The Desert: Quick oral tasks to help with 11+ creative writing

Here's the Week 6 verbal 'writing' task to help with 11+ Creative Writing at home!

I hope weeks 1 to 6 have been helpful.

And, as last week, the printable version of this post is in the FILES section of this page, or the link is in the chat below.

These weekly posts are to help children develop their writing skills with short and snappy verbal exercises.

Verbal tasks can help your child to think on their feet and support them in orally rehearsing an idea before putting pen to paper (great if your child's writing often has missing words or sometimes doesn't make sense).


Here's another set of three short tasks to try.

This week's setting is … a desert.

All three tasks use the picture on this post, and there are vocabulary suggestions to help.

Task 1

Say (or write) a sentence describing the desert's stillness or emptiness of the desert.

Example using some of the vocabulary listed below: Some say the desert is a featureless wasteland, but they are wrong.

Task 2

Say (or write) a sentence explaining the heat of the desert and add a metaphor.

 Example using some of the vocabulary listed below: The seething sun threw spears of singeing heat deep into this witch’s cauldron.

Task 3

Say (or write) a sentence including details about the desert's animals or plants.

 Example using some of the vocabulary listed below: High above the inert cacti and scurrying scorpions, a committee of vultures hunched together, skulking and waiting.

Vocabulary suggestions

Colour: singed-brown, burnt-umber, wasteland-brown

Stillness/emptiness: empty, desolate, featureless, forlorn

Metaphors: a witch’s cauldron, a scorching pan of emptiness, an arena of heat

Sun: searing, scouring, singeing, seething

Things in the desert: a desert quail, a vulture, a cactus, a scorpion, a coyote

Sounds of the animals: scratching, scrabbling, screeching

Vulture stance/actions: heavy body, hunched over, skulking, watching, soaring on the thermal wind, spreading their wings, plummeting

I couldn’t resist adding this information below about how to name a group of vultures as it’s quite amusing!

A group of vultures perching together is called a “committee,” “venue,” or “volt.” When in flight, they are called a “kettle,” and when feeding together at a carcass, they are referred to as a “wake.”

I hope you enjoy the challenges. 

Anna