Creative Writing Exercise
Michelle Foley
| GRADE LEVEL: | JHS all |
| SKILLS: | Writing, reading, speaking, listening |
| TIME: | 20-25 minutes |
| MATERIALS: | A picture, writing paper |
| OBJECTIVES: | To encourage free-use of English without focusing on precise grammar or spelling, for students to practice using the English they already know to communicate something new |
PROCEDURE:
1. Find a picture on which students will base their story. Try to find a picture that is not only interesting, but also one that targets English you know students can easily reproduce.
2. Photocopy a lined sheet of paper on which students will write their story.
3. Break the students into groups of about 5-6. Each group has a copy of the same picture and a sheet of lined paper. Explain to students that everyone must write their own sentence. Group members can encourage and assist one another, but every student must contribute by writing. Emphasize that perfect English is not necessary, and that this exercise will not be marked. Finally, dictionaries and textbooks are forbidden! Using such resources slows down students’ progress; it also tends to promote direct translation instead of coaxing students to express themselves using the vocabulary they already know.
4. After a predetermined time period, have a representative from each group read their group’s story to the class. Students will be amused by both the similarities and the differences between stories.
NOTES:
Students will try and sneak peeks at textbooks and dictionaries. Apply a punishment if this happens too often (push-ups, etc).
For variety, offer each group a different picture from one story. After composition, the group representatives go to the front of the class, and read their stories in the order their picture appeared in the original story. Following that, the ALT reads the original story, and the students can compare their stories with the original. This follow-up activity will more than likely account for the remainder of a 50-minute period.
For less-confident or weaker classes, I sometimes provide word banks on the chalkboard for the obvious things they would want to describe from the picture. This is especially effective if you are just starting to use this exercise. The more often you do this exercise, students will be more confident using their own English and less reliant on the word banks.
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