Innovative lessons/ideas for teaching creative writing, as well as samples of student writing resulting from the lesson. See complete submission guidelines here.
by Bushra Rehman “Peer closer: a soul and a soul. He folds over her like a rosebud in sleep.” — Ishle Yi Park How to bring a love of sonnets to my high school students? Easy. I was a student, once upon a time in the old hip-hop life of Queens, and I am armed…
By Jacy Bryla This unit is adapted from T&W teaching artists Jane LeCroy’s and Samantha Facciolo’s poetry programs for sixth-grade students who were making masks as an art class project at IS 218, the Rafael Hernandez Dual Language Magnet School in the Bronx. Alongside their mask-making, the writers asked the students to write poetry that…
By Jason DeHart In my experience as a middle school teacher, I often found that some students were hesitant to engage with the written page, either as readers or writers. On the other hand, colorful characters and even segments from popular superhero movies were almost always uniquely engaging for students. Comic books and heroic characters…
By Samantha LoCoco In this lesson on personal narrative, T&W teaching artist Samantha LoCoco helps seventh-graders begin to articulate the values that are most important to them, and to realize how those values shape who they are as individuals. Grade: 7 Genre: Personal Narrative Download: Value Exploration and Personal Narrative Common Core State Standards: (Refer to…
By Bushra Rehman In the following lesson plan writer Bushra Rehman considers diary writing as a vehicle to explore personal experience. Grade: 5 Genre: Prose Download: Dear Diary… Common Core State Standards: (Refer to the ELA Standards > Writing > Grade 5) ELA-LITERACY.W.5.3.B: Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop experiences and…
By Linda Morel and Jessie Paddock In this lesson plan developed by T&W writers Linda Morel and Jessie Paddock for third-grade classes at PS 90 in Coney Island, New York City, the teaching artists invite students to explore how their real-world experience of place can inform their understanding of research. Grade: 3rd Genre: Poetry Download: Research,…
By Erika Luckert In this lesson T&W writer Erika Luckert invites students to explore the music genre of blues through contemporary rap and poetry. Grade: 8 Genre: Poetry Download: Writing the Blues Common Core Standards (Refer to the ELA Standards > Writing > Grade 8 and the ELA Standards > Reading: Literature > Grade 8) ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.D: Use precise…
By Alba Hernandez In this lesson, T&W teaching artist Alba Hernandez focuses on teaching students to use vivid details to create a linguistic picture of a special person or pet. Alba reminds students that the five senses can be used in any type of writing, including persuasive writing, and that in order to persuade someone,…
By Olaya Barr In this class, T&W teaching artist Olaya Barr and T&W education associate India Gonzalez, a graduate student at New York University, challenged students to translate a text written in a foreign language, nearly 200 years ago! Is it possible to translate a text if you don’t know the original language? As a…
By Jennifer Bartlett In this lesson from T&W teaching artist Jennifer Bartlett, participants unpack their perceptions of disability, explore the origin of those perceptions, analyze a poem written by a disabled poet, explore explicit and implicit biases within a dialogical framework, and write a poem exploring an aspect of their own identity. Grade/Population: High school or adults…