Five Quick Ways to Get Your Students Writing!

The Situation

Your students need to get creative.

The Solution

Here are five fantastic writing activities to get your students engaged!

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The Future

The future is a mysterious abyss that we cannot truly anticipate. Get students to consider life now in our current era and consider what life might be life in the future. Would it be worse, or better? Are we slipping into a dystopian era? This is a great for in-depth discussions!

Ekphrastic Writing

Some paintings are strange and offer infinite interpretations (Just check out Theme). Bring in a couple of your favourites and get students to brainstorm what could be happening in the paintings. Look at the narrative conventions and brainstorm each in relation to the paintings. Who are the main characters? What are they doing? How did they get into that situation? It will get some excellent discussion going.

100 Word Stories

Not all stories need to take weeks to write. Get students to do a quick write and construct a 100 word story. I mean, exactly 100 words. This encourages students to be economical with their word choice. Throw elements at them that they need to work into their story. A red hat, a black cat. Perhaps they need to use at least two language features you have previously learnt.

The Secret Life of Pets

This is great for teaching point of view. Get students to write a story from the point of view of their pet. What do they do when they are not at home? What unexplained adventures do they get up to? How is life different for cats compared to dogs? How do pets view humans who feed and clean up after them? The possibilities are endless!

Interactive Writing: List Stories

Students often find it difficult to develop ideas for stories. They should be allowed discuss and brainstorm in a healthy environment. There are a number of strategies that you could use to get students interacting and developing ideas. Here is one such activity that you can use:

1. Group students into teams of 4. 
2. Each person in the team list 15 elements that can be included in a story. Here are some things to consider:
   1. objects
   2. setting
   3. phrases
   4. dialogue
   5. actions
   6. conflicts (Internal and external)
3. Each person from the group takes the list from another student.
4. They then start developing the concept for a story. Students may choose to write a story from this summary. Alternatively, students may write a poem or play from the list.