The composition theme “Doing the Right Thing” is relatively open. A display of different values can be considered “doing the right thing”: being helpful, honesty, etc.

When students see that one of the given pictures is a wallet, honesty is one of the main stories that comes to mind. Most pupils will end up with a simple story about finding a wallet and returning it to its owner. That fits the theme, but is overly simple. How can your child tweak this simple story idea to ensure his or her composition stands out?

Here’s what Samantha did for her composition:

In this composition, Samantha has selected the unique perspective of writing from the point-of-view of an adult in financial difficulty (versus the POV of a regular 11 or 12-year-old student). Hence, this provides her character with an added layer of complexity. Her character is presented with a greater dilemma as money is something her protagonist needs. As her character struggles with this decision, the reader’s heart goes out to the protagonist. It tugs at the reader’s heartstrings, understanding that the protagonist’s choice to “do the right thing” was certainly not an easy decision.

Additionally, Samantha used the given picture meaningfully in her story. This means that she did not simply mention it in passing. Instead, Samantha slowed down the scene. She had an entire paragraph dedicated to her character’s discovery of what was inside the wallet. Using a combination of showing techniques by describing the character’s thoughts, feelings and micro-actions, the reader gets a sense of how amazed the protagonist was when finding the wallet.

Click here to read more model compositions written by our students.

At LiteracyPlus, we encourage our pupils to take their writing to the next level by incorporating a multitude of writing techniques to given prompts. For Samantha, she accomplished this by coming up with a story idea that was extremely relevant to the given prompt, yet interesting enough due to its unique perspective. All in all, fantastic effort, Samantha!

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