Category: Lesson Plans
Innovative lessons plans and ideas for teaching creative writing as well as samples of student writing resulting from the lessons.
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May I Ask Who’s Calling?
A phone booth writing prompt.
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Good Soil
Transforming trauma to allow creativity to take root.
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Forbidden Places
A transformative lesson in taking up space.
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Out of Ashes / Creating / the / Atmosphere
Teaching found poetry in the age of attention.
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The Things We Carry
A lesson in deep self-reflection and empathy.
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What Are We Made Of?
Exploring the forces that shape us through poetry and science.
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Seeing Before Naming
A phenomenological poetry workshop that turned my classroom into a field of discovery.
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Rewriting Time
A braided narrative practice.
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A Pagoda
Feelings, needs, and cultural identity as the building blocks of storytelling.
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Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg
Banned book writing prompts.
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Beyond the Darkness
Teaching “true crime” memoir as a crime survivor.
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Distillation and Transplantation
Teaching early writers to transform lived experience into fiction.
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Better Brainstorming
Teaching early writers to generate ideas for fiction.
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How to Pick a Lock
Rediscovering wonder in the blank page.
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You Must Be Proud
Food-themed narrative writing with Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks.”
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What the Sound Wants to Say
An approach to story and memory through rhythm.
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Beloved by Toni Morrison
Banned book writing prompts.
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Word into Idea
An aleatory exercise for young poets.
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Maus by Art Spiegelman
Banned book writing prompts.
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When the Page Goes White
Coaching “flow” to reluctant writers.
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Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Banned book writing prompts.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Banned book writing prompts.
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Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
Banned book writing prompts.
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Like Cutting a Watermelon with a Sharp Knife
On haiku and cultivating a receptivity for imagery.