TheHighSchooler

Teach Creative Writing In High School With 10 Fun Activities

Creative writing is a meaningful aspect of literature that mandates you to utilize your expertise, ingenuity, and story to depict a critical message, emotion, or plot. It defies the traditional bounds of other forms of writing and is completely subjective to our preferences and experiences. In creative writing, it’s all about imaginativeness!

Using creative imagination and originality to convey feelings and concepts in a unique way is at the heart of creative writing. Simply stated, it’s about infusing your own ‘flair’ into your writing, moving beyond academic or other technical kinds of literature. 

In this post, we will explore the various activities which would be advantageous for a high schooler who wishes to indulge in creative writing!

creative writing lessons for high school

What Happens When Creative Writing Is Put To Use?

Creative writing is any form of writing that deviates from traditional professional, investigative journalism, educational, or technological forms of literature. It is typically distinguished by emphasizing narrative craft, character development, literary tropes, or various poetic traditions.

Here are the few ways how high schoolers can benefit from creative writing –

1. Imagination

When you write creatively, you expand your imagination by creating new environments, scenarios, and characters. This way, you are also boosting and stretching your imagination, as well as “thinking out of the box.” This allows you to concentrate your energy on many other things and improve your ability to find fresh ideas and alternatives to problems you’re having. Whether you’re a researcher or a businessman, creative writing will increase your imagination and help you think more creatively, and push the boundaries.

2. Empathy and Communications skills

When you create characters, you’ll be constructing emotions, personalities, behaviors, and world views that are distinct from your own. Writers must conceive personalities, emotions, places, and walks of life outside of their own lives while creating universes with fictional characters and settings.

This can give children a good dose of empathy and understanding for those who aren’t like them, who don’t live where they do or go through the same things they do daily. Writers are better equipped to communicate when they have a greater understanding of other points of view. They can come up with creative ways to explain and debate subjects from multiple perspectives. This ability is crucial in both professional and personal situations. 

3. Clarification of Thoughts 

Creating structures in creative writing allows you to organize your impressions and emotions into a logical procedure. You may express both your thoughts and your sentiments through creative writing. For example, if you’re a marketing executive, you could create a short tale in which your clientele reads your promotional emails. You can guess what they’re up to, where they’re seated, what’s around them, and so on.

This enables you to focus on the language and strategies you employ. Alternatively, if you’re a technical writer writing on a new desktop platform, you could create a creative scenario in which a user encounters a problem. 

4. Broadens Vocabulary and gets a better understanding of reading and writing

You’ll learn a larger vocabulary and a better understanding of the mechanics of reading and writing as you begin to practice writing exercises regularly. Even if you’re writing a budget report, you’ll know when rigid grammar standards work and when they don’t, and you’ll know what will make your writing flow better for your readers. Exploring different ways of expressing yourself when writing creatively allows you to extend your vocabulary.

You’ll notice a change in your use and range of language as you improve your writing over time, which will be useful in any professional route and social scenario. You’ll be able to bend and break the rules when you need to, to utilize your voice and make what you’re writing engaging without coming off as an amateur, dull, or inauthentic once you’ve grasped the fundamentals of writing professionally and creatively.

5. Building Self-Belief 

When you write creatively, you’re actively involved in an activity that allows you to fully develop your voice and point of view without being constrained. You have a better chance to investigate and express your feelings about various issues, opinions, ideas, and characters. And you’ll feel more at ease and secure stating your thoughts and perspectives in other things you write as a result of this.

Writers who don’t write creatively may be concerned about appearing authoritative or trustworthy. They accidentally lose their voice and sound like drones spouting statistics by omitting to include their perspective on the topics they’re writing about. As a result, they miss out on using their distinct voice and presenting themselves as an expert with real-world expertise.

Creative Writing Activities That Will Strengthen Your Writing Skills  

Short spurts of spontaneous writing make up creative writing activities. These writing exercises push a writer to tackle a familiar topic in a new way, ranging from one line to a lengthy tale. Short, spontaneous projects are common in creative writing programs, but any writer should make them a regular practice to extend their abilities and learn new tactics to approach a series of stories.

These activities must be performed for ten minutes at a time, several times a week – by creative writers. They’re designed to help you improve your writing abilities, generate fresh story ideas, and become a better writer.

1. Free Writing

Writing is the first and foremost activity that is going to give your creative writing a boost. Start with a blank page and let your stream of thoughts and emotions flow. Then simply begin writing. Don’t pause to think or alter what you’re expressing. This is known as “free writing.” This writing activity is referred to as “morning pages” by Julia Cameron, the author of ‘The Artist’s Way.’ She recommends that authors do this every day when they first wake up. Stream of consciousness writing can provide some intriguing concepts.

Allow your intellect to take the lead as your fingers type. Or write a letter to your younger self.  Consider a topic you’d like to discuss, such as a noteworthy event, and write it down. Give guidance or convey a message that you wish you had heard as a youngster or a young adult.

2. Modify a Storyline – Read

Most of us like to read. However, just reading won’t really help augment your creative writing skills. While reading bestows insight into the deeper meanings of numerous things, you need a more concrete approach to better your aptitude. To do this, you can modify any storyline. Take an episode from a chapter, if you’re feeling brave—from one of your favorite books and recreate it. Write it from the perspective of a different character. Swap out the main character in this exercise to examine how the story may be conveyed differently.

Take Percy Jackson’s thrilling conclusion, for instance, and rework it with Annabeth as the primary character. Another way to approach this creative activity is to keep the primary character but switch viewpoints. Rewrite a scene in the third person if the writer has told a story in the first person. 

3. Add Creative Writing Prompts or Create Flash Fiction

Use writing prompts, often known as narrative starters, to produce writing ideas. A writing prompt is a sentence or short excerpt that a writer uses to start composing a story on the spot. You can look up writing prompts online, pick a sentence out of a magazine at random, or use a brilliant line from a well-known work as the start of your short scene.

creative writing lessons for high school

Another thing you can do to accentuate your writing is to create flash fiction. Sit down at your desktop or pick up a pen and paper and write a 500-word story on the spur of the moment. This isn’t the same as just writing whatever comes to mind. With no fixed guidelines, free writing generates a stream of consciousness. All of the basic components of a story arc, such as plot, conflict, and character development, are required in flash fiction, albeit in a shortened form.

4. Create a Fictitious Advertisement

Pick a random word from a nearby book or newspaper and create a fictitious commercial for it. Write one ad in a formal, abbreviated newspaper classified format to require you to pay special attention to your word choice to sell the item. Then write one for an online marketplace that allows for longer, more casual text, such as Craigslist. Describe the item and persuade the reader to purchase it in each one.

5. Engage in Conversations 

Engaging in conversations with your friends/family – or simply communicating can help brush up your writing skills. Talk to your loved ones about their hobbies, career, views on societal issues – any suitable topic for that matter. This helps implement others’ points of view and expands your mental ability. Another useful thing that you can do is – make another person’s tale and create it by implementing your own thoughts. Then talk about it in an impeccable manner. Also, talk in complete sentences. This goes to show your Linguistic intelligence proficiency – and helps augment your creative writing skills.

6. Create Your Own Website/Blog

Start your search for blogging. There are a million writing suggestions out there, but they all boil down to the same thing: write. Blogging is excellent writing practice because it gives you a place to write regularly.

creative writing lessons for high school

To keep your fingers and mind nimble, write a post every day. Like most bloggers, you’ll want to restrict your subject—perhaps you’ll focus on parenting or start a how-to site where you can tell stories from your point of view.

7. Participate in Debates/Extempores  

Participating in debates, extempores – anchoring for your school function, giving a speech, all of these activities help boost your creative spirit. These group events make you understand what other people are envisioning, which in turn helps you generate new ideas, approaches, and methods. Not only do they improve your articulation and research skills, but they also develop critical thinking and emotional control abilities. All of these promote a better creative writing aptitude.

8. Start a YouTube Channel or Podcast 

Starting a YouTube channel or podcast will definitely level up your creative game. YouTube is a never-ending platform, covering myriads of topics. Choose a particular niche for your channel.

creative writing lessons for high school

Then do your topic research, create content, manage SEO, approach brands, talk to clients and influencers – do all the good stuff. Communicating with other influencers and creating content will take your creative writing skills to another level. Starting a podcast will have a similar impact. 

9. Love them? Say it with your words!

We have many festivals, occasions, birthdays, parties, anniversaries and whatnot! You can employ these special days and boost your creative writing skills. You can make a token of love for them – writing about your feelings. You can also make gift cards, birthday cards, dinner menus, and so on. So let’s say, it’s your mother’s birthday, you can write her a token of love, elucidating your feelings and letting her know what all she’s done for you and that you’re grateful. Do this for all your near and dear ones. This not only spreads positivity and love but helps you develop your creative aptitude.

10. The What-if Game

The What-If game is an incredible way to upgrade your creative abilities. You can play this game with your friends, cousins, relatives, or solo. Here, you need to find links to many interesting hypothetical questions. For instance, what if the sun doesn’t rise for a week? What if there’s no oxygen for one minute? Play it with your peeps, or ask these questions to yourself. It can be anything random but concrete. If you don’t know the answers to the questions, look them up on Google. This way, you’re training your mind to learn new concepts all the while enhancing your visualization process. 

We can conclude that creative writing encourages students to think creatively, use their imaginations, imply alternatives, expand their thinking processes, and improve their problem-solving skills. It also allows the child to express themselves and grow their voice. Besides, it enhances reasoning abilities. The principle behind the creative writing concept is that everyone can gain the qualities that are needed to become a successful writer or, rather become good at writing. Creative writing is all about using language in new and innovative ways.

creative writing lessons for high school

Sananda Bhattacharya, Chief Editor of TheHighSchooler, is dedicated to enhancing operations and growth. With degrees in Literature and Asian Studies from Presidency University, Kolkata, she leverages her educational and innovative background to shape TheHighSchooler into a pivotal resource hub. Providing valuable insights, practical activities, and guidance on school life, graduation, scholarships, and more, Sananda’s leadership enriches the journey of high school students.

Explore a plethora of invaluable resources and insights tailored for high schoolers at TheHighSchooler, under the guidance of Sananda Bhattacharya’s expertise. You can follow her on Linkedin

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4 Engaging Writing Tasks for High School Students

Short, authentic writing tasks can encourage high school students to compose richer long pieces.

creative writing lessons for high school

It’s quite likely that many of your students dislike writing. After all, they’re often expected to compose lengthy pieces that typically require lots of brainstorming, researching, planning, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing—and that can be exhausting. My class of high school boys had the same attitude, and their short, underdeveloped, and passionless pieces were most telling. I had to overhaul my approach.

During my quest for an alternative practice, I quickly learned that by building students’ knowledge about the topic on which they are expected to compose, and by initially assigning them shorter and more authentic writing tasks, we can successfully motivate them to write longer, richer, and more compelling multiparagraph pieces. Yes, baby steps—from a creep to a stable walk—can work wonders.

Incorporate Knowledge-Building Activities

Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler said it best in  The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades : “Writing and content knowledge are intimately related. You can’t write well about something you don’t know well. The more students know about a topic before they begin to write, the better they will be able to write about it.”

Documentaries, podcasts, TED Talks, and other authentic and engaging audiovisuals can facilitate this knowledge building. Field trips, as well as interviews with relevant community-based experts, can also offer students significant fodder for their writing.

Moreover, when students have interesting discoveries to share, they’ll be excited about the writing tasks, and their compositions are likely to be longer, more detailed, more affecting, and more compelling. Because they have a rich knowledge bank, they’re less likely to get stuck and frustrated as they write. Knowledge stimulates ideas.

But information gathering is not all. It’s also important to show students how to use the newly learned content. We don’t want them to plagiarize information or inadvertently silence their own voices by over-quoting others. Their research should enhance what they write, not substitute for their initial thoughts or suppress their creativity.

What can you do then?

Go beyond lessons in citation format. Model, through write-aloud, how to make decisions about the content included in written work, how to paraphrase and summarize from the original source, and how to ensure that the added content actually strengthens what you already have.

Offer Authentically Rooted Writing Assignments

Finally, make sure that the writing assignments are authentic—with realistic, real-world communicative goals and true-to-life audiences (not just the classroom teacher). Here are some suggestions that you can implement in your teaching practice:

Travel blogs:  Take students on virtual field trips. Nearpod , Google Earth, and YouTube are excellent for this. Following this activity, have students write a blog post to describe the place they visited. If your students have visited resorts or attraction sites locally, they could write about that experience, recommend activities for prospective visitors, and simultaneously persuade them to visit when it is safe to do so.

Their insights might even persuade others to travel to this site. Students could use pictures to supplement their writing. They could also convert their written piece into a mini-video production for a real or imagined YouTube channel that promotes exotic getaways. Their composition would become the audio narration, and, with some background reggae, R & B, or any other culturally popular music, their piece would be beautifully transformed into a riveting marketing pitch.

Movie reviews:  Due to the pandemic, we know that many of our students may be watching far more movies than ever before. Therefore, let’s repurpose this social activity and use what they love or do for pleasure to help them refine a key academic skill. Have students write a review of their most recently watched or favorite film.

Prompt them to provide a summary of the movie, share their impressions of major characters and the plot’s unfolding, and examine the techniques used to create suspense and mounting tension. Later, when they’re writing their own narratives or putting on drama productions, they can adopt and adapt some of these techniques.

Song or music video reviews: Some students enjoy listening to music, so a song or music video review could also motivate them and facilitate interest-based differentiation. State where the review may be published—a local tabloid, a social media page, etc. Have students keep that in mind as they write so that their finished pieces are authentic and fitting for the context and audience intended.

