Word Scramble

Students will either utilize an online word scramble, or an in-class board game, such as Scrabble, to create a word scramble. Students can play out a game with one another, and then, with the words they utilized in the game, create a short story with the words they used. There will be extra credit points awarded for words that utilize higher level orders of thinking (or words that score high in Scrabble).

Tiered Persuasive Essay Activity

For a junior high classroom, students from beginning, intermediate and advanced English language learning can follow this instructional activity, respectively:

Beginning - Students will receive a model of a five-sentence paragraph and explicit instruction in constructing the paragraph. As a prewriting activity, students will list their topic and develop a list of at least three things that support their topic.

Intermediate - Students will receive a model of a persuasive essay and a graphic organizer that explains the construction of a persuasive essay. They will also receive explicit instruction in writing a persuasive essay. As a prewriting activity, students will use the graphic organizer to plan their writing.

Advanced - Students will review the graphic organizer for a persuasive essay. Students will be given explicit instruction in locating sources and quotes for their essays, As a prewriting activity, students will use the graphic organizer to organize their essay, and they will also compile a list of five sources that define their main point.

Translate this!

Students can surf to books.google.com, find a text they like, and pore through it for a quote they enjoy or find interesting. Once they do this, they can copy/paste the quote into translate.google.com, running it through several different language to language conversions. From this, they can then translate that back into English. Whatever the results may be, and often different from the original quote they are, a student can wrote a poem or short story focused on the remaining translated quote. Or even write a story on how they think the quote went from its original meaning to the new one!

Mnemonic devices

Students will explore a type of writing, creative writing, expository essays, persuasive essays, etc. From this they can find out the structure that a particular type of writing may follow, and from this structure come up with their own mnemonic device for remembering that structure. This could be beneficial when encountering a test, standardized or not, that requires them to write a paper utilizing a specific type of essay.

For example: Expository essays follow this format roughly:
Capture interest
Introduct topic
Make a claim/thesis
Body
Conclusion

A mnemonic device for this: Can I Make Butter Cookies?

Students could come up with as many as they want, but as few as three or four.

Walking through a store

Students will walk through a pharmacy or general convenient store, pick out a few items they have never tried, and try to make up a recipe and write an explanation as to how they would like to use the ingredients they came across. This could be funny, serious, or a little bit of both!

Speeches

Students: Find a copy of a speech given, either online or in a piece of literature. Search through the speech, find a line they find potentially ambiguous. Utilize this line in a what the speaker did not intend and spin it into a speech of their own.

Google Image Search

First, students should ensure a filter is on for an image search. Next, they can use a search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo) and type in a few adjectives. Click search, and when they come upon an image they like, they can write a story about it.

Newspaper headlines

Students can pore through a newspaper or magazine, find a headline they like, and then write a fictional story or article on it. They can also take this further and find an article or op-ed and take the first sentence and write a paper or article on that. This can get students interested in the field of journalism as it pertains to fictional writing as well.

Mythological creatures

Students can research, in library or the internet, a mythological creature or god. They can then learn about one they enjoy, and then read a story about that creature or god. The students then can write a creative story on their own featuring that creature or god in an entirely different atmosphere/context from whence it was originally utilized. This can really get students to think constructively out of the box, while still keeping true to the authenticity of the character.

Replacing quotes for context

Something I thought of when constructing my course design paper was taking a famous quote or quote from a movie, and then having students utilize the quote in a completely different context to construct a story. This could be assessed as a formal assignment for a creative writing classroom and kids really seem to enjoy quotes and may like to utilize them in a different capacity altogether. This could be a funny, and fun, activity for all students.

Write to Inform

Writing to inform, or essentially a how-to paper, is often part of a unit in a language arts class. A strategy to complete these informational essay is as follows:
Brainstorming. Students can get in think-pair-share groups and brainstorm topics for an essay of this nature.
Categorizing - Students can then split into groups based generally on what their informative paper will follow.
Experience charts will help the students construct the body of their essay in this manner.
Researching will continue the process of learning more about your paper before starting it.
Webbing can be the final pre-write step before actually developing an introduction and thesis.

Interest Groups/Interest Centers

With interest groups, the teacher can divide up groups heterogenously so all students can increase their sociability and familiarize themselves with things outside of their comfort zone. In these groups, the teacher may provide a small, short text focused on a specific content area. The text could, and likely should, include photographs, as this helps appeal to visual learners, and each group will then write a paragraph or so (for each student) on the text and then present this to the class. The teacher can and should ensure that the students be as creative as possible when structuring their paragraphs. This could be a week long lesson, and the students can rotate groups each day. Sociability and networking are important things, and involving writing in this can benefit them greatly, and help them enjoy the experience more than they normally would with a group that may have a dominating member who just completes all the writing himself.