Spice Up Your Writing Block
Are you looking for some inspiration in your writing block?
Do you need an engaging writing activity that breaks the norm?
Are you going to be out and need an effective, fun, and worthwhile writing activity that a substitute can deploy?
Do you have a few minutes to fill in your day?
I got you.
I have created a few variations of the same base activity, sure to meet your needs no matter what they are or the age of learner you have in your learning space!
What you need:
- Learners
- writing utensils and media
- Photographs like these from Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards
Here are a few ideas to incorporate along with some creative writing in your learning space.
Idea 1: Creative Captions
Provide each learner with a photo or project for everyone to use the same one! Inspire learners to create a caption or explanation for the photo — you can set the boundaries and expectations. These can be silly, serious, or perhaps open-ended. Consider creating an example or two for a photo to provide a little support for learners who are more hesitant to begin.
This might be a great opportunity to weave in science concepts such as classification or adaptations! You could even allow for a combination of silly and serious creations.
Throw in a gallery walk for learners to view the work of others to incorporate a little movement and collaboration!
Idea 2: Breaking News Article or television headline
Task your learners with crafting a news story script or article for the newspaper (or online blog!) about the action in the photo. This could start as a caption and morph itself into a longer piece of writing. You could make this a team effort by composing one sentence at a time around the room. Maybe you already have a script written with strategic errors within the text for learners to find, correct, and improve! Maybe even throw in some technology integration where they create graphics to accompany the photo and script, a slideshow for the news anchors to use as a background or even deliver the news story themselves while you video record it for their families!
Idea 3: Match the caption
Utilize a little humor and creative thinking by composing captions to short stories ahead of time for photos. Allow learners to match up the captions to the photos they think are connected. This is a great opportunity to incorporate debate and conversation as learners must defend their answers. Better yet, can they articulate which captions do not make sense?
Idea 4: Narration and Dialogue
Provide a photo and ask your learners to compose a conversation that might be happening in or about the photo. This provides an opportunity to practice using quotation marks for dialogue in a fun and engaging way! You could even ask them whether it makes more sense to create dialogue that is happening in the photo versus dialogue that might be happening about the photo. For example, if there are multiple animals in the photo, perhaps a dialogue with the animals in the photo makes more sense. If there is only one animal in the photo, it could be what the animal is thinking or what people viewing the photo are saying to one another.
Do you have an idea to share? Add it to the comments or post on social media! I’d love to see what you come up with!
