20 teaching ideas for creative writing
What do they think? Write a monologue from someone else’s point of view.
It could be someone who the students know individually or a famous person.
This is a really open activity which can be adapted in many different ways.
Musical stimulus! Play a piece of music – you could also add pictures to go
with this. The students then write a response. This could be a short piece of
description, poem or narrative.
Connect 5. Display (or distribute) five pictures of places/objects which
students have to connect in a narrative. You could use story cubes too.
Stories could be swapped and fleshed out to provide more detail.
‘The best/worst day’. Students could use their own experience or imagine
they are someone else. This doesn’t even have to be a person but could be
something inanimate – a city the day that it was attacked during war, the sea
when an oil spillage occurred.
Screen to page. Show students a short clip from an atmospheric film which
has no dialogue (gothic films are good for this!). Students note down what
they can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. They write the scene in
continuous prose, using description of all their senses to bring it to life.
‘My most poignant memory’. Students could write their responses to this
statement. If helpful you could give some ideas: their first day at school, a
birthday celebration, a traumatic event, a discovery they made etc.
Nursery news. Take a nursery rhyme or fairy tale and change the narrative
into a piece of broadsheet or tabloid reportage. This involves using a nonfiction form but in a creative way! Lots of fun can be had with creating
headlines.
Photographic stimulus! Provide your students with a range of photographs.
You could add questions to each photo if you feel this would help them to gain
some ideas. Use Teachit’s ‘creative writing with pictures’ resource for ideas or
to start.
You said it. Put pictures up around the room of literary characters or
famous writers – or even people in the news. Give students speech bubble
post-its to complete and put on the relevant picture. Have a reward for the
top three!
Titles. Give your students titles only and then ask them to write a creative
response based on these.
© www.teachit.co.uk 2014
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20 teaching ideas for creative writing
Facebook updates. When studying a novel or play, students are given a
character to track. After each chapter, they create a new Facebook status
update in the style of their particular character. Other ‘characters’ could
comment on it to show their connection with the writer.
Still to life. Use pictures of famous artworks (or students could choose their
favourite CD/DVD cover). Students create a story around the picture – what
led up to this point, what happens next?
Create a day. Students imagine an extra day in the week which can be just
as they wish. They should decide what to call it, where it will fall, what it will
consist of etc. Maybe it’ll have more than 24 hours – nothing’s out of the
question! The Teachit resource ‘Create your own month’ has a similar idea
for creating a new month.
Run a workshop. Students take a piece (or pieces) of writing and ‘workshop’
each other’s work. To do this, you’ll need to sit them in a circle and get them
to: a) say in summary what they feel/think about each piece (while the writer
listens quietly / takes notes) and b) how it might be improved. A workshop
requires careful management but is excellent for helping students to redraft /
edit their work.
Everything they own. Students take a literary character (or a famous
person) and imagine what might be in their bag or what their house might look
like. This could be written as a script for MTV Cribs or the old Through the
Keyhole TV programme. It could be turned into a speaking and listening
activity in which they justify their choices!
Different points in the picture. Get pupils to imagine they are located at
different points in a picture (this could also include different characters in the
picture). Get them to write about the picture from different perspectives.
What is going on in the world? In groups, students discuss what has
happened in the news recently. Use this as stimulus for writing a narrative
about an event or describing the event from a witness’s perspective.
Sweet sensation. Buy a bag of sweets or chocolates. Students have to use
great detail to describe the sensation of receiving the sweet, unwrapping it,
tasting it, chewing it etc. Make them hold back from eating it until almost the
end of the exercise! Download Teachit’s Sherbet lemon resource for more on
this.
Bag of tricks! Get a bag and fill it with interesting items/props. Anything from
a trinket box to a receipt or postcard can make for story-writing gold.
It’s a sin! Using the seven deadly sins, students create a short story around
one of the original sins. They could also make a list of what they deem to be
modern sins and write a story which highlights one or all of them.
© www.teachit.co.uk 2014
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