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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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.
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Everybody Wants a Donut
An in-class demonstration that shows, not tells, the elements of story.
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A Novel Idea
How a reading specialist used fiction writing to instill confidence in her students.
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What Do I Know?
Engaging with the borrowed wisdom of the cento.
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Let’s Play
Writing for the stage.
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A Bridge Built of Art and Words
Writing fables with English language learners.
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The (Sm)art of Rap
Teaching the elements of poetry through rap.
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I Am a Cartographer of Fear
Teaching horror and Dante’s Inferno in an age of anxiety.
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Birthing Corpses
Nurturing high school writers through a two-year poetry journey.
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Where We’re From
Using poetry to build community.
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Café Day
Being a writer in the real world.
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Every Bombed Village Is My Hometown
Teaching James Baldwin in Bangladesh.
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What I Got
Nina Simone and the freedom to write and dance.
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Poetic Archeology
Excavating found text to create word-and-image poems.
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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Banned book writing prompts.
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The Onion
Helping students find inspiration in the ordinary.
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A Place for Us
Student poetry that looks back to move forward.
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Call Me by My Name
Poetry and translanguaging in the multilingual classroom.
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In the Beginning Was the Word and the Word Was Blue
Exploring the blues through poetry and song.
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A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Banned book writing prompts.
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Tools for Rethinking the World
Using surrealist and science fiction techniques to liberate the imagination.
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Back to School with Sijo
Six teachers expand poetry’s horizons with this Korean form.
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Mockingbird
Using one-sentence poem trickery to inspire student writing.