Creative writing

Scondary adult
Christine Frank, Germany

I) Expanding sentences

1. Get the students to write anonymously in telegram style not more than 5 sentences about themselves. If they do not know the other students very well, tell them to write about their lifestyle, their family and their interests. In an established class you can suggest they write about the last weekend, their holidays, etc.
2. Collect the papers and distribute them making sure no one gets their own sentences.
3. They have to read and expand the sentences into a story. It can be as imaginative as the student wants, but they have to include all the information they have from the original student. Encourage the student to write about 200-250 words.
4. Go round offering help and correcting the students' mistakes.
5. They read their stories out. The other students have to listen carefully because the owner has to identify her/himself and explain what is true in the story. If you have over 15 students you can pin up the stories on the wall and the students have to pick out the story that is about them.

II) Words to Text

1. Give the students a topic, e.g. a film, the last lesson, the latest news, etc.
2. The students have to build a sentence. This is done by each student in turn saying one word, e.g. student A Last, student B Last week, student C Last week I, student D Last week I went, etc.
3. You have to intervene, if there is any mistake or the sentence gets too long.
4. When the sentence is finished you give the signal that they have to write it down. Do not let students write while they are constructing the sentence.
5. Go on to the next sentence in the same way, i.e. the students have to add a word to build the sentence and then they all write it down.
6. After about four to five sentences tell the students individually to combine what they have written into a short text. They can write one or two additional sentences at the beginning, in the middle or at the end, but they must not alter the original sentences.

III) Drawing a Text

1. Divide the students into two groups A and B. Subdivide A and B into groups of 3 - 4 students.
2. The students in group A get one text and the students in group the other. They should not communicate with each other.
3. Get the students to read as a group and discuss the different scenes in the text. They should then draw a picture story showing the scenes in the sequence they occurred.
4. They should swap the picture story with the other group and write a text from the pictures they have received.
5. At the end you can compaer the original stories with the ones they have written.

N.B. This procedure is easier if the whole activity is done on OHP transparencies. The original text, the picture story and the text from the students.)

IV) A Different Register

1. The students are divided up into groups of about four.
2. Give each group a story which is well-known, e.g. a fable, a fairy-tale or traditional story. 4. The pictures on separate pieces of paper are given to another group who then puts them into chronological order.
5. The students, as a group, have to write the story using the pictures of the other group as a guide, but concentrating on politically correct language.

V) Summary writing

1. The students have to choose individually a subject from the list and in class begin their writing. The help they need as a class or individually depends on your writing programme.
2. Collect their assignments at the end of the lesson for correction.
3. Next lesson give out the corrected papers making sure that students do not get their own one.
4. Get the students to write a summary of the paper they have received.
5. As the students finish swap the initial texts (but not the summaries) and a second summary is written by a different student.
6. Both summaries and the text are returned to the owner of the text. Give the students the opportunity to comment on both summaries of their text either orally or in writing.

VI) Profiles

1. Give each student one question, e.g. a) Have you ever been involved in a car accident? b) What puts you off people? c) What toy did you long for as a child that you did not get? d) If you worked in a zoo what animal would you like to look after? Etc.
2. Get the students to mill and ask as many people as possible the question that they have been given. Tell the students to make notes on what each person says.
3. After about ten minutes they are each given the name of a different student in the class.
4. They have to mill again asking for the information about the particular student, e.g. Anna: Steven, did you talk to Linda? Steven: Yes, I asked her if had ever been in a car accident. Anna: What did she say? Steven: She said she had been involved as a passenger last year, but nobody was hurt. And did you talk to Jens? Anna: Yes, asked him what puts him off people, and he said ….
They have about 10-15 minutes to collect as much information as possible about "their" student. Encourage them to make notes.
5. They then read and order their and write a profile of "their" student. This stage of the activity lends itself to homework and the next lesson you can put the profiles up round the room or collect them and produce a class book.