Social media:  Based on your content area, you could have students make discipline-specific posts and write related captions. For instance, if you are looking at rocks in geography or soil types in science, have students photograph different types and post related descriptive or explanatory captions. They’ll be learning and teaching concurrently.

Provide Mentor Texts

These activities are exciting, but before you scuttle off to assign them, find or create models of the kinds of writing that you want your students to produce. Discuss the sample by prompting students to keenly attend to the content and the writer’s craft (style and techniques) throughout the piece.

Finally, make arrangements to have your students publish their pieces—through a safe online space or through an in-school magazine or newsletter—for authenticity at its finest.

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Black History Month for Kids: Google Slides, Resources, and More!

10 Creative Writing Activities That Help Students Tell Their Stories

Lower the stakes and help them get started.

Share your story message written on three post it notes

“I don’t have a story. There’s nothing interesting about my life!” Sound familiar? I don’t know a teacher who hasn’t heard students say this. When we ask our students to write about themselves, they get stuck. We know how important it is for them to tell their own stories. It’s how we explore our identities and keep our histories and cultures alive. It can even be dangerous when we don’t tell our stories (check out this Ted Talk given by novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and share it with your students for more on that). Storytelling is essential for every subject, not just English Language Arts; students dive deeper and engage when they practice thinking about how their own stories intersect with historical events, civic engagement, and the real-world implications of STEM. These 10 creative writing activities can work in every subject you teach:

Here are 10 of our favorite story telling activities that inspire students:

1. write an “i am from” poem.

A students I Am From creative writing activities

Students read the poem “I am From” by George Ella Lyon. Then, they draft a poem about their own identity in the same format Lyon used. Finally, students create a video to publish their poems. We love this one because the mentor text gives a clear structure and example that students can follow. But the end result is truly unique, just like their story.

2. Design a social media post to share an important memory

collage of historical images creative writing activities

How can you use your unique perspective to tell a story? We want our students to learn that they are truly unique and have stories that only they can tell that other people want to hear or could relate to or learn from. In this activity, students watch two Pixar-in-a-Box videos on Khan Academy to learn about storytelling and perspective. Then, they identify an interesting or poignant memory and design a social media post.

3. Create an image using a line to chart an emotional journey

creative writing lessons for high school

How do you show emotion using a single line? In this activity, students watch a Pixar in a Box video on Khan Academy to learn about how lines communicate character, emotion, and tension. Then they experiment with these aspects as they write their story. We love using this for pre-writing and to help students explore their story arc. Also, for students who love to draw or learn visually, this can help them get started telling their story and show them that there are many different ways to tell a story.

4. Tell the story behind your name

creative writing lessons for high school

Sharing the story behind our name is a way to tell a story about ourselves, our culture, and our family history. And if there isn’t a story behind it, we can talk about how we feel about it and describe what it sounds like. In this activity, students use video to introduce themselves to their classmates by discussing the origin of their name. This project asks students to connect their names (and identities) to their personal and familial histories and to larger historical forces. If you’re looking for a mentor text that pairs well with this one, try “My Name” by Sandra Cisneros .

5. Develop a visual character sketch

Give students the time to create a character sketch of themselves. This will help them see how they fit into their story. In this lesson, students create a visual character sketch. They’ll treat themselves like a character and learn to see themselves objectively.

6. Create a webpage to outline the story of your movie

creative writing lessons for high school

Building a story spine is a great way to show students how to put the parts of their story in an order that makes sense. It’s an exercise in making choices about structure. We like this activity because it gives students a chance to see different examples of structure in storytelling. Then, they consider the question: how can you use structure to set your story up for success? Finally, they design and illustrate an outline for their story.

7. Respond to a variety of writing prompts

Sometimes our students get stuck because they aren’t inspired or need a different entry point into telling their story. Give them a lot of writing prompts that they can choose from. Pass out paper and pencils. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Then, write 3-4 writing prompts on the board. Encourage students to free-write and not worry about whether their ideas are good or right. Some of our favorite prompts to encourage students to tell their story are:

  • I don’t know why I remember…
  • What’s your favorite place and why?
  • What objects tell the story of your life?
  • What might surprise someone to learn about you?

8. Create a self-portrait exploring identity and self-expression

creative writing lessons for high school

Part of what makes writing your own story so difficult for students is that they are just building their identity. In this activity, students explore how they and others define their identity. What role does identity play in determining how they are perceived and treated by others? What remains hidden and what is shown publicly?

9. Film a video to share an important story from your life

creative writing lessons for high school

Encourage students to think about how to tell the story of a day they faced their fears. Students consider the question: How can you use different shot types to tell your story? They watch a video from Pixar in a Box on Khan Academy to learn about different camera shots and their use in storytelling. Then, they use Adobe Spark Post or Photoshop and choose three moments from their story to make into shots. We love using this to help students think about pace and perspective. Sometimes what we leave out of our story is just as important as what we include.

10. Try wild writing

Laurie Powers created a process where you read a poem and then select two lines from it. Students start their own writing with one of those lines. Anytime that they get stuck, they repeat their jump-off line again. This is a standalone activity or a daily writing warm-up, and it works with any poem. We love how it lowers the stakes. Can’t think of anything to write? Repeat the jump-off line and start again. Here are some of our favorite jump-off lines:

  • The truth is…
  • Some people say…
  • Here’s what I forgot to tell you…
  • Some questions have no answers…
  • Here’s what I’m afraid to write about…

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Our 2020-21 Writing Curriculum for Middle and High School

A flexible, seven-unit program based on the real-world writing found in newspapers, from editorials and reviews to personal narratives and informational essays.

creative writing lessons for high school

Update, Aug. 3, 2023: Find our 2023-24 writing curriculum here.

Our 2019-20 Writing Curriculum is one of the most popular new features we’ve ever run on this site, so, of course, we’re back with a 2020-21 version — one we hope is useful whether you’re teaching in person , online , indoors , outdoors , in a pod , as a homeschool , or in some hybrid of a few of these.

The curriculum detailed below is both a road map for teachers and an invitation to students. For teachers, it includes our writing prompts, mentor texts, contests and lesson plans, and organizes them all into seven distinct units. Each focuses on a different genre of writing that you can find not just in The Times but also in all kinds of real-world sources both in print and online.

But for students, our main goal is to show young people they have something valuable to say, and to give those voices a global audience. That’s always been a pillar of our site, but this year it is even more critical. The events of 2020 will define this generation, and many are living through them isolated from their ordinary communities, rituals and supports. Though a writing curriculum can hardly make up for that, we hope that it can at least offer teenagers a creative outlet for making sense of their experiences, and an enthusiastic audience for the results. Through the opportunities for publication woven throughout each unit, we want to encourage students to go beyond simply being media consumers to become creators and contributors themselves.

So have a look, and see if you can find a way to include any of these opportunities in your curriculum this year, whether to help students document their lives, tell stories, express opinions, investigate ideas, or analyze culture. We can’t wait to hear what your students have to say!

Each unit includes:

Writing prompts to help students try out related skills in a “low stakes” way.

We publish two writing prompts every school day, and we also have thematic collections of more than 1,000 prompts published in the past. Your students might consider responding to these prompts on our site and using our public forums as a kind of “rehearsal space” for practicing voice and technique.

Daily opportunities to practice writing for an authentic audience.

If a student submits a comment on our site, it will be read by Times editors, who approve each one before it gets published. Submitting a comment also gives students an audience of fellow teenagers from around the world who might read and respond to their work. Each week, we call out our favorite comments and honor dozens of students by name in our Thursday “ Current Events Conversation ” feature.

Guided practice with mentor texts .

Each unit we publish features guided practice lessons, written directly to students, that help them observe, understand and practice the kinds of “craft moves” that make different genres of writing sing. From how to “show not tell” in narratives to how to express critical opinions , quote or paraphrase experts or craft scripts for podcasts , we have used the work of both Times journalists and the teenage winners of our contests to show students techniques they can emulate.

“Annotated by the Author” commentaries from Times writers — and teenagers.

As part of our Mentor Texts series , we’ve been asking Times journalists from desks across the newsroom to annotate their articles to let students in on their writing, research and editing processes, and we’ll be adding more for each unit this year. Whether it’s Science writer Nicholas St. Fleur on tiny tyrannosaurs , Opinion writer Aisha Harris on the cultural canon , or The Times’s comics-industry reporter, George Gene Gustines, on comic books that celebrate pride , the idea is to demystify journalism for teenagers. This year, we’ll be inviting student winners of our contests to annotate their work as well.

A contest that can act as a culminating project .

Over the years we’ve heard from many teachers that our contests serve as final projects in their classes, and this curriculum came about in large part because we want to help teachers “plan backwards” to support those projects.

All contest entries are considered by experts, whether Times journalists, outside educators from partner organizations, or professional practitioners in a related field. Winning means being published on our site, and, perhaps, in the print edition of The New York Times.

Webinars and our new professional learning community (P.L.C.).

For each of the seven units in this curriculum, we host a webinar featuring Learning Network editors as well as teachers who use The Times in their classrooms. Our webinars introduce participants to our many resources and provide practical how-to’s on how to use our prompts, mentor texts and contests in the classroom.

New for this school year, we also invite teachers to join our P.L.C. on teaching writing with The Times , where educators can share resources, strategies and inspiration about teaching with these units.

Below are the seven units we will offer in the 2020-21 school year.

September-October

Unit 1: Documenting Teenage Lives in Extraordinary Times

This special unit acknowledges both the tumultuous events of 2020 and their outsized impact on young people — and invites teenagers to respond creatively. How can they add their voices to our understanding of what this historic year will mean for their generation?

Culminating in our Coming of Age in 2020 contest, the unit helps teenagers document and respond to what it’s been like to live through what one Times article describes as “a year of tragedy, of catastrophe, of upheaval, a year that has inflicted one blow after another, a year that has filled the morgues, emptied the schools, shuttered the workplaces, swelled the unemployment lines and polarized the electorate.”

A series of writing prompts, mentor texts and a step-by-step guide will help them think deeply and analytically about who they are, how this year has impacted them, what they’d like to express as a result, and how they’d like to express it. How might they tell their unique stories in ways that feel meaningful and authentic, whether those stories are serious or funny, big or small, raw or polished?

Though the contest accepts work across genres — via words and images, video and audio — all students will also craft written artist’s statements for each piece they submit. In addition, no matter what genre of work students send in, the unit will use writing as a tool throughout to help students brainstorm, compose and edit. And, of course, this work, whether students send it to us or not, is valuable far beyond the classroom: Historians, archivists and museums recommend that we all document our experiences this year, if only for ourselves.

October-November

Unit 2: The Personal Narrative

While The Times is known for its award-winning journalism, the paper also has a robust tradition of publishing personal essays on topics like love , family , life on campus and navigating anxiety . And on our site, our daily writing prompts have long invited students to tell us their stories, too. Our 2019 collection of 550 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing is a good place to start, though we add more every week during the school year.

In this unit we draw on many of these resources, plus some of the 1,000-plus personal essays from the Magazine’s long-running Lives column , to help students find their own “short, memorable stories ” and tell them well. Our related mentor-text lessons can help them practice skills like writing with voice , using details to show rather than tell , structuring a narrative arc , dropping the reader into a scene and more. This year, we’ll also be including mentor text guided lessons that use the work of the 2019 student winners.

As a final project, we invite students to send finished stories to our Second Annual Personal Narrative Writing Contest .

DECEMBER-January

Unit 3: The Review

Book reports and literary essays have long been staples of language arts classrooms, but this unit encourages students to learn how to critique art in other genres as well. As we point out, a cultural review is, of course, a form of argumentative essay. Your class might be writing about Lizzo or “ Looking for Alaska ,” but they still have to make claims and support them with evidence. And, just as they must in a literature essay, they have to read (or watch, or listen to) a work closely; analyze it and understand its context; and explain what is meaningful and interesting about it.

In our Mentor Texts series , we feature the work of Times movie , restaurant , book and music critics to help students understand the elements of a successful review. In each one of these guided lessons, we also spotlight the work of teenage contest winners from previous years.

As a culminating project, we invite students to send us their own reviews of a book, movie, restaurant, album, theatrical production, video game, dance performance, TV show, art exhibition or any other kind of work The Times critiques.

January-February

Unit 4: Informational Writing

Informational writing is the style of writing that dominates The New York Times as well as any other traditional newspaper you might read, and in this unit we hope to show students that it can be every bit as engaging and compelling to read and to write as other genres. Via thousands of articles a month — from front-page reporting on politics to news about athletes in Sports, deep data dives in The Upshot, recipes in Cooking, advice columns in Style and long-form investigative pieces in the magazine — Times journalists find ways to experiment with the genre to intrigue and inform their audiences.

This unit invites students to take any STEM-related discovery, process or idea that interests them and write about it in a way that makes it understandable and engaging for a general audience — but all the skills we teach along the way can work for any kind of informational writing. Via our Mentor Texts series, we show them how to hook the reader from the start , use quotes and research , explain why a topic matters and more. This year we’ll be using the work of the 2020 student winners for additional mentor text lessons.

At the end of the unit, we invite teenagers to submit their own writing to our Second Annual STEM writing contest to show us what they’ve learned.

March-April

Unit 5: Argumentative Writing

The demand for evidence-based argumentative writing is now woven into school assignments across the curriculum and grade levels, and you couldn’t ask for better real-world examples than what you can find in The Times Opinion section .

