Innovative lessons/ideas for teaching creative writing, as well as samples of student writing resulting from the lesson. See complete submission guidelines here.
by Alice Pencavel Alice Pencavel’s lesson plan uses close reading of A Streetcar Named Desire as a starting point for students to write their own dramatic scenes. If many students are already familiar with Streetcar, choose a different play to teach the same lesson. Grades: High School Lesson Objectives: To introduce students to the fundamental…
by Erika Luckert Poet and Teachers & Writers Collaborative teaching artist Erika Luckert uses Sydell Rosenberg’s children’s book, H Is For Haiku: A Treasury of Haiku from A to Z, to introduce young students to this poetic form. The National Council of Teachers of English chose H Is For Haiku as a 2019 Notable Poetry Book…
by Erika Luckert This lesson uses translation as a way to teach revision in poetry. Grades: Middle and high school Opening Discussion: Ask students if anyone speaks a language other than English. Give the students a chance to share their other languages with each other, and ask if anybody has tried translating, either orally or…
by Alice Pencavel T&W teaching Alice Pencavel offers a lesson plan that lets students connect language and equation, demystifies difficult language with concrete numbers and rhythms, and fosters collaboration among students. In so doing, the lesson elicits a physical pleasure associated with Shakespeare. Guiding Questions: What feelings arise from the music? How fast/slow is it?…
by Erika Luckert At the end of most T&W programs, we hold a celebration that launches an anthology of student work and features performances of poems by a selection of student readers. While not every student will perform their work onstage, it’s important to me as an educator that every student feels a part of…
by Jason DeHart As both a middle grades and college English instructor, I have found that using well-chosen visuals when introducing writing modes can create powerful, and even entertaining, opportunities for students to begin drafting. Images can be used in a variety of ways; for the purpose of this lesson plan, I will discuss guiding…
by Alice Pencavel T&W teaching artist Alice Pencavel’s crumpled paper exercise engages students with the process of collaborative storytelling. The lesson enables students to harness a greater aptitude for spontaneity and deepens their understanding of story structuring. Grades: 6th and up Materials/Set Up: One writing utensil and sheet of paper per student. Desks should be…
by Erika Luckert Last year, I facilitated a roundtable discussion on plagiarism and intertextuality in poetry, where a group of teachers and writers talked about the way we use other texts to inspire and fuel our writing. As we talked, we realized that what might be called plagiarism in a formal essay is sometimes a…
by Jennie Weng Character analysis is an important skill for writers to learn. However, too often students label characters with one-dimensional terms (e.g., good, bad, funny, evil, protagonist, antagonist). Well-crafted characters are a lot like real people; they are complex. If students can understand this integral component of character analysis, they will not only be…
by Matthew Baganz In the second part of his Arts of Speech lesson plan, Matthew Baganz shows students how words can create and communicate visual images. Read Part 1 of the lesson plan here. Grade: 3–5 Genre: Descriptive prose Download: The Arts of Speech Part 2: Recreating Pictures with Words Common Core Standard: ELA-Literacy.W.3-5.3 Write narratives…