Need to engage your students? Whether you are teaching a creative writing class or a traditional one, here are fun, quick writing activities you can use to any time to get your reluctant writers — writing!
They are great when:
- there are 20 minutes before the assembly starts
- one class gets ahead of another – and you need a “holding” lesson until you can get your classes aligned
- students are super-squirrelly, but still need to work
- your class is stagnant and everyone needs a boost (including you!)
- you’re looking for creative writing games
- students need a quick creative writing activity to warm them up
- you want to introduce a new writing unit
It’s great to have quick, fun creative writing exercises and lesson plans to turn to when you have extra class time to fill.
If students don’t finish, have them hold onto them for another day. There always seems to be a pocket of time you need to fill — and these quick creative writing prompts are perfect! No printed worksheets necessary!
1. Pass-back Stories
If you haven’t taught them, here is how they work:
- Every student has a blank piece of paper and pen.
- The teacher provides the story starter. It can be something like, “Suddenly, the lights went out,” or “Our camping trip was going great until,” or “I knew it was a bad idea to…”
- The students write the story starter at the top of the page and then start writing the story.
- The teacher sets the timer (2 minutes or so); when the timer goes off, the students must pass their paper back to the person behind them. The last person in the row, runs her paper up to the first person. Students must stop writing when the teacher calls time — even if they are in the middle of a sentence!
- Continue with each student down the row adding to the story.
- After a few rounds, students will end up with their own paper again. They then need to write a conclusion to their story.
Reasons to love this little lesson:
- It’s fast and fun
- Students love reading and adding to each other’s stories
- Students are practicing spontaneous writing – their imaginations are firing and their creative writing skills are being challenged.
- Reinforces writing skills – students know their story needs to have a beginning, middle, and end.
- Perfect to add to your back to school writing ideas.
- Provide creative writing exercises for beginners
- Review of when to start new paragraphs
- Works with middle school through high school students.
- If you’re looking for a fun end of the year activity, give this a try.
Adjustments you might want to make:
- Rearrange your classroom into even rows.
- Set some rules and restrictions. For example, you may want to stipulate that no real people can be mentioned in the story, or that it must be rated G.
- Once students get the idea, you can have “challenge” items in each round. For example, students have to include a groundhog, or must use the word “confetti.” I announce this right before setting the timer.
- Play with the time limit. The time limit makes it a fun writing game. Try not too give them too much time; you want them to finish writing in the middle of an idea — that creates a challenge for the next writer!
- Collect all the stories at the end of the class. Read a few of the best to the class the next day — or allow students to read their stories in small groups. I like to collect and read to sort out any stories that might have pushed boundaries or forgotten the rules!
Once your students do this, they will beg you to write pass-back stories, but I wouldn’t recommend using them more that a few times in a school year. That keeps them fresh and exciting!
2. Guess-who Character Cards
If you haven’t taught it, here’s how it works:
- Provide each students with a picture of someone they are not familiar with. It could be a picture from an ad, a “Guess Who” game card, or a photo you find online. The important thing is that students don’t know the person.
- Have students write a quick description of the person. Encourage them to create as clear a detailed description as possible.
- Collect descriptions, post pictures around the room, redistribute descriptions and challenge students to match the picture with the description.
Reasons to love this little lesson:
- challenges students to look at details in a photo. (If you need more descriptive writing activities, you might be interested in this post.)
- fun and fast — students love matching the description with the photo
- writing with a purpose – students know their descriptions must be accurate and specific
- encourages students to use descriptive words
- add to your beginner writing exercises to help students pay attention to details
Adjustments you may want to make:
- If you teach more than one section, swap descriptions so students need to read and match pictures and descriptions from a completely different class.
- Allow students to work with a partner
- Turn it into one of your writing games by providing points for correct matches.
3. Guess-who Characters — with a twist!
How it works:
- Follow the directions for the Guess-who character description above except instead of writing a description of the character, students write dialogue the character has.
Reasons to love this little lesson:
- Students have the chance to see how dialogue tells us about a character.
- It provides writing with voice.
- Practice writing dialogue.
- It’s one of those school writing prompts that really engages!
- Perfect to add to your creative writing lessons as a start of the year review of dialogue
- Fun!
Adjustments you may want to make:
- Allow students to work together with two different pictures. The characters in the pictures might be having a conversation, argument, or debate.
- Extend the lesson into a full scene that involves the character.
- Challenge students to write a backstory about the character.
4. Quirky prompts
Students love learning about the oddball holidays that are so popular (you can find them in my “What to teach this month” posts).
How to do this:
- Choose a quirky holiday. It doesn’t have to be the holiday of the day — any quirky day will work!
- Ask students to plan a celebration for the day. They can write a flyer, an ad, a commercial, or create a party plan.
- Or have students describe what happens at this celebration. They can include as much description as possible.
Reasons to love this little lesson:
- students love the quirkiness of this assignment!
- creative and imaginative
- these work for extra practice for creative writing lessons for high school or middle school
Adjustments you may want to make:
- If you have more time, you can give students different holidays. They can describe the celebration without naming it. Later, students can try to match the holiday and the description.
- Allow students to include illustrations with their descriptions.
- Ask students to come up with slogans, flag, or fashion wear for the holiday. Make sure they can justify their creation.
5. Use story starters!
You can find 22 story starters in my store!
How to use them:
- Print the story starter writing prompts (you may want to use cardstock).
- Distribute them to your students & let them get started.
Reasons to love these:
- your students will want to know what story starter their classmates have, so this makes for a great opportunity for students to read their writing aloud!
- super easy to use! Print and use.
- flexible creative writing activities for elementary, middle, or high school
Adjustments you may want to make:
- you can also use these as a “fast finisher” prompt or a warm up.
- incorporate them into your creative writing class.
- perfect for the end of the school year or before a break begins
- students can trade story starters and start over.
Ready for more?
Once your students are warmed up, give them the opportunity to really stretch their writing skills by crafting a short story.
This story writing activity will take your students through the entire writing process. You can find this one and other school writing activities in my shop.
Creative writing activities can challenge and stretch your students — give one of these a try!
With gratitude,