This unit will, like our others, be supported with writing prompts, mentor-text lesson plans, webinars and more. We’ll also focus on the winning teenage writing we’ve received over the six years we’ve run our related contest.

At a time when media literacy is more important than ever, we also hope that our annual Student Editorial Contest can serve as a final project that encourages students to broaden their information diets with a range of reliable sources, and learn from a variety of perspectives on their chosen issue.

To help students working from home, we also have an Argumentative Unit for Students Doing Remote Learning .

Unit 6: Writing for Podcasts

Most of our writing units so far have all asked for essays of one kind or another, but this spring contest invites students to do what journalists at The Times do every day: make multimedia to tell a story, investigate an issue or communicate a concept.

Our annual podcast contest gives students the freedom to talk about anything they want in any form they like. In the past we’ve had winners who’ve done personal narratives, local travelogues, opinion pieces, interviews with community members, local investigative journalism and descriptions of scientific discoveries.

As with all our other units, we have supported this contest with great examples from The Times and around the web, as well as with mentor texts by teenagers that offer guided practice in understanding elements and techniques.

June-August

Unit 7: Independent Reading and Writing

At a time when teachers are looking for ways to offer students more “voice and choice,” this unit, based on our annual summer contest, offers both.

Every year since 2010 we have invited teenagers around the world to add The New York Times to their summer reading lists and, so far, 70,000 have. Every week for 10 weeks, we ask participants to choose something in The Times that has sparked their interest, then tell us why. At the end of the week, judges from the Times newsroom pick favorite responses, and we publish them on our site.

And we’ve used our Mentor Text feature to spotlight the work of past winners , explain why newsroom judges admired their thinking, and provide four steps to helping any student write better reader-responses.

Because this is our most open-ended contest — students can choose whatever they like, and react however they like — it has proved over the years to be a useful place for young writers to hone their voices, practice skills and take risks . Join us!

12 Lesson Plans for Teaching Writing to Secondary Students

creative writing lessons for high school

Blog category: Education Date: 21 September 2017

creative writing lessons for high school

It can be tough to think of ways to keep things interesting when teaching writing to high school students. Fortunately, there are so many great lesson plans out there to give you a starting point. We’ve compiled a list of 12 great lesson plans for teaching different writing techniques and styles to high school students.

1.  News stories

It’s important for students to learn that different types of writing require different styles. For example, the structure and tone of a newspaper article differs greatly from a creative narrative. This news story writing lesson is a great way to help students produce writing with more lexical variation, complex sentences and passive structures.

2.  Calling all characters

Writing fictional narratives can be daunting to many students who feel uncomfortable sharing their ideas, so breaking down the creative writing process is a good way to help students get the ball rolling. This lesson plan requires students to brainstorm character traits, behaviours and actions, then write scenes about that character. Although this lesson plan was designed for primary students, it can be adapted for secondary-level creative writing by removing the simpler games.

3.  Drafting your essay

Essay writing is a major part of high school so it’s important to find different ways of engaging students to reinforce their learning of this type of text. This activity has students deconstruct other essays to learn about essay structure, which will help them when they go to write their own essays. Again, because this is a lesson plan for primary school students, it should be adapted to suit the grade of high school you’re teaching, for example, substitute the picture book for a secondary school novel.

4.  Object creative writing

Rather than starting with characters, another way to prompt students to write stories is the object creative writing lesson plan. By giving students an object to describe, they learn to think creatively in response to a stimulus and develop their descriptive writing skills. Thinking on their feet will help them develop the skills to formulate their own creative ideas in the future.

5.  Letter of complaint

Letters are a common text type that your students will be familiar with. The purpose of this lesson plan is to encourage students to use phrases that express attitude and emotion, which are found in letters of complaint.

6.  Advertising

Advertising uses persuasive language, so practicing this type of writing can help students in forming arguments in essays and debates. Learning how to sell something can also help develop confidence in students.

7.  Peer editing

This lesson plan involves students editing the writing of their peers. Marking the work of others can help a student develop an understanding of their own writing skills by analysing what they would do differently. Responding to feedback from peers also encourages students to develop a positive attitude towards criticism and learning.

8.  Self-reflection

Writing about writing is one of the best ways to help students reduce the number of errors in their work. This lesson plan requires students to read over their work and identify one error that occurs frequently, then rewrite the piece without the error. This activity helps students learn how to correct their work and address habits so that they occur less frequently in the future.

9.  Writing for a real purpose

Writing for a hypothetical purpose can leave students feeling unmotivated to produce their best work. For this lesson plan, students respond to real life scenarios that they’re personally interested in. This way, students adopt an authentic voice, based on real life experience, making their work more engaging.

10.  The 100-word challenge

Being able to write clearly and succinctly is an important writing skill for students in high school and beyond. This lesson idea teaches students how to get to the point in a small number of words, by asking student to respond to a prompt in 100 words or less.

11.  Start a pseudonym project

If you have a students who are particularly shy about sharing their writing with others, you can introduce an anonymous system. Allow students to choose a pseudonym they will use for handing in work. The idea is that students will feel less conscious about being personal or passionate in their work, and therefore produce higher quality work.

12.  Copy cat

Some types of writing, like poetry and creative writing, are harder for students than structured essays and short responses. To help students adopt more creative tones in their writing, this lesson asks students to bring in a piece of writing (poetry or novel) and write their own original piece using the same style and tone.

Get creative

Learning to write different text types, from essays and letters, to creative stories and poetry, can be challenging for students. To help them along the way, it’s important to introduce lesson plans that encourage imagination and help develop lifelong skills that will improve their writing.

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creative writing lessons for high school

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Creative Writing Skills: 6 Lessons You Need To Teach Today

Creative Writing Skills: 6 Lessons You Need To Teach Today

So, you’re going to teach Creative Writing. Congratulations! Now comes the hard part–what exactly does that mean? What should you be teaching? What skills should your students be learning? In this post, I’m going to share some essential Creative Writing skills you should be teaching in your high school Creative Writing class. 

If you’re looking for more tips to teach Creative Writing, check out this post . And if you need help planning the Creative Writing semester, this post should help . 

(Looking to skip the planning entirely? Grab all of my Creative Writing skills lessons right here! )

"Creative Writing Skills: 6 Lessons You Need to Teach Today" It's Lit Teaching blog post Pinterest pin

Creative Writing Skills #1: Show. Don’t Tell.

The advice to “show, don’t tell” is some of the oldest and most consistent advice given to young writers. And it’s for a good reason–they really struggle with it!

About half of my students come into Creative Writing with these big elaborate stories they want to tell. But when they actually get into writing, their stories feel more like a list of events that happened. 

I’ve seen months of plot happen in just a paragraph of my students’ writing. Students need to learn to slow down and create an experience for their readers. It’s how a story unfolds, after all, that makes it worthwhile–not the events themselves. 

Tips for Teaching “Show. Don’t Tell”

Cover of It's Lit Teaching Product: Creative Writing Workshop and Mini Lesson for Showing, Not Telling in Writing

Like all creative writing skills, you’ll want to show your students some really good mentor texts first . Find some excerpts from books with really juicy descriptions. Share these with your students. 

After they have some examples, give students time to try “telling” an event, description, or emotion instead of “showing” it. 

I do this by giving each student a “telling sentence” and asking them to turn it into a “showing” paragraph. A student might get a sentence that says something like, “Billy felt angry.” Then, they’ll have to write a whole paragraph that implies Billy is angry without actually saying it bluntly. 

If you want to save yourself some time (and the mental anguish of brainstorming a bunch of bland sentences), you can get my “Show. Don’t Tell” Mini-Lesson right here. It includes a slideshow, student worksheets, and those telling sentences.  

creative writing lessons for high school

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Creative Writing Skills #2: Precise and Concise Language Choice

Now that your students are learning to slow down and offer descriptions in their writing, it’s time to help them focus on their word choice. 

Diction is immensely important to a writer–especially when storytelling gets more advanced. A lot of our students want to write down the first words that come to their minds and then “be done.” 

But we know great writing doesn’t happen like that. We have to teach our students to find the best word, not the first word–without abusing a thesaurus. 

Tips for Teaching Better Word Choice

First, you’ll want to show your students some examples of really great concise and precise word choice. You’ll also want to show some not-so-great examples. The comparison should be eye-opening for your students. 

Now, the best way to become more precise in your diction is to improve your vocabulary. We probably can’t make great strides in improving our students’ vocabulary in just a quarter or semester of Creative Writing. 

creative writing lessons for high school

But we can show them how to improve some of the most commonly used vague language . One great example of this is the word “got.” 

It’s pretty rare that “got” is the best verb for a situation, but we–and our students–use it all the time. If we can teach students that “got” is a red flag for vague language, that’s a huge step!

We can also teach our students to avoid filler words. 

If you need help putting this all together in a lesson, I have a no-prep Precise and Concise Langauge Mini-Lesson right here for you . Included is a slideshow, students worksheets, and a reference handout for students they can use every day. 

Creative Writing Skills #3: Dialogue

Your students are starting to put words on a page and–hey–they’re not bad!

But at some point, your students are going to have their characters talk to each other. And this can be when stories get really, really bad. 

Early on in your Creative Writing class, encourage your students to start listening to the way others speak. Where do they pause? What slang do they use? When do they use complete sentences and when don’t they? You can even ask students to jot down conversations they overhear.

A great writer has an ear for dialogue, and this skill begins when students become aware of speech around them. Encouraging them to eavesdrop will help them write realistic dialogue later.  Just remind them to be respectful. Eavesdropping in the cafeteria is one thing. Listening outside someone’s bedroom door is another.

Our students not only struggle with mimicking real, authentic speech, but they also struggle with punctuating it. Depending on the skill level of your students, you may have to pick your battles here. Cheesy speech might be worth ignoring if there’s no quotation mark in sight. 

Tips for Teaching Dialogue Writing

First, and foremost, I like to cover punctuating dialogue first. For one reason, it’s because punctuating dialogue is either right or wrong. It’s easier to learn something that is objective. 

creative writing lessons for high school

For another reason, I, personally, can’t stand reading poorly punctuated dialogue. My English teacher’s eyes just can’t see past it. 

Only once the quotation marks, commas, and periods are at least close to the right spot do I focus on trying to improve the content of students’ dialogue. 

Students’ dialogue writing is only going to get better through practice and observing real-life speech. However, you can give them some tips for writing dialogue better. 

For example, remind your students not to have characters talk too much . I’ve seen stories with pages and pages of dialogue. Each character’s every little “hi,” “‘sup?” and “‘nothin’ much” gets recorded. Let your students know they can skip anything that doesn’t add value to the story. 

If you need help planning this lesson, I have a done-for-you Dialogue Mini-lesson right here. It includes a slideshow lesson, worksheets for focusing on both punctuation and craft, and a writing exercise. Get it here. 

"Creative Writing Skills: 6 Lessons You Need to Teach Today" It's Lit Teaching blog post Pinterest pin

Creative Writing Skills #4: Mood

If you can only teach your students the above Creative Writing skills, you will no doubt improve their writing tremendously. But if you want to take your students’ writing up a notch, encourage them to think about the mood in their poetry and stories.  

Students will no doubt have heard this literary term from their regular English classes, but it’s always worth reviewing first. Plus, they’ve probably read for mood, but creating it is a totally different game. 

Tips for Teaching Mood

There are so many ways you can teach your students to create mood. It’s a pretty fun topic!

You might want to begin with some brainstorming. Like, what kind of mood might a horror story have? A comedy? You want students to understand why, as a writer, mastering mood is important to them. 

creative writing lessons for high school

Then, like always, you’ll want to share some solid mentor texts. I love horror stories for showcasing well-written mood, but love poems are also good for this. 

Whenever possible in Creative Writing, I like to mix up the media, so I have students first analyze the mood of various classic paintings. As an English teacher, it tickles me to show students that these literary terms apply to art of all kind. Film clips would work really well, too. 

Then, challenge students to write a scene and evoke a specific mood. You could randomly assign the mood or let students pick. 

In my Mood Mini-Lesson , I have students analyze the mood in painting first. Then, I have them choose a card. Each card has a different mood written on it. Then, students must describe a setting that evokes that mood. You can get this mood lesson for yourself here.  

Creative Writing Skills #5: Tone

Well, if you’re going to teach mood, then tone is the likely next skill, right?

Teaching tone and mood is important because their differences are subtle, but important. Until students study tone, they might mistake it for mood and mix the two together. 

I never expect my students to master tone. It’s difficult and something that even professional writers polish over the course of many drafts. But it doesn’t hurt to get students thinking about the impact of their word choice. 

Don’t forget to remind students of the importance of choosing those precise and concise words. With tone, it’s truly what makes a difference. 

Tips for Teaching Tone

After defining tone and showing great examples of it to your students, give them some space to practice identifying it.  

Cover for It's Lit Teaching product: Creative Writing Mini Lesson and Workshop Tone

I like to cover informal and formal tones–not just emotional tones. Identifying whether a piece of writing is formal or informal is a great first step for students. It’s a little easier but an important skill and might give your students a bit of confidence in their tone-identifying skills. 

Once they know what tone looks like, they can try to create it themselves.  

The activity I do involves having students write a short scene.

I randomly give my students a tone to use. I also randomly give them a situation. So, a student may have to describe “eating lunch in the cafeteria” with a “romantic” tone. The results can be pretty entertaining!

If that sounds like a lesson you’d like, you can get my Tone Mini-Lesson right here . Includes are a slideshow, students worksheets, and the slips for tones and situations.

And, if you’re teaching mood and tone, I have a FREE Mood and Tone Handout right here!

