It's not always easy for teachers to come up with fresh ideas to keep their students interested in writing. Most students do not want to write about how their summer vacation went or write a poem about a specific season. These ideas are old and boring to them. Try some of the following creative writing ideas with your students to expand their writing skills.
Picture It
For this exercise, your students will need a picture. As the teacher, you could bring in one picture to distribute to the entire class, or you could bring in several different pictures so that each student has a different picture. You could also offer the option for students to bring in their own pictures and then exchange them with other students. Once each student has a picture, ask that he or she write a story describing what is taking place in the picture as well as what happened before the picture was taken and what happened after the picture was taken. This provides students with a good opportunity to test their short story writing skills. Allow at least one class period for students to finish their story. This assignment would work best if done overnight or over the course of a week of classes. Ask students to volunteer to read their stories once the assignment is completed (this is especially amusing if all students worked from the same pictures...the variety of stories and aspects is fantastic!). As far as grading is concerned, of course critique grammar and spelling, but play close attention to the details of story telling. Suggest ideas for smoother transitions or more intense plot lines. This exercise allows for a lot of creative freedom, but does not expect students to start from scratch. Providing them with a visual starting point might be better than requesting a short story from scratch. You might be surprised at how students can get carried away with a story! Expect responses of varying lengths.
Imitation
For this exercise, provide students with a piece of poetry that you would like them to imitate. The poetry could be of any length or style. Try to pick a style that your students may have had trouble with in class, as imitating a style can help them understand it by working through it. It is important that the students imitate the style and not the subject. For example, if you chose the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, you would want your students to replicate the style, rhyme scheme, and perhaps tone, but you would not want them to reiterate the subject of the two roads. This exercise can be very difficult for students, but it allows them to work from something instead of asking them to write a poem of any style. Students can read their work out loud, or you could post them publicly somewhere in the classroom. Students should be given at least one night to work on their imitation piece.
Free Write
Free writing is a great exercise for students to use to produce writing ideas. Ask students to write for at least twenty minutes straight, copying down as many thoughts as they can as fast as they can. These thoughts don't need to be coherent or grammatically correct. Students might enjoy reading their free writing examples afterward just to see how many thoughts went through their heads in such a short amount of time. While this assignment should not be graded for spelling or grammar, you could always use it as a starting point for another creative writing exercise. For example, you could ask students to take one thought from their free writing exercise and turn it into a poem. You could also pick a specific line that you like from their free writing and ask them to use it as the first line in a short story. The more creative you are, the more likely that your students will follow your example. Don't be afraid to join in on this activity with your students! It can be just as beneficial to teachers as it is to students.
Avoidance
This exercise can be very frustrating for students, but also very humorous at the same time. Create a list of at least fifteen words that students are not allowed to use while writing a short story or poem. Use a wide variety of words. You could eliminate certain pronouns or articles, or completely cut out all adverbs. Ask your students to help you create the list (but don't fall into their trap if they try to suggest words they wouldn't normally use in the first place!). Then, as an overnight assignment, have your students write their piece without using any of the words on the list. You could also make this more difficult yet more memorable by having students creative a collaborative piece on the spot. It's fun to watch students come up with new ideas to replace the words they cannot use. Another fun idea would be to separate the students into several groups and give each group a separate list of words to avoid. When they finish their pieces, have the groups exchange their work and then cross out any words that were "illegal" to the second group. Ask that group to then use other words to fill in the gaps.
Hopefully these ideas will be helpful in your classroom. Feel free to improvise or elaborate on some of the ideas to make them your own or to help them suit the feel of your classroom.
