Moving House: Plan and Write a Story

Use a model story and planning prompts to develop a moving-house narrative with characters, dialogue, tension and a resolution.
Year levels
Years 5–7
Pages
9
File type
PDF

Updated Sep 27, 2026

Subject
Creative Writing, Writing, English
Resource types
Activities
Australian Curriculum content descriptions
AC9E6LY06 — plan AC9E6LE05 — create

From the author

About this resource

Essential Writing Practice (9-13 years)

Use the story planner to plan and write a story 'Moving To A New House'. Read the example to see how a story can be structured (opening, development of plot, complication, suspense and tension and resolution). Don't forget to work on how the characters feel.

An essential series of themed prompts to help children aged 9-12 years to practise their creative writing skills. The packs include an outline to help the child plan his or her own story, article, letter or play script and examples to build on, using harder more challenging vocabulary to stretch more able pupils.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

  • Identify the ingredients of an entertaining story: opening, characters, setting, plot, suspense, dialogue, and ending
  • Plan an original story through the opening-to-resolution structure
  • Write a complete first-person or third-person narrative about facing a big change

Teaching tips

  • Read the model before identifying its narrative techniques.
  • Complete the partly filled plan together before pupils plan their own story.

Skills covered

  • Narrative planning — pupils plot introduction, middle, and ending against the file's paragraph plan and structure checkpoints.
  • Suspense and tension building — the plan pages explicitly prompt 'What might happen to trigger off a series of events?' and 'Build up tension and suspense.'
  • Dialogue writing — the model demonstrates dialogue moving the story along ('Why can't we go for a walk,' I pestered Dad).

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

What does the model story contribute beyond an example to read?

It becomes the working material: students explain why its opening hooks the reader, fill in its characters and setting, extend its plan for the middle and ending, and sort its vocabulary into a word-class table — the story's plot ('facing a big change after moving house') is given as the anchor.

How much support does the final writing task give?

The prompt supplies a moving-house scenario that begins with loneliness and introduces a new friend. Planning questions guide the story stages, and two lined pages provide drafting space.

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Australian Curriculum (Version 9.0)

Australian Curriculum content descriptions

Australian Curriculum content descriptions

  • AC9E6LY06 — plan, create, edit and publish written and multimodal texts whose purposes may be imaginative, informative and persuasive, using paragraphs, a variety of complex sentences, expanded verb groups, tense, topic-specific and vivid vocabulary, punctuation, spelling and visual features
  • AC9E6LE05 — create and edit literary texts that adapt plot structure, characters, settings and/or ideas from texts students have experienced, and experiment with literary devices

Core concepts

  • Narrative writing
  • Story structure
  • Suspense
  • Dialogue
  • Sentence variety

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