Creative Writing Skills #6: Voice

I put voice last in this blog post, but it could just as easily have been first. Voice is difficult to define for students, but it’s something they should be working on crafting throughout your whole Creative Writing class. 

Even if your students never quite master their literary voice (who does?), it’s a good skill to discuss with them. If students understand the concept of literary voice, it will make them better writers and more analytical readers. 

Tips for Teaching Literary Voice

You’ll first have to define voice for your students. This can be challenging. It might be easier to focus on a few aspects of voice–like diction or syntax–in order to explain the concept. 

Discuss with students their favorite authors. What does their “voice” sound like? What about the authors you’ve read and studied together?

creative writing lessons for high school

Give students examples of strong voice to examine (the stronger the better). Have them discuss the techniques and style of each mentor text. 

To drive this home, I do a fun activity with my students. I take three very different poems by authors with very different voices. Then, I cut them up, line by line, and mix the three poems together. My students are then tasked with putting the poems back together!

To do this successfully, they’ll have to look for styles that match. Rhyming may be part of one author’s voice, but not another. One author may create a dark mood while another uses humor consistently. It’s a great way to drive home how voice can be an author’s calling card. 

This activity and some additional practice are included in my Voice Mini-lesson . Also included is a slideshow to introduce the concept. You can save yourself some time and get the lesson here. 

"Creative Writing Skills: 6 Lessons You Need to Teach Today" It's Lit Teaching blog post Pinterest pin

These are some skills that I think are essential for any Creative Writing class. There’s no one right way to teach any of these skills, and teaching from multiple angles is best. 

Whenever possible, I like to make my Creative Writing lessons hands-on. Even the most die-hard students get sick of writing every minute of every class. 

If you, too, would like some hands-on lessons and short activities that cover these essential skills, check out my Creative Writing Workshops Bundle . Each lesson includes everything you need to teach, model, and help your students master these skills one at a time. 

Cover for It's Lit Teaching Product: Creative Writing Workshops Mini Lessons Bundle

Poetry Center

creative writing lessons for high school

Five Creative Writing Lesson Plans for Middle & High School Students

creative writing lessons for high school

A Poem About Joy:

In this lesson plan, inspired by Ross Gay's "Sorrow Is Not My Name," Teré Fowler-Chapman asks young poets to come up with a list of things that bring them joy and then write a poem inspired by one of the items on that list. The writing exercise, which is a fantastic way to bring social-emotional learning into the classroom, is preceded by a conversation on Gay's poetics and on how joy can exist even in times of sorrow.

Personal Migrations:

Saraiya Kanning, inspired by Wang Ping's "Things We Carry on the Sea," asks young writers to, "contemplate how migration has played out in their own lives, including the lives of their families." This multi-part lesson plan includes a word association game, a discussion of Ping's poem, and a group poem in which students answer the question, "What sort of things have been carried across land, sea, or even across time?" collaboratively. After this, they write their own individual poems, using a series of questions to jump start their creativity, and then craft art pieces using popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and/or puff paint to trace paths across the surface of their chosen canvas (Kanning used cake board!). This lesson can be shortened or spread out over class periods as part of a unit on immigration and migration.

Rare Bird Erasure:

"Erasure poems use words from another source to create a new poem," Saraiya Kanning writes in this lesson plan, which uses the field guide Rare and Elusive Birds of North America as a source text from which young writers create their own pieces (although you're welcome to use any book you'd like!). Each student receives a photocopied page from the book and goes on a "treasure hunt," selecting 5-10 words that in some way connect to one another. After creating their erasure poem, students can decorate the page with art materials to "create images, patterns, or designs around the words." This lesson plan includes a note on modifications for student with visual impairments.

Titles: Art on their Own:

So often in creative writing, the titling process is overlooked but important: as Sophie Daws says, "Writing a title can feel like putting the cherry on top of your great poem or it can feel like walking on eggshells, where the wrong title could ruin the whole poem and you just can’t come up with the right one!" This lesson plan, drawn from her high school zine residency, uses six prompts to offer a guided approach to coming up with a title for a finished project, from one that asks students to write down their favorite line to another that encourages them to think of how a title can add another tone or angle to their work.

Found Art Handmade Books:

Taylor Johnson bridges creative writing and visual art in this lesson plan, which focuses on crafting handmade books from recycled materials. Johnson suggests using everything from old postcards to yarn to insect wings to create a publication that's truly one of a kind. As far as words go, students can either add something they've previously written to their books whole cloth or cut up bits of their old writing and "remix" it. After the books are done, Johnson suggests creating a classroom library or exhibit for students to browse one another's books.

Image from the Boston Public Library.

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Creative Writing

15 Classified Ads We Hope Had Happy Endings Writing prompt: choose one of these historical ads and construct a narrative that supports it. Include characters, location, and other necessary details. (Teachers may wish to check the ads for appropriateness.)

20 Mystical Bridges That Will Take You To Another World Creative writing prompt: "I walked across the bridge and ..." The photographs of real bridges on this page are astonishingly beautiful. However, the page also carries ads that may not be appropriate for the classroom. Consider copying the photographs into a new file for classroom use.

27 Magical Paths Begging To Be Walked Photographs of beautiful paths all over the world, showing a variety of seasons and geography, just waiting to inspire a poem or serve as the setting for a short story. Note: this page carries ads that may not be appropriate for the classroom. Consider copying the photographs into a new file for classroom use.

The 100-Word Challenge In this activity students respond to a prompt using not more than 100 words. Writing is posted on a class blog, where responses are invited. The activity encourages regular writing for an authentic audience. It's designed for students 16 and under.

Adding Emotions to your Story A good lesson on adding detail, "exploding" an incident, and "show, don't tell." It includes handouts and is designed for grades 3-5.

After the First Draft: 30 Fast, Easy Writing Tips for the Second Draft This 37-page document is designed for writers of novels, but many of the tips apply equally to writers of short stories. Clear, simple, and easy to read, appropriate for 5th or 6th grade (in places) and up. Adobe Reader required for access.

All Together Now: Collaborations in Poetry Writing Students write a line of poetry in response to something the teacher reads. Their lines, together, form a poem. This unit is designed for grades K-2.

Bernadette Mayer's List of Journal Ideas A list of journal topics that will work on multiple grade levels. Scroll down for a list of "Writing Experiments" that will work well in a creative writing unit.

The Book of Butterflies by Michael Leunig (Scroll down on the page.) This short (1:06) video explores the question "What happens when a book comes to life?" It will work well on almost any grade level.

By the Old Mill Stream A creative writing prompt, differentiated for elementary and middle and high school students. Students begin writing a narrative. In the second part of the prompt, they write a description.

Calling on the Muse: Exercises to Unlock the Poet Within From Education World.

Can You Haiku? from EdSitement Complete lesson plans for writing haiku, links to additional material.

Character Name Generator Choose ethnicity, decade of birth, and gender, and this site will generate an appropriate name and a possible character description.

Characterization in Literature and Theater Students explore various methods authors use to create effective characters. Students will consider what makes a character believable and create their own characterizations. They will also write a short script using the characters they created and act out the script.

The Clues to a Great Story One-page handout with 5 essential elements for good storytelling. Uses "The Ugly Duckling" and more contemporary stories for examples.

The Color of Love In this lesson students will be invited to reflect on a variety of colors and the pleasurable things that those colors invoke. They then will write a poem about someone they love following Barbara Joosse's style in I Love You the Purplest .

Creating Characters Students examine character as a significant element of fiction. They learn several methods of characterization, identify and critique these methods in well-known works of fiction, and use the methods in works of their own. Students also identify, examine, evaluate, and use the elements dialogue and point of view as methods of characterization.

Creative State of Mind: Focusing on the Writing Process In this lesson, students examine the lyrics of rap artist Jay-Z for literary elements including rhyme, metaphor, puns and allusions, then consider what he says about his own writing process. Finally, they analyze additional lyrics and apply lessons from Jay-Z's process to their own reading and writing.

The Cutting Edge: Exploring How Editing Affects an Author's Work Students examine the writing of short-story author Raymond Carver as well as their own writing to explore how editing can affect the text, content and context of an author's work.

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Language Arts Classroom

Creative Writing Unit for High School Students

creative writing unit

My creative writing unit for high school students allows for adaptations and for fun! With plenty of creative writing activities, you’ll have flexibility. 

If you are looking for a creative writing unit, I have ideas for you. When I taught middle school, I sprinkled such activities throughout the school year. As a high school teacher, though, I taught an entire creative writing course. With no textbook and very little established activities, I largely worked from a blank slate.

Which. . . turned out well. I love teaching creative writing!

ELA Specific Classes

Older students often can choose electives for their ELA classes, and Creative Writing is a popular class. I’ve condensed my ideas into one post, so I organized the ideas by creative nonfiction and fiction writing and added pictures to organize this information for you.

EDIT: This post about my creative writing unit for high school writers has exploded and is about three times as long as a normal blog post. If you’d like to skip around to get inspiration for teaching creative writing, you can use the pictures and headings as guidance.

ANOTHER NOTE: I attempted to outline the days I spend on each topic, but several factors went into my estimates. First, each class differs in what they enjoy and what they dislike. If a class dislikes a specific topic, we will wrap it up and move on. If a class has fun with an assignment or needs more time to work, the days might vary.

What are the key elements of a creative writing unit?

Key elements of a creative writing unit include introducing different writing genres, teaching basic writing techniques, encouraging imagination and creativity, providing writing prompts and exercises, offering constructive feedback and revision opportunities, and fostering a supportive writing community.

How can we organize such activities?

Starting with creative nonfiction has worked for my classes, small pieces like paragraphs. I believe the success is because young writers can write what they know about. Then we can switch to fiction for the second quarter. Again, the days spent on each assignment varies, and I honestly do not stress about creative nonfiction being nine weeks and fiction being nine weeks.

All of the material listed below is in my newly updated Creative Writing Bundle . The pieces are sold separately, but that creative writing unit includes bonus material and a discount.

Ok, settle in! Here are my ideas about teaching creative writing with high school students.

creative activities for writing students

First Week of School for a Creative Writing Unit

The first day of school , we complete activities that build awareness into the classroom environment about “creativity.” Do not shy away from setting a foundation of support and understanding as you engage with young writers. During my first creative writing classes, I neglected to spend time establishing expectations and community. The following semester, the time invested early paid off with engaged students later.

Those first days, we also discuss:

  • Published vs. private writing. I tell writers they may share whatever they like with me and the class. As a community of writers, we will share with each other. Most of our writing will be public, but some will be private.
  • A community of writers. Writing and sharing ideas requires maturity and acceptance. Not everyone will agree is largely my motto (about negotiables, not human rights), and I stress with students that they may read and provide feedback with topics in which they do not agree.
  • Routines. Writers write. That sentence might sound silly, but some people believe that humans are born with a skill to write or they are not. Writing well takes practice. The practice can be short and unconnected to a larger product. I typically begin each week with a quick writing prompt , and we share our responses, which of course, builds that community of writers.

Whatever you are teaching—a creative writing unit or a creative writing class—spend some time establishing your expectations and goals with your students. Laying a foundation is never a waste of time! In fact, I believe so much in the power of the first week of a creative writing class that I have a blog post devoted to the concept.

Time: 2-3 days

First weeks: creative nonfiction

Creative nonfiction seems to be the genre of our time. Memoirs, essays, and hermit-crab essays flood bookstores and journals.

When students read captions on social media, profiles of their favorite artists, or long Threads, they are reading creative nonfiction. Not only should students be able to dissect this form of writing, but they should also be able to write in our society’s preferred genre.

Below, I’ve outlined creative nonfiction activities that work with teenagers.

creative writing lessons for high school

Nonfiction Narrative Writing

Writing narratives (and meeting those standards) are trickier with older students. As a teacher, I struggle: Students will often tell me deep, meaningful, and personal parts of their lives, and I am supposed to grade those writings!

When students write a narrative , I address this situation immediately. Share with writers that their narrative ideas are strong (I believe that to be the truth!), and that in no way are we grading their ideas. Rather, we want their excellent narratives to be communicated in the best light; therefore, we will provide guidance about the structures of narrative writing.

The topic for a nonfiction narrative varies. Often, students write about themselves as learners or as community members. Framing students in a positive way allows them to explore their strengths in life and to build confidence as writers.

Time: 7-9 days

a creative writing unit for high school students should include plenty of fun activities

Object Essay

An object essay might sound like a “blah” type of assignment, but the simplicity allows students to push past their normal experiences. An object essay is simple, so they can experiment with their writing.

What object? I have assigned this essay several ways. For instance, I have brought in a very plain object (like a rock) and had students explain it. I like this approach because students can work together to discover the best descriptions.

Another way, my preferred way, is to allow students to choose the object. Students write about a coffee cup, water bottle, car keys, or bus pass. When students choose, the essays are richer with meaning.

Neither approach disappoints me, though! With a plain object, students must stretch themselves to be creative. Judge what your class needs and get students writing!

Time: 3-4 days

add a creative writing unit to your ELA classroom

How-to Paper

No, not a “how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” paper. A fun and meaningful how-to paper can encourage classes as they see themselves as experts.

What I like about a how-to paper is students get to be the expert in their paper. Finding a used vehicle to buy? Shopping for a formal event? Saving money? Cleaning a closet? Selling at consignment stores? Each writer has an area in which they shine, and a how-to paper allows them to share their knowledge with others. They write about “behind the scenes” or little known secrets.

Of all the creative writing activities, I assign the how-to paper early. It builds confidence in young writers.

