How to Teach Creative Writing to Children

Creative writing offers challenges to both new and seasoned teachers as it can be a difficult type of writing at times. Fortunately, there are some proven strategies that can help teachers effectively teach children to write creatively.

Following are some suggestions for teaching creative writing more effectively and making it a more exciting experience:

Model Good Writing

Rather than giving your students a blank sheet of paper and telling them to write about their favorite game or many other writing prompts, it is recommended that you show them good writing first. Have your students model good writing. Read a short story and then ask the students to write the story again. Encourage them to make some changes to the story when writing. Even if they write the same story, it’s a good start.

By providing a model, your students will be encouraged and busy at the task of writing instead of trying to think of something ‘creative’. Having a model ready during the creative writing class will help the students see what strong writing looks like.

Read to Your Students

It doesn’t matter how old your students are, it is recommended that you read to them so that they know what a quality writing sounds like. Use stories that focus on one or two characteristics of quality writing. It is also recommended that you introduce a characteristic of writing e.g. a unique word choice, and then ask them to listen for samples of it in the story as you read. After that, have your students mimic the characteristics of the story you read in a creative writing piece of their own. This will surely help them improve in creative writing.

Experiment with Genres

You want to get your students out of their comfort zone and encourage them to write in a different style such as science fiction, suspense, humor, mystery, or adventure. If they are struggling with ideas for writing, encourage them to write something from their own life in any of the specified genres. Not only will this strategy be fun for your students, but it will also encourage them to get creative and experiment with something new.

Encourage Them to Use Style in Their Writing

Ask your students in the creative writing class to include certain types of words that usually show creativity and particularly style in other people’s writings. It is recommended that you start slowly by asking for one or two requirements and once your students become proficient in using different stylistic techniques, add more and more elements to improve their creative writing skills.

Final Word

When it comes to creative writing for primary school, encouraging students to write a story of their own can be a challenging task for most teachers. However, it can give them an enormous confidence boost and help them improve their creative writing skills by putting their reading, grammar, and phonics skills into practice. Hopefully, the above-mentioned strategies will help you teach creative writing to your students effectively and encourage them to improve their creativity. It will surely be a step up from just offering them a blank sheet of paper.