Innovative lessons/ideas for teaching creative writing, as well as samples of student writing resulting from the lesson. See complete submission guidelines here.
I started this “poetry-mural” initiative back in the spring of 2017 while working as a writer-in-residence at PS 51 in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan. The school building was already brimming with color and creativity, thanks in large part to the collaborative spirit of the art teacher, Shani Perez, and the principal, Nancy Sing-Bock.
Jayne Cortez’s poem “These New York City Pigeons” inspires student poems in this lesson plan from Joanna Fuhrman.
In this lesson plan, photographs are used to explore point of view in fiction writing.
Poet and teaching artist Trace DePass riffs on the contrapuntal as a poetic form and a way of looking at the world.
The following article was originally published in the lesson plan archive. by Kim Stafford As Donald Graves once said, if you want students to write literature, read them beautiful things and simply ask them to write. They will make the connections and write under the spell of what they have heard. Once upon a time,…
lesson by Sheila Maldonado as told to Azka Anwar There are some lessons that I rely on as a teacher for their success with students at many different levels, usually with minimal adaptation required. The lesson below is one of them; students take to the prompt quickly and with little resistance, possibly because the prompt…
By Vince Puzick One of my favorite writing exercises is to have students create poems inspired by photographs. I find that working with these images allows them to observe a moment in time, focusing on small details while also exploring the broader context of the photo, extending and speculating beyond what the camera captures. For…
the featured image is from electricliterature.com by Annabel Paulsen “[Queerness] is not something to be ashamed of, and I’m coming from a place of privilege because I was not ashamed. I want [my students] to feel the same freedom, and that’s why in my teaching, in my writing, in the artists I have picked for…
by Madison Stuart Teachers are keepers of names. Some corner of my brain is cluttered with Alexanders and Amanis and Keanus and Kylies. That first day of school, working down the roster, teachers wield a great appellative power; how many Pomaikaimaikekukunaokalamekahos who go by Po, Zhijias who go by Roy, Shar’lynnruths who go by Shari?…
T&W writer Matthew Burgess brings us a new poetry activity which uses the poems “Black Nikes” by Harryette Mullen and “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” by Wallace Stevens as mentor texts that encourage wordplay, imaginative leaps, and experimentation with form.