Time: 5 days

creative writing lessons for high school

Sell this Apple

Why an apple? When I wanted students to creatively sell something, I searched for something they could all have in common but sell in different ways. I wanted classes to have one object but to witness the multiple approaches for advertising. Apples (which I could also afford to bring to class) fit nicely.

What do students sell when they “sell an apple”?

  • Dips for apples.
  • Apples for preschool snacks.
  • Charcuterie apple boards.
  • Apple crisp.
  • Red and green apple rainbows.

Basically, students can create a marketing plan for multiple age groups and other demographics. For instance, they can write a blog post about safety in cutting pieces for young children (and complete some research in the process). They can then “promote” a local apple orchard or fruit stand.

Another advertisement is an apple pie recipe for a Thanksgiving brochure for a supermarket.

When I gave students something simple, like an apple, they ran with the idea. Then, we can share our ideas for selling apples.

a profile essay is a fun creative nonfiction piece

A profile is difficult to write, so this assignment is normally my last assignment of the quarter. Before we switch to writing fiction, we apply all our concepts learned to writing a profile.

Profiles are more than summaries of the person. Writers must take an angle and articulate the person’s traits utilizing Showing vs. Telling. Of all creative writing assignments, the profile, might be the most difficult. I place it in the middle of the semester so that writers understand our goals in class but are not tired from the end of the semester.

Time: 10-12 days

Final weeks: fiction

Fantasy, historical fiction, mystery, romance: Students consume a variety of fiction via books, movies, and shows. Fictional creative writing activities invite young writers into worlds they already consume.

Below, I’ve outlined some that work with teenagers.

send students around the community or school for this creative writing project

Alternative Point-of-View

Grab some googly eyes or some construction paper and send students loose. (A few guidelines help. Should students remove the googly eyes from the principal’s office door?) Have them adhere the eyes to an inanimate object to make a “being” who learns a lesson. They should snap a picture and write a quick story about the learned lesson.

What type of lesson? Perhaps an apple with a bruise learns that it still has value and is loved with blemishes. Maybe a fire extinguisher realizes that its purpose is important even if it isn’t fancy.

Honestly, the creativity with the googly eyes adhered to inanimate objects is so simple, but it always is my favorite event of the semester. I officially call it the “ alternative point-of-view ” activity, but “googly eyes” is how my writers remember it.

Time: 2 days

creative writing activities for high school students

Create a Superhero with a Template

A superhero does not need to wear a cape or fancy shoes. Rather, in this creative writing activity, students build a superhero from a normal individual. When I created the activity, I envisioned students writing about a librarian or volunteer, but students often write about a grandparent (adorable).

Since students enjoy graphic novels, I wanted students to experience making a graphic novel. The colorful sheets allow students to add their ideas and words to pages that fit their messages.

After students create a comic book, they will also write a brief marketing campaign for a target audience. Learning about who would buy their graphic novel typically leads them to parents and librarians which should lead students to discover the importance of reading. The advertising campaign additionally serves as a reflective component for the initial activity.

imagination is a key part of creative writing lessons

Product Review

Product reviews and question/answer sections are a genre all their own. SO! Have students write reviews and questions/answers for goofy products . Students will find a product and write several reviews and questions/answers.

This quick activity lends itself to extension activities. Once, a teacher emailed me and said her school bought some of the goofy products for a sort of “sharing” day with the school. Since students have access to pictures of the item, you can make a “catalog” for the class out of a Canva presentation and share it with them and your colleagues.

Here are a few examples:

  • Banana slicer .
  • Horse head .
  • Wolf shirt.

Aside from the alternative point-of-view activity, the product reviews remain my personal favorite part of a creative writing unit. Writers find random products and write goofy workups that they share with the class.

Time: 3 days

character creation for creative writing

Character Creation

Creating a well-rounded and interesting character requires prep work. The brainstorming part of the writing process, the pre-writing? We spend lots of time in that area as we create fleshed out characters.

I like to start with a multiple-choice activity. We begin my imagining the main character. Next, students take a “quiz” as the character. How does the character eat? What sort of movies does the character enjoy? hate? After the multiple-choice activity, they can derive what those pieces explain about their characters. Finally, they can begin to brainstorm how those pieces will develop in their story.

flash fiction is a part of creative writing

Flash Fiction

Flash fiction is a simple, short story. Writers might cheer when they hear I expect a 300-word story, but often, they discover it is a challenging assignment from class. A large part of a creative writing unit is giving students a variety of lengths so they can practice their skills under different circumstances.

historical fiction is a great creative writing activity

Historical Fiction

Historical fiction is a popular genre, and classes are familiar with many popular historical fiction books. I find it helpful to have several books displayed to inspire students. Additionally, I read from the books to demonstrate dialogue, pacing, theme, and more.

Since my historical fiction activity takes at least two weeks to accomplish, we work on that tough standard for narrative writing. To that end, these activities target the hardest components:

  • Pacing within a narrative.
  • Developing a theme .
  • Building imagery .
  • Creating external conflicts in a story.
  • Establishing a setting .

First, I used pictures to inspire students, to get them brainstorming. Second, I created those activities to solve a problem that all writers (no matter the age!) have: Telling vs. Showing. I found that my writers would add dialogue that was heavy on explanation, too “world building” for their narrative. The story sounded forced, so I took a step back with them and introduced mini-activities for practicing those skills.

Third, the above creative writing activities can EASILY be assignments independently for short and fun assignments. I teach them with historical fiction because that activity is at the end of the semester when my expectations are higher, and because students enjoy writing historical fiction so they are invested.

But! You can easily add them to another narrative activity.

Time: 10-12 days 

creative writing lessons for high school

A clean tabloid! Tabloids are largely replaced by online social sharing creators, so they are fun to review with students. Students might not be familiar with tabloids at the grocery store checkout, but they are familiar with catchy headlines. They will be completely ready to write a tabloid !

To ensure a clean tabloid, I ask students to write about a children’s show, something scandalous happening from a cartoon. The results are hysterical.

Time: 4 days

creative writing lessons for high school

Children’s Book

I have two introductory activities for the children’s book. One, students answer questions about a mentor text (another children’s book). Two, students evaluate the language of a specific book to start them in their brainstorming.

My students write their children’s book as a final activity in class as it requires all the elements of creative writing. When a school requires me to give a final exam, students write a reflection piece on their children’s books. If you are looking for a finale for your creative writing unit, a children’s book is a satisfying ending as students have a memorable piece.

Time 10-12 weeks

Final note on creative writing activities and bundle

I intended for this post to inspire you and give you ideas for teaching either a creative writing unit or a creative writing class in ELA. My first time through teaching creative writing, I worried that my lessons would flop and that students would not find their groove with me. I found success, but with modifications, I formed a cohesive semester.

The first time through, I did not frontload information and expectations. (Spending time at the start of class is my biggest message! Please establish groundwork with students!) I also did not provide concrete enough guidelines so students understood the differences between the assignments. After a few semesters, I developed my creative writing unit . With a variety of activities and an appropriate amount of structure, I found success, and I hope you do too.

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creative writing creative writing activities

Walking by the Way

the road to inspired learning

Eight Free Creative Writing Lessons

February 17, 2012 by Ami 17 Comments

creative writing lessons for high school

I know I throw around the word favorite all the time. But this is the truth: teaching creative writing lessons is my favorite. 

I have taught creative writing enrichment for summer school students. I have taught creative writing in various homeschool settings and co-ops. I have taught big students and little students. And I love it. 

Since I love to share homeschool co-op class ideas , I have compiled the creative writing lessons from a co-op class that I taught. 

Creative Writing Lessons for a Homeschool Co-op Class

First, please remember that any teacher can use these creative writing lessons. You don’t need to be teaching homeschoolers. You can be a classroom teacher or a homeschool teacher at home with one student. You can even be a librarian who needs a fun program series.

Second, I used these creative writing lesson plans with upper elementary students (with maybe a few 7th graders thrown in). However, you can adapt and use them for older students or younger students!

Creative Writing Lesson Plans

Creative writing lesson one.

The first lesson focuses on cliché and metaphor. It prompts students to consider how words matter.

Grab lesson one here .

Creative Writing Lesson Two

The second lesson teaches students about sensory details: why they are important and how to include them in their writing. Students will begin using sensory details to evoke smells and sounds and sights.

Grab lesson two here.

Creative Writing Lesson Three

The third lesson introduces showing vs. telling. Students learn how to recognize authors who utilize showing, and students are able to articulate the difference between showing and telling.

Grab lesson three here.

Creative Writing Lesson Four

The fourth lesson teaches students how to capture images. We use examples of poetry and prose to discuss this important writing skill.

Grab lesson four here.

Creative Writing Lesson Five

The fifth lesson introduces the story elements of character and conflict.

Note: You may choose to split this lesson into two lessons since it covers two big elements. I only had nine weeks with my students, so I had to jam character and conflict together.

Grab lesson five here.

Creative Writing Lesson Six

The sixth lesson introduces the students to point of view and perspective. We have fun reading poems and using pictures to write descriptions from different points of view.

Grab lesson six here.

Creative Writing Lesson Seven

The seventh lesson puts everything we’ve learned together. I read the students some fractured fairy tales, and we watch some, too. Students then use the prewriting activities and their imaginations to begin drafting their own fractured fairy tales.

Grab lesson seven here.

Creative Writing Lesson Eight

The eighth lesson focuses on revision. After a mini-lesson, students partner up for peer editing.

Grab lesson eight here .

For our final class day, students bring revised work, and I host coffee shop readings. This is a memorable experience for students (and their teacher).

Creative Writing Lessons FAQ

Since posting these creative writing lessons, I have had lots of questions. I decided to compile them here in case you have the same question.

Q: What are copywork quotes? A: Copywork quotes are simply great quotes that students copy as part of their homework assignments. You can use any quotes about writing. I’ve included my favorites throughout the printable packs.

Q: Can I use this with a younger or older student? A: Absolutely! Just adapt it to meet the needs of your student.

Q: Can I use this for my library’s programming or my homeschool co-op class? A: Yes! I just ask that it not be used for profit.

Do you have any questions about teaching creative writing? What’s your biggest hang-up when it comes to teaching creative writing? I’d love to hear from you and help you solve the issue.

creative writing lessons for high school

January 7, 2016 at 1:57 pm

Hi Theresa,

As long as you are not profitting from using them, they are yours to use! Enjoy! Wish I could be there to help facilitate all those young writers! 

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Teaching Poetry in High School – Lessons, Activities, and Ideas

Poetry , Secondary Literacy , Writing

creative writing lessons for high school

One reason why I love teaching poetry in high school is because of the rich conversations you can have with students.  No matter what school setting I am teaching in, my students always have so much to say about poetry. When students feel confident in their abilities, they truly love the challenge of reading poetry .  In this blog post, you will learn how you can instill the love of poetry in your students.  I will also share some activities and resources to teach poetry to high school students .

How to teach poetry in high school students

How do you introduce a poem in high school?

Have your students ever described poetry as boring or confusing?  It is pretty common for them to feel overwhelmed by poetry.  This is because poetry is so different from the styles of writing that they are used to exploring in the classroom.  In order for students to move past this attitude towards poetry, they need to feel confident in their abilities.

To instill this confidence, it can be helpful to introduce poetry slowly .  Before diving into a poem, you may want to first teach the basic elements of poetry .  This will help students acquire the vocabulary that they need to discuss poetry in the classroom.

Another introductory lesson involves familiarizing students with poetic devices .  Being able to identify figurative language in poetry will help students further develop their thoughts about the poem.  Discussing poetic devices can also help students analyze the author’s style of writing.

Activities to teach poetry in high school

One of the most important skills for high school students is annotating .  Annotating is the process of writing notes next to a verse of poetry  These notes may express thoughts, questions, evaluations, or definitions.  They may also note the meter (or “rhythm”) of the poem.  Annotating will help students to develop an in-depth analysis of a poem.  

Once students understand the elements of poetry and feel comfortable with identifying poetic devices, they are ready to practice annotating .  To teach annotation, you can break the process down into steps.  This blog post shares a 4-step process for annotating poetry.  You can also use this free annotation bookmark as a personal anchor chart for students as they work through these four steps.

A great way to make annotating accessible to students is to practice with music lyrics .  Students already have a lot to say about their favorite artists and songs; because of the cultural relevance of the music they enjoy, they often feel confident analyzing it and making inferences.  Modeling annotation on song lyrics is a great way to hook your students and scaffold this skill.

This poetry unit for high school includes slideshow lessons, word wall activities, vocabulary anchor charts, bookmarks, annotation activities, and informational handouts.  During this 2-week unit, students will learn how to fluently read and analyze poetry .

High school poetry lessons

How do you make poetry fun in high school?

If there’s any unit my high school students resonate with, it’s poetry.  This is because there are so many ways to make poetry engaging and fun.  For the most part, my students enjoy poetry because they see it as relevant to popular culture .  This is why teaching poetry in high school is so rewarding!

In order to help them see the relevance of poetry, we spend a lot of time exploring modern poets in various forms.  They are especially interested in the new wave of free verse poets on Instagram , also known as “Instapoets.”  Some examples of these are Rupi Kaur, Tyler Knott Gregson, and Kate Baer.  Song lyrics form another connection between poetry and popular culture and serve as a great way to teach poetic devices .

Your students will probably have the most fun writing their own poetry .  If they are reluctant, you could start off with a few icebreakers or creative writing prompts to help them become more expressive in your classroom.  Your students might enjoy replicating the styles of free verse poetry popularized on Instagram.  If so, you can lead a free verse poetry workshop with them.

If you students would prefer something more structured, then styles like sonnets and haiku might be more appropriate.  Using a sonnet template or haiku outline will offer them more guidance without limiting their creativity and expression.

