When thinking about HOW to structure your creative writing class along with WHAT to do, here are some tried-and-true options for a 50 min class (you can adjust these minutes based on your own schedule, too):
(10 min) Freewriting / journaling / doodle notes / quiet time
(10 min) Read-aloud
(20 min) Project time
(10 min) Check-in/share/feedback/clean-up time
Here’s what all this means > >
Freewriting/journaling/doodle notes/quiet time
* Put up a quote AND an image, or two quotes, or memes, etc. Just two of something so students can always have a choice.
These can be projected on the board with the lights dim, lamps on, music playing, and they simply wrote.
Or they can draw, whatever they needed to do. I didn’t grade these (well, I counted that they had 10 done every two weeks and 10/10 = 100 to make it easy on myself).
In fact, here’s my Pinterest board for images I love to pull from and here’s the one I have for quotes I love to use. You’re welcome to use them, too.
Read-aloud
* Read aloud from something interesting, just to give them consistent ideas about what “good” writing sounds like. Good reading inspires good writing, right?! It might be from a funny book (like Flipped by Wendelin Van Drannen, or a poem or article or anything, really.
It actually got to where students started asking me to read excerpts from things they were reading, which was really great.
If they wanted to do the read-aloud, they had to practice for it (no monotone reading allowed, lol)! You can also find good ones on YouTube so you can play / show it and that gives you a little 10 minute “break” from being “on” all the time!
Project Time
* I assigned writing projects based off of a choice board where students had 9 options to choose from. Each project was designed to take anywhere from 2-3 weeks, but some students chose to spend the entire semester on just one of them, which was fine with me.
I didn’t make rubrics for them, either! The students chose the project from the choice board, and then basically they had to create the rubric, create a schedule for themselves that they followed each day, figure out what they needed to do, all that good stuff.
Keep in mind this was high school where I taught a creative writing elective though, so I had older students. I do think it’s possible to do something like this with middle school, too, though 😊
Project ideas:
* Toilet Talks (write a one-page newsletter full of interesting, cool info and post it in the bathrooms with a new one released each week)
* Fiction / short stories (write one short story on a topic of your choice, or a series of short stories — could become a longer book later on)
* Poetry (experiment with any 3-5 forms / types of poems and write a poetry anthology on topics of your choice using various forms of poetry)
* Create “doodle notes” using inspirational or famous quotes (like what you see on Pinterest) – my artistic kiddos loved doing this!
* Make a “coloring book” for a favorite book you’ve read and know well and love (I had a student create a coloring book using some of her favorite quotes from the Bible, and another student in the exact same class that year did the same thing for her religion by creating one based on the Quran)
* Make a series of comic strips (like Calvin & Hobbs or Peanuts, etc.) that tells a bigger story over time
Create a total of 9 projects for students to choose from and see where it goes! They could spend the entire semester on just one of those projects if they wanted to really develop it, or they could switch it up every couple of weeks.
I also had students from time-to-time who would ask me if they could do something totally different… Many times, yes, of course!
Creative Writing class doesn’t always attract students who love writing! Use this to your advantage when thinking about writing tasks.
Here’s an example that worked well for me: I had some kids who were in the class who really struggled with writing in general and simply wanted time and help to get writing done for other classes.
I let them and I helped them.
Giving them a secure place to go where they didn’t have yet MORE writing thrown on them was a relief because they knew they could focus on the “regular” writing for other classes . . . They simply needed more time and more guidance than what those other classes could afford to provide (only so minutes in a class, right?) I was really glad that they could get help from me and learn that they could indeed write!
A tip for the grading of all this:
I NEVER took home all that writing to grade—I just couldn’t do it!!
So instead, I graded and assessed AS I WENT each day, during that 20 min project work time.
I’d call students up a few at a time throughout the week and check in with them, ask questions, prompt and guide them, and I’d record a grade.
Again, I kept it super simple by asking them questions like, “What do you think your grade should be based on what you’ve been able to do so far this week?” and many times, they were harder on themselves than I would have been! Students would say things like, “I got stuck and didn’t really do much yesterday so… I guess a zero, but then I had better ideas today so I almost finished this next part.”
My response was always, “I’m not giving you a zero because you had a slow day yesterday. You needed ‘think time’ and you got it going again, so let’s say a 90!”
Stuff like that.
In other words, I recorded grades that represented their progress and I did it all right there in class, by checking in with them each week. I could touch base with a few students each day to where by the end of the week, I had talked with every student at least once.
As for grading, I kept it very easy for myself (because I was teaching other grade levels of English, too!!)
⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️
Grades:
1) 10 / 10 free writes = 100 (participation grade)
2) Choosing a project / creating an outline & rubric = 100
3) Following your own schedule you set for yourself 5 days a week = 100 for the week, 20 points per day (self-assessment)
4) Meeting project milestones along the way (so I had a grade to enter for students who wanted the whole semester…I couldn’t just wait until the last week to enter a grade, so I had them come up with “milestones” they had to meet every two weeks and I counted that as their project grade) And remember, THEY created the rubric, set the points up, all that stuff.
The main thing is to be realistic about how much energy, time, and mental space YOU have for this class. It’s easy to put pressure on yourself thinking this class has to be amazing, but you’re ONE person with other classes to teach (not to mention a life outside the classroom).
