writing Scary Stories

I love teaching creative writing. It's my happy place and it's where all my skills as an author come into play. I developed the following unit for my year 9 EAL class and it worked a treat to get them to write an effective scary story.

I embedded grammar skills within the unit in order to get them to learn application in relation to their stories.

The way I teach creative writing is to break each section into seperate sections so first they develop a character and setting in order to write an orientation. Then they write the climax of the story and then resolution. I provide scaffolds for each stage of the writing process and this is their draft as I go through and provide feedback. Then they put their final stories together with all the elements.

Learning Intentions:
  • To decide on a point of view for my scary story
  • To decide which tense to use when writing my scary story
  • To use the STEAL method to develop characterisation
  • To incorporate symbolism in my scary story
  • To create a setting for my scary story
  • To write an orientation to my scary story
  • Orientation scaffold-use this to plan and write your orientation
  • to identify the types of sentences used in the climax of a story
  • To incorporate the features of Horror Writing in my scary story
  • To write the climax of my story using the features of horror
  • Climax scaffold-use this to plan and write your climax
  • Learning Intention: To write the resolution to my story
  • Resolution scaffold-use this to plan and write your resolution
  • Scary Stories Critique Sheet
  • To write a scary story orientation paragraph as a Common Formative Task
  • To write a scary short story for Summative Assessment Task
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    Amra Pajalić is an award-winning author, an editor and teacher who draws on her Bosnian cultural heritage to write own voices stories for young people, who like her, are searching to mediate their identity and take pride in their diverse culture. She writes memoir, young adult and romance under the pen name Mae Archer.

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Copyright Amra Pajalic 2025
  • Home
    • Blog
    • About Me
    • Press Kit
    • Za Bosance
    • Resources for Teachers >
      • Remote Learning >
        • Narrative Writing
        • Poetry Writing
        • Fun activities
        • Spelling activities
    • My Newsletter
    • News & Events
    • Book Me >
      • Aspiring writers >
        • Six things writers should do
        • Young Adult Books
        • Writing tips for young people
    • Articles
    • My Books >
      • Young Adult >
        • Cuckoos Song
        • Sassy Saints Series >
          • Sabiha's Dilemma >
            • The Good Daughter
          • Alma's Loyalty
          • Jesse's Triumph
          • Sassy Saints Series Books 1-3
        • The Climb
      • Memoir >
        • Things Nobody Knows But Me
        • Teacher Teacher anthology
        • Growing up Muslim in Australia
        • Meet Me at the Intersection
        • Rebellious Daughters
        • St Albans piece
      • Romance >
        • Dreams of Destiny Romance Series >
          • Hollywood Dreams
          • Vintage Dreams
          • Vengeful Dreams
        • Return to Me
        • Kings of the Bay Romance Series >
          • That One Summer Anthology
      • Dark Fiction Horror >
        • WomanOnTheEdgeShortStory
    • Contact
    • Amra's Writing Room
    • Authorly Advice
    • Podcast >
      • Benefits of a residency
      • Journey to Self Publishing
      • The Art of the pitch
      • Balancing the pen and the paycheck
      • Short stories for publication portfolio
    • Pishukin Press
    • Grant Writing Course
  • My Shop