Best poetry for high school students

Here are a few poetry picks that your high school students will love!

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur – Kaur wrote this collection of poems at 21.  It shares her coming-of-age experience as an Indo-Canadian woman.  It is vulnerable, feminine, powerful, and features simple illustrations alongside the text.

And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou – Angelou’s collection of poetry shares the themes of strength, loneliness, and determination.  The singular poem by the same name serves as a great read for an individual lesson.

“ The Negro Speaks of Rivers ” by Langston Hughes – This poem serves as a great lesson for exploring figurative language.  This annotation lesson facilitates a guided close reading of the poem to teach your students how to annotate.

William Shakespeare’s Sonnets – These classic poems are a great way to explore Shakespeare’s iconic sonnet form.  Students can read one of Shakespeare’s popular sonnets before writing their own using this sonnet writing workshop .

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong – Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet who recalls memories of grief and war in this full-length collection of poems.  His work is a great example of contemporary poetry.

Teaching high school poetry

Teaching Poetry in High School: Tying it All Together

There are so many ways to make poetry fun and engaging for high school students.  I hope this blog post has helped you with a few lesson plans and activities to teach poetry in high school.   It’s really inspiring to see students feeling confident in reading and analyzing poetry, and it makes for great classroom conversations!

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

How to Help Students With Their Writing. 4 Educators Share Their Secrets

creative writing lessons for high school

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Teaching students to write is no easy feat, and it’s a topic that has often been discussed on this blog.

It’s also a challenge that can’t have too much discussion!

Today, four educators share their most effective writing lessons.

‘Three Practices That Create Confident Writers’

Penny Kittle teaches first-year writers at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years and is the author of nine books, including Micro Mentor Texts (Scholastic). She is the founder and president of the Book Love Foundation, which annually grants classroom libraries to teachers throughout North America:

I write almost every day. Like anything I want to do well, I practice. Today, I wrote about the wild dancing, joyful energy, and precious time I spent with my daughter at a Taylor Swift concert. Then I circled back to notes on Larry’s question about teaching writers. I wrote badly, trying to find a through line. I followed detours and crossed out bad ideas. I stopped to think. I tried again. I lost faith in my words. I will get there , I told myself. I trust my process.

I haven’t always written this easily or this much. I wouldn’t say I’m a “natural” writer because I don’t believe they exist. Writing is work. When I entered college, I received a C-minus on my first paper. I was stunned. I had never worked at writing: I was a “first drafter,” an “only drafter.” And truthfully, I didn’t know how or what to practice. I was assigned writing in high school and I completed it. I rarely received feedback. I didn’t get better. I didn’t learn to think like a writer; I thought like a student.

I’ve now spent 40 years studying writing and teaching writers in kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school, as well as teachers earning graduate degrees. Despite their age, writers in school share one remarkably similar trait: a lack of confidence. Confidence is a brilliant and fiery light; it draws your eyes, your heart, and your mind. But in fact, it is as rare as the Northern Lights. I feel its absence every fall in my composition courses.

We can change that.

Confidence blooms in classrooms focused on the growth of writers.

This happens in classrooms where the teacher relies less on lessons and more on a handful of practices. Unfortunately, though, in most classrooms, a heap of time is spent directing students to practice “writing-like” activities: restrictive templates for assignments, with detailed criteria focused on rules. Those activities handcuff writers. If you tell me what to do and how to do it, I will focus on either completing the task or avoiding it. That kind of writing work doesn’t require much thinking; it is merely labor.

Practice creating, on the other hand, is harder, but it is how we develop the important ability to let our ideas come and then shaping them into cohesive arguments, stories, poems, and observations. We have misunderstood the power of writing to create thinking. Likewise, we have misunderstood the limitations of narrow tasks. So, here are my best instructional practices that lead to confidence and growth in writers.

1. Writing Notebooks and Daily Revision. Writers need time to write. Think of it as a habit we begin to engage in with little effort, like serving a tennis ball from the baseline or dribbling a basketball or sewing buttonholes. Writers need daily time to whirl words, to spin ideas, to follow images that blink inside them as they move their pen across the page. In my classroom, writing time most often follows engagement with a poem.

Likewise, writers need guidance in rereading their first drafts of messy thinking. I’ve seen teachers open their notebooks and invite students to watch them shape sentences. They demonstrate how small revisions increase clarity and rhythm. Their students watch them find a focus and maintain it. Teachers show the effort and the joy of writing well.

Here’s an example: We listen to a beautiful poem such as “Montauk” by Sarah Kay, her tribute to growing up. Students write freely from lines or images that spring to them as they listen. I write in my notebook as students write in theirs for 4-5 minutes. Then I read my entry aloud, circling subjects and detours ( I don’t know why I wrote so much about my dog, but maybe I have more to say about this … ). I model how to find a focus. I invite students to do the same.

2. Writers Study Writing . Writers imitate structures, approaches, and ways of reaching readers. They read like writers to find possibilities: Look what the writer did here and here . A template essay can be an effective tool to write for a test, but thankfully, that is a very small and insignificant part of the whole of writing for any of us. Real writing grows from studying the work of other writers. We study sentences, passages, essays, and articles to understand how they work, as we create our own.

3. Writers Have Conversations as They Work . When writers practice the skills and embrace the challenges of writing in community, it expands possibilities. Every line read from a notebook carries the mark of a particular writer: the passion, the voice, the experiences, and the vulnerability of each individual. That kind of sharing drives process talk ( How did you think to write about that? Who do you imagine you are speaking to? ), which showcases the endless variation in writers and leads to “writerly thinking.” It shifts conversations from “right and wrong” to “how and why.”

Long ago, at a local elementary school, in a workshop for teachers, I watched Don Graves list on the chalkboard subjects he was considering writing about. He read over his list and chose one. From there, he wrote several sentences, talking aloud about the decisions he was making as a writer. Then he turned to accept and answer questions.

“Why do this?” someone asked.

“Because you are the most important writer in the room,” Don said. “You are showing students why anyone would write when they don’t have to.” He paused, then added, “If not you, who?”

confidenceblooms

Developing ‘Student Voice’

A former independent school English teacher and administrator, Stephanie Farley is a writer and educational consultant working with teachers and schools on issues of curriculum, assessment, instruction, SEL, and building relationships. Her book, Joyful Learning: Tools to Infuse Your 6-12 Classroom with Meaning, Relevance, and Fun is available from Routledge Eye on Education:

Teaching writing is my favorite part of being a teacher. It’s incredibly fun to talk about books with kids, but for me, it’s even more fun to witness students’ skills and confidence grow as they figure out how to use written language to communicate what they mean.

A lesson I used to like doing was in “voice.” My 8th graders had a hard time understanding what I meant when I asked them to consider “voice” in their writing. The best illustration I came up with was playing Taylor Swift’s song “Blank Space” for students. Some students groaned while others clapped. (Doesn’t this always happen when we play music for students? There’s no song that makes everyone happy!) But when they settled down, I encouraged them to listen to the style: the arrangement, her voice as she sang, the dominant instruments.

Then, I played a cover of “Blank Space” by Ryan Adams. Eyes rolled as the song unfurled through the speakers, but again I reminded students to listen to the arrangement, voice, and instruments. After about 60 seconds of the Adams version, heads nodded in understanding. When the music ended and I asked students to explain voice to me, they said it’s “making something your own … like your own style.” Yes!

The next step was applying this new understanding to their own writing. Students selected a favorite sentence from the books they were reading, then tried to write it in their own voice. We did this a few times, until everyone had competently translated Kwame Alexander into “Rosa-style” or Kelly Link into “Michael-style.” Finally, when it was time for students to write their own longer works—stories, personal essays, or narratives—they intentionally used the words and sentence patterns they had identified as their own voice.

I’m happy to report this method worked! In fact, it was highly effective. Students’ papers were more idiosyncratic, nuanced, and creative. The only change to this lesson I’d make now is trying to find a more zeitgeist-y song with the hope that the groans at the beginning die down a little faster.

itsfun

Teaching ELLs

Irina McGrath, Ph.D., is an assistant principal at Newcomer Academy in the Jefferson County school district in Kentucky and the president of KYTESOL. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Louisville, Indiana University Southeast, and Bellarmine University. She is a co-creator of the ELL2.0 site that offers free resources for teachers of English learners:

Reflecting on my experience of teaching writing to English learners, I have come to realize that writing can be daunting, especially when students are asked to write in English, a language they are learning to master. The most successful writing lessons I have taught were those that transformed the process into an enjoyable experience, fostering a sense of accomplishment and pride in my students.

To achieve this, I prioritized the establishment of a supportive learning environment. At the beginning of each school year, I set norms that emphasized the importance of writing for everyone, including myself as their teacher. I encouraged students to write in English and their native language and I wrote alongside my English learners to demonstrate that writing is a journey that requires hard work and dedication, regardless of age or previous writing experiences. By witnessing my own struggles, my students felt encouraged to persevere.

My English learners understood that errors were expected and that they were valuable opportunities for growth and improvement. This created a comfortable atmosphere where students felt more confident taking risks and experimenting with their writing. Rather than being discouraged by mistakes, they viewed them as steppingstones toward progress.

In my most effective writing lessons, I provided scaffolds such as sentence stems, sentence frames, and word banks. I also encouraged my students to use translation tools to help generate ideas on paper. These scaffolds empowered English learners to independently tackle more challenging writing assignments and nurtured their confidence in completing writing tasks. During writers’ circles, we discussed the hard work invested in each writing piece, shared our work, and celebrated each other’s success.

Furthermore, my most successful writing lessons integrated reading and writing. I taught my students to read like writers and utilized mentor texts to emulate the craft of established authors, which they could later apply to their own writing. Mentor texts, such as picture books, short stories, or articles, helped my students observe how professional writers use dialogue, sentence structure, and descriptive language to enhance their pieces.

Instead of overwhelming students with information, I broke down writing into meaningful segments and taught through mini lessons. For example, we analyzed the beginnings of various stories to examine story leads. Then, collaboratively, my students and I created several leads together. When they were ready, I encouraged them to craft their own leads and select the most appropriate one for their writing piece.

Ultimately, my most effective lessons were those in which I witnessed the joyful smiles on my English learners’ faces as they engaged with pages filled with written or typed words. It is during those moments that I knew my writers were creating and genuinely enjoying their work.

To access a self-checklist that students and EL teachers can use when teaching or creating a writing piece in English, you can visit the infographic at bit.ly/ABC_of_Writing .

iprovided

‘Model Texts’

Anastasia M. Martinez is an English-language-development and AVID Excel teacher in Pittsburg, Calif.:

As a second-language learner, writing in English had not always been my suit. It was not until graduate school that I immersed myself in a vast array of journals, articles, and other academic works, which ultimately helped me find my academic voice and develop my writing style. Now, working as an ESL teacher with a diverse group of middle school multilingual learners, I always provide a model text relevant to a topic or prompt we are exploring.

When students have a model text, it gives them a starting point for their own writing and presents writing as less scary, where they get stuck on the first sentence and do not know how to start.

At the start of the lesson, prior to using a model text, I create a “do now” activity that guides my students’ attention to the topic and creates a relevant context for the text. After students share their ideas with a partner and then the class, we transition to our lesson objectives, and I introduce the model text. We first use prereading strategies to analyze the text, and students share what they notice based on the title, images, and a number of paragraphs. Then, depending on the students’ proficiency level, I read the text to the class, or students read the text as partners, thinking about what the text was mostly about.

After students read and share their ideas with partners and then the whole class, we transition to deconstructing the text. These multiple reengagements with the text help students become more familiar with it, as well as help students build reading fluency.

When deconstructing the model text, I guide my students through each paragraph and sentence. During that time, students orally share their ideas determining the meaning of specific paragraphs or sentences, which we later annotate in the model text using different colored highlighters or pens. Color coding helps visually guide students through similar parts of the model text. For instance, if we highlight evidence in paragraph 2 in one color, we also highlight evidence in the same color in the following paragraph. It helps students see the similarities between the paragraphs and discover the skeleton of the writing. Additionally, color coding helps students during their writing process and revision. Students can check if they used all parts of the writing based on the colors.

Furthermore, one of the essential pieces during deconstructing model texts that I draw my students’ attention to is transition words and “big words,” or academic vocabulary. We usually box them in the text, and I question students about why the author used a particular word in the text. Later, when students do their own writing, they can integrate new vocabulary and transition words, which enhances their vocabulary and language skills.

As the next step, I invite students to co-create a similar piece of writing with a partner or independently using our model text as their guide. Later, our model text serves as a checklist for individual and partner revisions, which students could use to give each other feedback.

Model texts are an essential part of the writing process in any content-area class. As educators, we should embrace the importance of model texts, as they provide a solid foundation upon which students can develop their unique writing skills, tone, and voice.

modeltexts

Thanks to Penny, Stephanie, Irina, and Anastasia for contributing their thoughts!

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email . And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 12 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list here .

The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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creative writing lessons for high school

Craft or Commodity? The ‘Paradox’ of High School Creative Writing Competitions

By propelling winners to elite colleges and empowering them to pursue writing, these competitions can change the course of students’ lives. But the pressure to win can also stunt young writers’ growth and complicate their relationship with their craft and themselves.

One story of his — which went on to win a national award for flash fiction — begins as a dispassionate description of household events, but turns by the end into a heart-wrenching account of a child dealing with the aftermath of his parents’ divorce. In writing it, Heiser-Cerrato says he was inspired by the struggles of friends who had experienced divorce.

He also wrote it to enter into national creative writing competitions.

