The Moment When…
In this lesson plan, photographs are used to explore point of view in fiction writing.
Lesson Plans
Innovative lessons/ideas for teaching creative writing, as well as samples of student writing resulting from the lesson. See complete submission guidelines here.
Writing a contrapuntal poem: tools gathered from even-odd project elevators
Poet and teaching artist Trace DePass riffs on the contrapuntal as a poetic form and a way of looking at the world.
The Backward Prompt: Using Great First Lines from Literature to Invent Your Own Way Forward
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,…
My Self-portrait / My Secret Self-portrait
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…
The Parent Poem Project: Using Photographs to Take a Closer Look at Our Parents and Ourselves
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…
Building a Queer Canon
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…
Writing Our Names
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?…
Black Nikes in Red Weather: A Lesson Plan for “Dream Poems”
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.
How a Spider Web Can Untangle Memoir Writing
by Kendra Stanton Lee “All I have are Iggy Pop and dirt-biking before I got locked up,” one student shared with the class. That sounds like plenty of material to me, I said, as I began to jot some of the student’s memories on the board. First, I drew a large rectangle box in dry…
Facts Before Fiction: Writing into Autumn
“Fictional stories and poetry are often held together by fact, and this lesson shows students how they can weave practical knowledge into imaginative writing.” Educator Diane Conmy shares one of her favorite lessons, inspired by autumn and the book “Autumn Leaves” by Ken Robbins.