The Ashridge Collection: A Free Creative Writing Resource for Curious Students and Tired Teachers

There’s something about the run-up to the end of the school year. Everyone’s tired. Me, the kids, the photocopier, and that usual lesson rhythm starts to wobble. I wanted something fun. Something a bit different. Something I’d actually look forward to teaching during the last stretch of the term.

That’s where The Ashridge Collection began.

Why I Made It

My larger Creative Writing Boxes are launching in June, and they’ve done well in testing (both inside and outside the classroom). People really do love stepping into a story when it’s built from fragments. But I wanted something smaller that I could use now. Something printable, ready to go, and still packed with imagination.

The idea for a boarding school setting came from my own experience. I boarded at a school in rural England and while it definitely wasn’t Hogwarts (though yes, we did have four long tables in the dining hall), I thought it would be fun to play into some of the assumptions people have - that all boarding schools are a bit eerie, a bit crumbling, a bit candlelit corridor and echoing chapel.

Is It a Mystery?

Not exactly. And that’s the point.

What I love most about these collections is that there’s no right answer. The Ashridge Collection can be a ghost story. It can be horror. It can be coming of age. It can be whatever your students make it. That freedom, to interpret, to disagree, to reshape the narrative, is the real power behind these kinds of writing tasks.

It sparks debate. It encourages imagination. And honestly? It wakes everyone up a little.

What’s Inside?

The resource includes letters, diary entries, a detention slip, a descriptive writing task with teacher feedback, and my personal favourite: an old school photo with a scratched-out face. (Yes, it’s unsettling. That was deliberate.)

There are also drawings, eerie rule posters, and newspaper headlines from different decades, all written to give students something that feels real. I wanted Ashridge Park School to feel like a place that could have existed.

You'll also find teacher instructions with activity suggestions (think group investigation, scriptwriting, poetry from evidence, class novel projects), but how you use it is completely up to you.

Why It Works

Students (or mine at least) like making sense of things. They like gaps and clues and things that don’t quite add up. They like being the ones to figure it out. The Ashridge Collection lets them do that through narrative, and then turn that narrative into whatever form they want. Stories. Monologues. Podcasts. Plays. Poems. You name it.

I also used a few AI-generated visuals in this project , drawings and images, purely because they’re hard to find, and genre-specific visuals are such a useful writing tool. A picture really is worth a thousand words when you’re trying to spark a vivid, specific atmosphere.

What’s Next?

This is just a snapshot of the writing boxes I’m working on. In June, I’m launching two full Creative Writing Boxes:

◆ The Victoriana Collection – Set in 1888, filled with séances, telegrams, fog, and flickering gas lamps (you can read all about it here)
◆ The Kindling Collection – a folklore-inspired midsummer mystery set in a remote rural village (I explore my inspiration on what’s inside in this blog post)

Both will be available as digital downloads and physical boxes. If you want early access, exclusive extras, and launch discounts, you can join the waitlist here.

Download The Ashridge Collection

You can grab it for free right here on my website, or find it on TES and TpT if that’s easier. And if you do use it, I’d love to hear how it goes. You can tag me on Instagram or just drop me an email.

I hope your students get curious. I hope they write something strange and brilliant. And mostly, I hope this gives you one less thing to plan when you need a lesson that still feels like it matters.