In other disciplines, high schoolers compete in elite programs that can serve as pipelines to top colleges. Students interested in STEM fields often strive to qualify for the International Science and Engineering Fair, while those hoping to go into law and politics can apply for the U.S. Senate Youth Program or compete in the national championships for speech and debate.

For students like Heiser-Cerrato, a number of creative writing contests now serve as a similar path to elite college admissions.

Heiser-Cerrato, who won multiple national awards for his prose and poetry, submitted creative writing portfolios to Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s sure his creative writing is what propelled him to Harvard.

“It was my main hook,” he says.

Competitions like YoungArts and the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards have skyrocketed in selectivity and prestige over the past few decades, becoming a quantifiable way for colleges to identify rising literary stars. The winners of top competitions disproportionately go on to attend elite universities.

However, selecting the nation’s top storytellers is more complicated than selecting its top scientists. Competitions can’t score poems in the same objective way they score students in a Math Olympiad. Instead, who wins these competitions often comes down to taste. Several former high school creative writers say that specific styles and topic areas disproportionately win national writing competitions. Top competitions, they say, incentivize writers to dredge up traumatic experiences or commodify their cultural backgrounds.

By propelling winners to elite colleges and empowering them to pursue writing, these competitions can change the course of students’ lives. But the pressure to win can also stunt young writers’ growth and complicate their relationship with their craft and themselves.

Creative writing contests aim to promote self expression and foster a new generation of artists. But does turning creative writing into a competition for admissions erode its artistic purpose?

‘The Most Important Experiences of My Life’

H eiser-Cerrato went to a “sports high school” where it was difficult for him to receive the mentorship he needed to improve his writing or find a creative community. With so few fellow writers at his high school, he had no way to judge his talent beyond the confines of his English classes.

Creative writing competitions were founded for students like Heiser-Cerrato. Even a century ago, Maurice Robinson — the founder of Scholastic — was surprised at the gap that existed in recognizing students interested in the arts. In 1923, he hosted the first national Scholastic Art and Writing Competition.

By the 2000s, Scholastic no longer had a monopoly on creative writing competitions. YoungArts was founded in 1981, and the Foyle Young Poets Competition held its inaugural competition in 1998. After the Adroit Journal and Bennington College launched their annual creative writing competitions in the 2010s, competing in multiple creative writing competitions became common practice for aspiring poets and novelists.

When students started finding out about competitions through the internet, competitions like Scholastic doubled in size. The Covid-19 pandemic drove submissions to competitions like Foyle Young Poets up even more. Last year, the Scholastic awards received more than 300,000 entries, up from the 200,000 some entries received in 2005.

Collectively, these contests now receive more than 315,000 creative writing entries a year in categories like poetry, prose, and even spoken word. Students submit individual works of writing, or in some cases portfolios, to be judged by selection panels often consisting of professors and past winners. They are assessed on criteria like “originality, technical skill, and personal voice or vision.”

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards boasts an impressive list of alumni who have gone on to win the highest literary prizes in their fields. Past winners include lauded writers Stephen King, Sylvia Plath, Joyce Carol Oates, and Amanda S. Gorman ’20.

Hoping to perhaps join this illustrious group, Heiser-Cerrato began applying to competitions his sophomore year. Spurred on by his high school English teacher — who incorporated contest submissions into assignments — Heiser-Cerrato felt the concrete nature of competition deadlines helped hold him accountable.

“When you’re trying to do something creative and you have no feedback loop or deadline, you can get very off track and not develop,” he says. “I never would have done that if there wasn’t a contest to submit to, because then there was no opportunity to get feedback.”

While Heiser-Cerrato went on to win some of Scholastic’s top honors — a National Silver Medal and Silver Medal with Distinction for his senior portfolio — even some who fare less well appreciate the feedback competitions provide.

“I think a lot of people are very cautious to give negative feedback to younger writers,” says Colby A. Meeks ’25, a former poetry editor of the Harvard Advocate. “I think getting rejections from certain contests and losing certain competitions did help me grow as a writer insofar as tempering an ego that I think young writers can very easily get from English teachers.”

Heiser-Cerrato views his experience with the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program — a program that pairs high schoolers with established writers — as “pretty instrumental to my growth.” After applying during his senior year, Heiser-Cerrato met bi-weekly with his mentor, discussing works of other authors and workshopping two stories of his own.

Similarly, when Darius Atefat-Peckham ’23, then a student at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, won a National Silver Medal in the Scholastic competition, he became eligible to apply to the National Students Poet Program. From a pool of finalists submitting more than 23,000 works, Atefat-Peckham was selected as one of five National Student Poets.

“It led me to probably the most important experiences of my life. As a National Student Poet, I got to travel the Midwest and teach workshops to high schoolers and middle schoolers,” he says. “That pretty much set me on my trajectory for wanting to be a teacher someday, wanting to apply myself in the ways that I would need in order to get to a prestigious institution.”

‘If You’re Going to Apply to Harvard…’

W hen Daniel T. Liu ’27 opened his Harvard application portal, he knew exactly why he’d gotten in.

“My application to college was almost solely based on writing,” Liu says.

In high school, along with serving on the editorial staff of multiple literary magazines and attending creative writing summer camps, Liu won dozens of contests — including becoming a YoungArts winner and a 2022 Foyle Young Poet of the Year.

“I actually read my admissions file, and they did mention camps that they know, summer camps like Iowa and Kenyon, which are big teen writing summer programs,” says Liu. “They pointed that out.”

According to The Crimson’s analysis of publicly available data and interviews with multiple students, there is a clear link between high school creative writing contest success and enrollment at highly selective colleges.

From 2019 to 2022, among students with publicly available educational history who won Scholastic’s Gold Medal Portfolio — the competition’s highest award — just over 50 percent enrolled in Ivy League universities or Stanford. Fifteen percent more received writing scholarships or enrolled at creative writing focused colleges.

From 2015 to 2020, 55 percent of the students who won first, second, or third place in the Bennington Young Writers Awards for fiction or poetry enrolled in Ivy League universities or Stanford.

“My application to college was almost solely based on writing,” Daniel T. Liu says.

As Atefat-Peckham reflects back on his college application, he knows his creative writing successes were essential in complementing his standardized test scores. While he was proud of his ACT score, he did not believe it would have been enough to distinguish him from other qualified applicants.

Since 2018, three recipients of YoungArts’ top-paying scholarship — the $50,000 Lin Arison Excellence in Writing Award — have matriculated to Harvard. Other winners attended Brown, Swarthmore, and Wesleyan. Recent recipients include Stella Lei ’26, Rhodes Scholar-Elect Isabella B. Cho ’24, and Liu.

Creative writing competitions’ prominence in the college admissions process comes during the most competitive college application environment ever. Harvard’s Class of 2025 received a record-high number 57,435 applicants, leading to the lowest admissions rate in College history.

Eleanor V. Wikstrom ’24, a YoungArts winner and Rhodes Scholar-elect, described YoungArts as “super cool” in allowing her to meet other artists. She also recognized the importance of her participation for college applications.

“I can’t lie: If you think that you’re going to apply to Harvard, it’s very helpful to have some kind of national accolade,” she says.

The ‘Paradox’ of Competitive Art

I n 2021, an anonymously written document accusing student poet Rona Wang of plagiarism made waves in the competitive creative writing community. Wang — who had won awards from MIT and the University of Chicago, was affiliated with Simon & Schuster, and had published a book of short stories — was accused of copying ten works written by other student poets.

According to Liu, this behavior isn’t unprecedented. Several years ago, Liu explains, an “infamous” scandal erupted in the high school creative writing world when a student plagiarized Isabella Cho’s poetry and entered it into competitions.

Liu says more students are beginning to apply to writing competitions out of a desire to have awards on their resume, rather than because of a genuine interest in creative writing.

While creative writing contests can provide valuable opportunities for feedback and mentorship, several students look back on their time in the competitive creative writing circuit with ambivalence. The pressure to write in service of a contest — writing to win, not just to create — can pressure writers to commodify their identities and cash in on their painful experiences, turning a creative outlet into a path to admissions or quest for outside validation.

Liu says he regrets that creative writing competitions are becoming a pipeline to elite college admissions. He’s worried competitions like Scholastic and YoungArts are becoming too similar to programs like the International Science and Engineering Fair.

“Math, science, all these competitions, they all have some aspect of prestige to them,” says Liu. “What makes it so difficult in that regard is that writing isn’t math. It requires a level of personal dedication to that craft.”

“It kind of sucks because a lot of artistic practice should come out of personal will,” says Liu. “To compete in art is paradoxical, right?”

Sara Saylor, who won a gold portfolio prize for her writing, told the New York Times in 2005 that “the awards came to mean too much to me after a while.”

“Whenever Scholastic admissions time rolled around, we began to get very competitive and more concerned about winning the contest than we should have,” she says.

Indeed, students at elite creative high schools like the Interlochen Center for the Arts are pushed by teachers to enter competitions. Hannah W. Duane ’25, who attended the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts as part of the creative writing department, was required to submit to three creative writing competitions every six weeks.

(These competitions are dominated by schools like Duane’s. In 2019, 23 Interlochen students received national Scholastic awards for their creative writing — a distinction typically awarded to less than 1 percent of entries.)

Though Liu wasn’t required to submit to contests, he felt a different kind of obligation. Liu says writing competitions pushed him to write almost exclusively about his heritage, keeping him from exploring other narratives.

“From the start, I applied with a lot of cultural pieces, like pieces about my family history,” says Liu. “Those were the ones that won. And so it built me into a cycle where I was only writing about these areas — heritage.”

Liu’s experience wasn’t uncommon. When looking at other winning pieces, he noticed a similar trend.

“The competitions — Scholastic, YoungArts, those two big ones — definitely prioritize writing about your heritage,” says Liu. “Part of the reason behind that is for a lot of the students, that’s a very unique aspect of them.”

“In a hyper-competitive environment, what you can write better than anyone else is what’s gonna make you stand out,” he adds.

In an emailed statement, YoungArts Vice President Lauren Slone wrote that YoungArts winners in writing “must demonstrate a sense of inventiveness, show attention to the complexities and technical aspects of language, and have a clear, original, and distinct point of view.”

Chris Wisniewski ’01, Executive Director of the nonprofit that oversees Scholastic, wrote in an email that the competition has been “welcoming to works across many styles, subjects, and points of view” and does not give “implicit or explicit guidance” to jurors or competitors about the content or style of winning pieces. He added that “on the national level, each piece of writing undergoes at least three separate readings from jurors to diversify the views on its adherence to the program’s original and sole criteria.”

Ryan H. Doan-Nguyen ’25, who received a Scholastic Gold Key and won the New York Times’s Found Poem Contest, notes another way young writers try to distinguish themselves.

“Students feel compelled to embellish or to write about really painful things,” says Doan-Nguyen, a Crimson News Editor. “It does tend to be really heavy hitting topics that make the page.”

According to him and multiple others, the creative writing circuit pushes students to expose deeply personal, sometimes traumatic experiences for academic points. (Students make similar claims about the college admissions process .)

Doan-Nguyen was hesitant to publicly open up about vulnerable experiences, so he shied away from writing about traumatic memories of his own. But he fears this reluctance held him back.

“Maybe that’s why I did not win more contests,” he says. “I was always too afraid to be so vulnerable and raw.”

Duane recalls the competitions being dominated by sobering personal narratives: often stories about authors’ experiences with racism, abuse, or sexual assault. However, her school worked to insulate its students from the pressure to sensationalize.

“The constant refrain we would hear is, ‘Writing is not your therapy. Get that elsewhere,’” she says.

Liu says writing contests not only changed his content — they also pushed him and other competitors to write in the specific style of past winners. He says many successful pieces were reminiscent of the poet and novelist Ocean Vuong.

Writers would cut their lines off at odd places “to give the illusion of mystery when there’s no real thought behind it besides, ‘Hey, it should look like this because it looks pretty like this,’” says Liu. He also recalls writers, especially young poets, using “a lot of language of violence.” Liu worries this overreliance on stylistic imitation can stunt young writers’ growth.

He questions whether the existence of creative writing competitions is helping young writers at all.

“If writing is supposed to be a practice of self-reflection, you’re not doing those things when you plagiarize. You’re not doing those things when you submit just a draft of someone else’s style,” says Liu. “It doesn’t align with what it should be as an artistic practice.”

‘I Will Always Be Writing’

S ince coming to Harvard, Heiser-Cerrato has begun writing for a very different purpose. He joined the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

With the structure and pressure of creative writing competitions behind them, he and other past winners are taking their writing in new directions.

“My high school writing was very sentimental and very focused on trying to be profound,” Heiser-Cerrato says. “But here, I’ve been more interested in the entertainment side of things.”

When writing for competitions, Heiser-Cerrato says it was difficult for him to define his goals. But for the Lampoon, he says he just wants to make others laugh. There, Heiser-Cerrato has finally found the sense of community he lacked in high school.

Meeks joined the Harvard Advocate, where he critiques poetry instead of writing it. In high school, Meeks appreciated competitions as an avenue through which to receive feedback on his writing. Now, he works to give those who submit work to the Advocate similar guidance.

“Often, submitting to a literary magazine feels like you’re sending something into a void,” Meeks says. “And I really wanted as much as possible, as much as it was manageable timewise, to make sure that people were getting some feedback.”

Like Meeks, Wikstrom and Doan-Nguyen are also members of campus publications. Wikstrom is the former editorial chair of The Crimson, and Doan-Nguyen is a Crimson News and Magazine Editor.

