Previously, Sophie shared 5 top tips for running creative writing activities. In this post, she looks at how to get your students started.
Use examples of creative writing
Prepare the students by reading and discussing some (simple) short stories as part of class. Stories with some variation in style and subject matter are preferable, to show students that there isn’t one right way to tell a story. There are plenty of short stories for kids and teens available as readers, or why not use our The Future Writes story collection which were written by teens themselves.
Poetry can be great for young or low-level learners, since there are several short and simple forms of poetry you can use. For example, cinquains, haiku, diamante poems, or limericks.
Provide inspiration
One idea is to bring in a selection of random objects to inspire students. Have them think of a story relating to one or more of the objects, perhaps having a group brainstorm or discussion session first. Students could also write collaboratively depending on the class and ability levels.
Alternatively, bring photographs of interesting looking scenes or people, making sure you have a good range for students to choose from. If using a scene, students can write about what they see happening, perhaps focusing on a particular part of the photograph. This task combines describing what they can see in front of them with using their imagination to write about why the people are there, what they are doing, and what will happen next.
Portrait photographs (of unknown people rather than celebrities) are perfect for character ideas. Try asking them to describe both the appearance and the personality of a person from a photo, and then writing a short story about them. This can also be done as a group activity.
Give them the words to pick from
For an interesting exercise, try using song lyrics, poems, or short online stories and pasting them into a word cloud creator, like Wordle.net. Have students try to write something that features as many of the words as possible. Instead of a word cloud, you could use print outs of complete song lyrics, look at them as a class, and have students write about them in a different form. For example, as a letter, email, news story, or narrative.
Don’t make it a one-off, even if you are only able to have short flash fiction or poetry sessions with the occasional longer project. Writing, even in one’s own language, takes practice and persistence, and the best results will be seen over time!
Hopefully this has given you some inspiration, and we would love to hear about your experiences. If you have already been implementing creative writing projects in your English classes, let us know!
In case you missed it, here are Sophie’s top tips when running creative writing tasks.