A* Descriptions – How to Structure Your Writing

About this lesson – descriptive structure

This lesson teaches students a five-paragraph structure for descriptive writing. This structure will not only help your top students to reach their full potential, challenging them to write with a circular structure, but also support weaker students to identify an area of focus for each paragraph in their writing. I have personally seen great improvements in my students’ writing by using this lesson.

What’s included?

• Video lesson
• PowerPoint and student worksheet
• Inspiration stimulus video
• Stimulus photos
• Full-length exemplar A* description for IGCSE descriptive writing
• Planning sheet

Video lesson: How to Structure Your Descriptions

Download the free resources below

PowerPoint for IGCSE English Descriptive Structure

Worksheet for IGCSE English Descriptive Structure

A* Description Exemplar for IGCSE First Language English

Cherry Blossom Season in Japan

It was April, and the time had come again for Tokyo to be velveted in a pink blanket. Shinjuku National Garden, vast and winding, was bustling with life: lovers made eyes in pedalos on the lake; a pretty girl posed for photos with petals in her hair; a tourist hunted for the best picnic location, dodging and diving around swarms of sightseers; and my grandfather held my sticky little hand, as I looked up at the blooms with awe-struck eyes. The air hummed with the click of cameras, the burble of conversation in a tapestry of languages, and the insistent shrieks of the cicadas. Cameras, conversationalists, and cicadas alike had all united here for a singular purpose: cherry blossom season had arrived.

Winter had been long. I remember that December that year had been brutal, bracing, unrelenting. Distantly, distantly, I recall biting cold mornings, snow crunching underfoot, and my dad bundling me four layers deep before taking me to school. Perhaps because of this, the bees were particularly thankful for Shinjuku’s reawakening landscape that year. One such bee danced gracefully between blossoms, bathed in the soft embrace of the late afternoon sun. Its tiny form, a marvel of intricate design, moved with an inherent rhythm, as if nature’s heartbeat were channelled through its translucent wings. The bee’s body shimmered like liquid gold, catching the sunlight in an iridescent dance. Delicate wings brushed against the petals; each touch was a renewal of life, a promise of another sunrise, another blossoming flower.

The sun dipped lower in the sky, casting the park in a rosy glow, and peering intently at the bees hovering from flower to flower sat my grandmother. She was hunkered down on a weathered bench, her gaze drifting softly across the park. Every so often, she met my eyes with a wink or blew my granddad a kiss. How many seasons had they passed together? Had they once ridden pedalos with the setting sun kissing their skin? How many blossoms had they watched bloom and fall?

Softly, petals spiralled to the ground, scattering like stardust beneath our feet. The floor was a confetti of blossoms, dusky pink, alabaster, fuchsia and ivory, vibrantly alive. But soon, the march of the crowds through the park ground the petals down into a soggy mulch that clung to my shoes. Over time, raindrops and footsteps would work together, coaxing the petals to merge with the soil, creating a rich bed that would nourish the very trees from which they had fallen.

It is April. I am no longer a little girl with sticky hands, and my grandfather no longer walks me through Tokyo’s parks. But nature does not heed the passage of time and has filled the skies with fireworks of blossoms once more. It is very quiet here. Singular petals fall from the trees above my grandparents’ grave before winding down to earth. They find home on my clothes, in my hair. When I close my eyes, I am back there, that April in the park when cherry blossoms briefly brought the world to life. How precious it is, to wait all year to see something so beautiful it cannot possibly last beyond a week and to possess memories too beloved to ever be replicated.