Wikstrom, who was the Vice Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland in high school for her spoken word poetry, says she loved spoken word poetry in high school because of its capacity to spark action. At Harvard, she saw The Crimson’s Editorial Board as another way to speak out about important issues.

“It’s a really interesting middle ground for creative writing, because you do have the commitment to factual accuracy,” she says. “But you also have more leeway than perhaps news to be injecting your personal voice. And also that urgency of, ‘I feel very strongly about this. And other people should feel strongly about this, too.’”

Unlike Heiser-Cerrato, Atefat-Peckham wasn’t drawn to any existing organization on campus. Though he attended Interlochen and succeeded in highly selective contests while in high school, Atefat-Peckham disagreed with the cutthroat, commodifying incentive structure and believed campus literary organizations like the Advocate and Lampoon were too selective.

When Atefat-Peckham returned to campus after the pandemic, he helped form the Harvard Creative Writing Collective, a non-competitive home for creative writing on campus.

Liu is a member of the Creative Writing Collective and the Advocate. But most of his writing at Harvard has been independent. Instead of writing for competitions, Liu says he’s transitioned to writing for himself.

And though Doan-Nguyen is not sure what he wants to do after college, he — along with Liu, Meeks, Heiser-Cerrato, Wikstrom, and Duane — is sure writing will play a role in it.

“It’s a big part of my life and always has been, and I think it’s made me see so much about the work that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise if I didn’t put my pen to paper,” says Doan-Nguyen.

“I know that no matter what I end up doing, whether that’s going to law school or journalism or just doing nonprofit work, I will always be writing. Writing and writing and writing.”

Correction: February 13, 2024

A previous version of this article included a misleading quote attributed to Ryan Doan-Nguyen.

— Magazine writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at [email protected] .

— Associate Magazine Editor Adelaide E. Parker can be reached at [email protected] .

The Summer Cohort Early Application Deadline is February 18, 2024.  

Click here to apply.

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10 Best Creative Writing Programs for High School Students

Creative writing has a wide range of applications and benefits. It not only helps you structure and write in different ways but also makes you a better reader and communicator!

In this post, we have compiled a list of great creative writing programs for high school students. We’ve also thrown in some journalism programs for good measure!

10 Great Creative Writing Programs

1. iowa young writers’ studio – residential program.

Location: Online and in-person versions available

Fee/stipend: $575 for the online version, $2,500 for the in-person version

Financial assistance: Several full tuition and partial tuition grants are available.

Application deadline: February 5, 2023

Program dates: Session 1 from June 11, 2023, to June 24, 2023, Session 2 from July 9, 2023, to July 22, 2023

Eligibility: 10th, 11th and 12th graders are eligible to apply

The Iowa Young Writers’ Studio is one of the most prestigious writing programs in the country, with an estimated acceptance rate between 15-20%. You get to choose one course from poetry, fiction, creative writing, playwriting, or TV writing. The course structure contains a mix of seminars and workshops. The mentors are graduates of the University of Iowa, which holds the most prestigious creative writing program in the country (strange but true)! This is a great program if you’re looking for an immersive experience in a single style of writing.

2. Princeton’s Summer Journalism Program

Location: Online and in-person versions available throughout the year culminating in a 10-day residential program at the end of July

Fee/stipend: Free

Financial assistance: NA

Application deadline: February 27, 2023

Program dates: Year-long

Eligibility: Students must be in the 11th grade, have a minimum GPA of 3.5, and must qualify for one of these socioeconomic conditions .

You will get a taste of life as a journalist in this year-long course. You will participate in a range of activities, including attending online workshops and lectures with renowned journalists from all over the country.

Apart from the usual workshops and lectures, you will have access to a number of exciting opportunities such as visiting newsrooms, making a documentary, and working on the Princeton Summer Journal which is published at the end of the program. Fair warning - this is a highly selective program including a three-round application process and a final cohort of up to 40 students .

3. NYU Tisch’s Future Dramatic Writers Workshop

Location: Commuter program at NYU's New York City campus

Application deadline: Closed for 2023

Program dates: February 4, 2023 - May 13, 2023

Program Selectivity: Highly selective

Eligibility: Open to 9th, 10th and 11th graders

If accepted to this program, you get the opportunity to study and practice writing for theatre, film, and television. The program takes place every Saturday for 14 weeks , where you will be spending 8 hours in lectures and workshops. It culminates in a yearly showcase where students can present what they’ve worked on. It is an intensive course equivalent to Tisch’s undergraduate curriculum . This has an in-person component, so it may be easiest if you are in New York City.

4. Telluride Association Summer Seminars

Location: Cornell University, University of Maryland, and University of Michigan

Program dates: June 25, 2023 – August 5, 2023

Eligibility: 10th and 11th graders

Primarily rooted in humanities and social studies, TASS looks at systems of power and oppression. While its main agenda is to exercise students’ critical thinking skills , reading and writing essays is a crucial part of the curriculum. You will find the opportunity to hone your writing skills in fields such as history, politics, culture, and more . This is a highly selective program with an estimated acceptance rate of 3-5% . While this may not fit the bill for traditional ‘creative writing’, the way in which it weaves a connection between critical thinking and impeccable writing is likely to enhance your creative writing projects.

5. Yale Young Writers’ Workshop

Location: Online

Fee/stipend: $900

Application deadline: April 3, 2023

Program dates: July 9, 2023 – July 14, 2023

Eligibility: Open to 10th, 11th and 12th graders

Yale Young Writers’ Workshop will give you an in-depth look at one of the following genres — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or graphic storytelling. With only 12 students per workshop, the highly selective, one-week program ensures each person gets an immersive experience in developing the craft of writing, experimenting with their work, and finding their own voice .

6. Asian American Journalists Association’s JCAMP

Location: On campus at American University, Washington D.C.

Application deadline: March 17, 2023

Program dates: July 15, 2023 – July 21, 2023

Known for its multicultural diversity and unique hands-on training, this renowned program aims to prepare you for a career in journalism. Not only will you get workshops with veteran industry leaders and go on field trips, but you’ll also have the chance to produce news packages for the program’s news site ! You will also have some published work to your credit. This is a highly selective program with about 30 students chosen from hundreds of applicants.

7. Kenyon Review Young Writer’s Summer Residential Workshop

Location: On campus at Kenyon College

Fee/stipend: $2,575

Financial assistance: Need-based financial aid is available.

Application deadline: March 1, 2023

Program dates: Session 1 from June 25, 2023, to July 8, 2023, Session 2 from July 16, 2023, to July 29, 2023

Eligibility: Open to 16–18-year-old students

This program offers a combination of individual conferences with your instructor and peer-led group discussion and exercises. The coursework is ungraded and focuses on students recognizing and working on their writing skills. You will also have the opportunity to sign up for a genre session where one genre or element of writing will be explored in-depth . This is highly selective with 12-14 students per workshop.

8. Bard College at Simon’s Rock Young Writers Workshop

Location: On campus

Fee/stipend: $3,500

Financial assistance: Moderate

Application deadline: None. Applicants are reviewed until the program is full, usually in mid-April or May

Program dates: July 9, 2023 – July 29, 2023

Eligibility: Open to students from grades 9-11

Instead of focusing only on the writing style, this three-week workshop focuses on enhancing language and thinking skills that are key for effective writing. The program consists of three 90-minute sessions every day with each having a different area of research. You will engage in writing activities and reading discussions within small groups of 12, so every student gets individual attention. Writings are shared by the workshop leaders as well as peers. While building a portfolio, you will be encouraged to focus on the process and finding your voice rather than the end product. This program is a good fit if you’re looking for informal coursework with a heavy emphasis on critical thinking.

9. Sarah Lawrence Writer’s Week – A Creative Writing and Performance Art Workshop

Location: Commuter program

Fee/stipend: $1,125

Financial assistance: Limited scholarships available to Yonkers Public School students

Application deadline: Registrations open in February.

Program dates: Virtual program from July 10, 2023 – July 14, 2023, On campus program from August 7, 2023 – August 11, 2023

Eligibility: Students must be 14 years of age or older

Writing (workshops and collaborative discussions) and theatre (workshops on improvisation, solo performance, character comedy, and the like) come together in this program with students learning components of each as well as their relation to each other. While this is a highly selective program, once in, you’ll find yourself in an interactive and supportive environment in a class of 18 students.

10. The Adroit Journal’s Summer Mentorship Program

Fee/stipend: $450

Financial assistance: Available

Application deadline: March 12, 2023

Program dates: June 19, 2023 – July 31, 2023

Eligibility: Open to students from the 9th to 12th grades

Hosted by a literary and art non-profit organization, this program pairs budding writers with established ones , making this a highly individualized program. While peer activities are also offered, you will get personalized support and guidance from your mentor. You can choose from poetry, fiction and non-fiction/memoir writing. However, the program’s acceptance rate has been approximately 8-9% in the past so keep in mind that it is highly selective.

If you’re interested in going beyond creative writing and want to explore research in fields you’re interested in (e.g., research in literature!) , consider applying to the Lumiere Research Scholar Program , a selective online high school program for students that I founded with researchers at Harvard and Oxford. Last year, we had over 2100 students apply for 500 spots in the program! You can find the application form here.

Stephen is one of the founders of Lumiere and a Harvard College graduate. He founded Lumiere as a PhD student at Harvard Business School. Lumiere is a selective research program where students work 1-1 with a research mentor to develop an independent research paper.

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    Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #1: Decide on Your Standards or Goals Your school or district may have a mandated syllabus or curriculum. Mine did not. Whether you're given student goals or have to create them, you must have an overall vision for what your Creative Writing class will accomplish.

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    Teaching Creative Writing Tip #1: Get Clear on Your Goals First, what do you want to achieve with your creative writing class? In some school, Creative Writing is purely a fun elective. The goal is create a class that students enjoy with a side of learning.

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    Creative Writing Lesson Plan for High School. Instructor: Kevin Newton. Kevin has edited encyclopedias, taught history, and has an MA in Islamic law/finance. He has since founded his own financial ...

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    Creative Writing Skills #1: Show. Don't Tell. The advice to "show, don't tell" is some of the oldest and most consistent advice given to young writers. And it's for a good reason-they really struggle with it! About half of my students come into Creative Writing with these big elaborate stories they want to tell.

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    1 Looking for creative writing lesson plans? I am developing creative writing lesson ideas! I've written and revamped my creative writing lesson plans and learned that the first week is vital in establishing a community of writers, in outlining expectations, and in working with a new class. What are some good creative writing exercises?

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    Five Creative Writing Lesson Plans for Middle & High School Students | Poetry Center About About the Poetry Center Building History Speedway & Swan Hannelore Quander-Rattee Works-in-Translation Reading Morgan Lucas Schuldt Memorial Reading Location and Hours Tours and Field Trips Mission and Values People FAQ Poetry Center 60th Anniversary Library

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    Read about 16 high-interest writing assignments that middle school and high school students actually enjoy! #WritingActivities #MiddleSchoolELA #HighSchoolELA

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    A comprehensive high school writing curriculum will address students' writing skills and grammatical knowledge. Meeting language skills alongside the writing standards can happen naturally. A well-rounded high school writing course will also address essential aspects such as argumentative writing (sometimes referenced as persuasive writing ...

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    This 37-page document is designed for writers of novels, but many of the tips apply equally to writers of short stories. Clear, simple, and easy to read, appropriate for 5th or 6th grade (in places) and up. Adobe Reader required for access. Students write a line of poetry in response to something the teacher reads.

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    Teaching screenwriting in Creative Writing seems second nature. It's a medium of writing students love being exposed to, but I've done some thinking about how this could be used in a standard ELA course too. Once you've taught the basics of the form and how it functions, it could be used as an option for students to show mastery of a unit.

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    Key elements of a creative writing unit include introducing different writing genres, teaching basic writing techniques, encouraging imagination and creativity, providing writing prompts and exercises, offering constructive feedback and revision opportunities, and fostering a supportive writing community. How can we organize such activities?

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    Here you will find some free, fun, and creative writing worksheets high school pdf printables, plus writing prompt and journal page pdfs. Take a look now and enjoy. Oh yeah!

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    Grab lesson one here. Creative Writing Lesson Two The second lesson teaches students about sensory details: why they are important and how to include them in their writing. Students will begin using sensory details to evoke smells and sounds and sights. Grab lesson two here. Creative Writing Lesson Three

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    Creative Writing Activity Packet This packet includes creative writing prompts and activities that are simple, engaging, and fun. While students are at home, their imaginations are still active and can flourish with a little prompting. The following activities require nothing more than a pencil and paper, can

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    Activities to teach poetry in high school. One of the most important skills for high school students is annotating . Annotating is the process of writing notes next to a verse of poetry These notes may express thoughts, questions, evaluations, or definitions. They may also note the meter (or "rhythm") of the poem.

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    Long ago, at a local elementary school, in a workshop for teachers, I watched Don Graves list on the chalkboard subjects he was considering writing about. He read over his list and chose one. From ...

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    10 Great Creative Writing Programs. 1. Iowa Young Writers' Studio - Residential Program. Financial assistance: Several full tuition and partial tuition grants are available. Program dates: Session 1 from June 11, 2023, to June 24, 2023, Session 2 from July 9, 2023, to July 22, 2023. The Iowa Young Writers' Studio is one of the most ...

  25. 8 Creative Writing Lesson Plans for Kids of All Ages

    1. Two-Sentence Response Ask your class a question or give them a scenario and have them respond to it in two sentences. The type of prompt is dependent on the age group of your students. You can ask things such as: Imagine you woke up this morning and there were no more adults. What would you do? What would it be like to be age ...