Creative Writing course help

Hi all. I hate to start thinking about next year while it's still mid summer but I need to start to prepare. I teach middle school and my assignment next year includes a creative writing course along with my English preps. It is very loosely structured in my district and has no real curriculum. I have a few ideas for projects that I would like to do with the students (How To, short stories, etc.) I guess I am looking for any ideas or advice. Can any writing teachers tell me how you structure your syllabus? I have not taught a course that was solely creative writing before and any help would be appreciated!

Message edited 7/25/2015 11:31:07 PM.

Creative Writing course help

I'm not a creative writing teacher, but I know my kids have always enjoyed the following writing activities: writing a children's book, short stories (they usually do this for Halloween), writing a comic strip, creating a descriptive writing piece that is about a mystery object that the other students need to guess, a persuasive writing piece (asking a parent for a pet/school policy they want to change), or them becoming an animal and going through a day.

Re: Creative Writing course help

If you are in the city, you should def do a picture book unit and have your kids compete in the Ezra jack Keats bookmaking competition

My school used the write steps program, maybe you can get a demo? It was common core aligned and came with all the resources and lesson plans

Re: Creative Writing course help

I did not teach creative writing as a course so I do not have a syllabus but I did do a lot of projects. These were all middle school so they may not work for younger kids.

- Humor writing- I took Top 10 Lists from the Letterman show's site as models- there were some very funny ones about kids and school- and the kids wrote their own. Also, Letters from a Nut by Ted L Nancy- they were crazy letters written to well known companies- super funny and my kids loved when I read them. They also wrote their own similar letters. Nancy Atwell has a lot of info about using Ted L Nancy letters. We also wrote spoofs of well known poems which were lots of fun.

-The Playful Way to Serious Writing is a great book. You may have to work to track down a copy but it will be worth it as it has lots of great exercises which do not require a lot of prep.

- The Writer's Toolbox is also good, it has things the kids can interact with.

-Story Cubes- have prompts, I bought them for my DD but they could be used in the classroom.

Also look into NaNoWriMo- National Novel Writing month- they have a lot of resources. The goal is to write a novel during the month of November. You could spend Sept and Oct doing prep (and the NaNo site has lots of resources) and then write in November, and then spend the next several months editing, revising and publishing. We had a party when it was over where the kids read from their novels. It was great.

Message edited 7/28/2015 2:00:59 PM.