Hi everyone, I am a teacher who is looking to set up a creative writing group for the kids in my school. I've been looking around on the internet for ideas for fun things I can do with them that can also improve their writing (both poetry and prose) and was wondering if any of you had any ideas. The kids are 11-16 years old and not necessarily hugely into creative writing which I why I want to make the exercises as fun, and as little like classwork, as possible. I would welcome any ideas that anyone had. Thanks a lot! Connor
You could try the Round Robin approach. Student sit in a select number (five, for example). Student starts up stories and write for a set amount of time. Then when the time's up, they pass their paper one person to the right, and then that student continues the story however they want, adding whatever they want. This continues until it's passed back to the original owner and they get to read what everyone's written for their story. Good luck with your student creative writing group! I wish I had that back in my school. =)
In my last year of high school I had a creative writing class every Tuesday and one day we were given this as an exercise: Everyone took a sheet of A4 paper and at the very top they wrote a setting. Then they fold the top of the sheet of paper just a little bit so it was covered and they would pass it to the next person who would make up a main character and then that would be folded too. Then they would pass it on and they would write a second character and then fold it over. Then they would pass it onto the next person who would write their relation and fold it again. The next person would write the conflict and... etc. This would continue until the teacher felt we had enough to work with (I think we had 6~8 points in total but I can't remember what they were now). At the end the papers were mixed up and each person was given one and we had to write a short story of no more than 4,000 words with it. I still have my story (it was 3,990 words in total) but no longer have the sheet I worked from. The setting was an abandoned boxing gym, it had to be set at night, the conflict was a house fire, the two characters were both middle-aged men (who were friends) and a black cat had to be present. It was a fun excercise and I imagine some of the stories produced were hilarious: one story's second character had to be one of our more robust male classmates dressed in the typical French maid attire.
I read something recently - I forget where - about someone who gives speeches to motivate those of all ages to write. He asks the audience (and the example he gave was kids around the ages you teach) for a topic. The class took a vote. He kept asking leading questions, and the whole class eventually forms the beginning of a story, along with the setting, character, mood, etc... Have students write it from memory, embellishing it, and then have them get into groups to compare. It would be interesting to see how each person treats the story differently. You can lead them to certain things, or bring in discussion of setting, character development, impossible situations, what would interest readers, etc... Sounds like fun. I wish I taught writing sometimes! I teach math, by the way. At the level I teach, there's little time for creativity, and I really enjoy that. Oh well - math is fun too!
