creative writing workshop lesson plan

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7 Steps to a Great Writing Workshop

Would you like to make your classroom a stimulating community of writers and learners? Set up a writing workshop! This instructional approach truly engages students by letting them write, read, interact, mentor, and take risks—all at their own pace. Follow these simple steps to create a writing workshop in your classroom.

Step 1: Set up a writing workshop framework.

A typical writing workshop session has four parts.

Step 2: Be a writer!

Teach by example, showing not only how you write, but also how to collaborate, respond to other writers, and make improvements based on responses.

Step 3: Create a writing community.

Help your students work side by side, learning from each other in much the same way that artists do in studios or cooks do in the kitchen. Provide spaces for individual work and spaces for small-group work.

Step 4: Provide many models and topic choices.

Models help students see how other writers have shaped their ideas in essays and stories. They also serve as springboards for minilessons and class discussions about specific writing strategies. ( See student models .)

Your students need to write about topics that interest them. When students have strong feelings about their topics, they stay with their writing longer and do their best work. ( See writing topics .)

Step 5: Let students work at their own pace.

On any given day, some students may be researching a topic; others may be drafting or revising; and still others may have finished one piece of work and started on another. As workshop manager, your job is to make sure that everyone is gainfully working on a project.

Step 6: Invite peer responses.

Your students need the feedback of their peers to develop strong writing and feel part of the writing community. Help them carry out peer response groups. ( See the peer response minilesson .)

Step 7: Offer your support.

Hold brief (2- to 3-minute) conferences with students as needed during independent writing time. During these conferences, don’t act as a fixer but rather as someone who listens and suggests and offers next steps.

Final Thoughts:

Effective classroom management is the key to implementing a successful writing workshop. You need to establish specific goals (such as the number of pieces to be completed per quarter), keep students on task (via the work check), and look for teachable moments to introduce specific minilessons.

Writing Workshop Resources

Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi

About the Authors: Writing Workshop with Our Youngest Writers by Katie Wood Ray

In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading, and Learning by Nancie Atwell

The 9 Rights of Every Writer by Vicki Spandel

The No-Nonsense Guide to Teaching Writing by Judy Davis and Sharon Hill

www.writingproject.org (National Writing Project)

Teacher Support:

Click to find out more about this resource.

Standards Correlations:

The State Standards provide a way to evaluate your students' performance.

• LAFS.K12.W.1.1
• LAFS.K12.W.1.2
• LAFS.K12.W.1.3
• LAFS.K12.W.2.4
• LAFS.K12.W.2.5
• LAFS.K12.W.2.6
• LAFS.K12.W.3.7
• LAFS.K12.W.3.8
• LAFS.K12.W.3.9
• LAFS.K12.W.4.10

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• Poetry prompts
• For teachers

How to Teach Writing

Welcome, fellow writing teachers! Here, you'll find ideas for how to teach writing, including topics, worksheets and lesson plans for fiction and poetry classes. If you're teaching adults and want to incorporate a workshop component in your classroom, you can find suggestions for how to run a critique here.

Join our email group for creative writing teachers.

Topics for Teaching Fiction Writing

• Reading fiction
• Character development
• Conflict and plot structure
• Narrative point of view
• Showing versus telling
• Summary versus scene
• Descriptive detail
• Story beginnings
• Story middles
• Story endings
• Types of stories and genres
• Setting and world-building
• Revising fiction

Click here for activity ideas.

Topics for Teaching Poetry Writing

• Reading poetry
• Subject and theme
• Specificity
• Sensory details
• Figurative language
• Lines and stanzas
• Meter and scansion
• Rhyme and rhyme schemes
• Fixed forms
• Voice and tone
• Patterns and repetition
• Visual aspects of poetry
• Revising poetry

Poetry Class Activities

Haiku Students write a haiku, a short unrhymed poem with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line, and five in the third line. Read more

Found poem Students write a poem using language borrowed from non-poetic sources. Read more

Fairy-tale poem Students write a poem inspired by a fairy tale or folk tale. 

Animal Poem Students write a poem about an animal. Click here for examples and ideas

Epistolary Poem Students write a poem in the form of a letter or email to someone real or imaginary.

Prose Poem Click here to get our Prose Poetry Kit.

Persona poem Students write a poem in the voice of someone else, such as a fictional character, historical figure, or animal.

Blank verse Students write a poem in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Read more

Sonnet Click here for instructions and prompts.

Music Poem You can play music in the classroom and ask students to write poetry inspired by the sounds they hear and the imagery it brings to mind.

Golden shovel poem Students take a line from a poem they admire and use each word from that line as the end word of a line in their new poem. Read more  

Cut-up poem Students write a poem by cutting up a piece of text and rearranging the words or phrases to form something new.

Sestina Click here for instructions, examples, and ideas.

Ekphrastic Poem Students write a poem inspired by a piece of visual art.

Five Senses Poem Students write a poem that describes its subject using details from all five senses.

Anaphora Poem Students write a poem that uses the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of each line or stanza for emphasis. Read more

Acrostic Students write a poem where the first letter of each line spells out a word or message vertically. Read more

Concrete Poem Students write a poem where the arrangement of the words on the page forms a visual image related to the poem's theme. Click here to get a worksheet with examples.

Nature walk poem Students take a walk, paying attention to sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations. Then they write a poem inspired by their observations.

Pantoum Click here to get our Pantoum Poetry Kit.

Limerick Click here for instructions, examples, and ideas.

Poetic translation Students can use AI tools and online translators to explore the meaning of a poem written in a foreign language. Then, they use their poetic skills to craft a translation that reads as a successful poem in English.

Riddle poem Students write a poem that describes something without naming it. Example here  

Erasure Poem: Students write a poem by erasing words from an existing text and leaving behind words that form a new poem. Here's an example created from the Miranda Warning.

Lesson Plans for Teaching Fiction Writing

Character development - teaching ideas.

• Character Development
• How to Show Your Character's Thoughts

Group activity:

Create a character as a class using a picture of a person as a starting point. First, have the students suggest a name for the character. Then, discuss and decide on the character's age and occupation. Continue to develop the character by answering the questions in this character profile questionnaire . To start students thinking about how character profiles can lead to story ideas, ask them the following questions: What problems does this character face? What does this character want more than anything What obstacles could get in the way of the character's desires? In what situation would this character react in an interesting way?

Invent a character with two conflicting personality traits or desires. For example, the character might be exceedingly disorganized yet a perfectionist, or a pacifist with a quick temper, or a rebel who craves parental approval. Imagine a situation where these contradictory aspects come into direct conflict. Write the story.

Worksheets:

• Character Profile Questionnaire
• 160 Characters for Your Stories

Conflict and Plot Structure - Teaching Ideas

• Story Conflict
• Plot Structure
• Story Climax

Present students with one of the following situations:

• Maria goes on vacation to Hawaii.
• David's about to get married.
• Sandra just moved into a new house.

Ask students to suggest ideas for adding conflict to the situation you've presented. What could go wrong for the character?

Choose one of the conflict ideas and ask students to discuss what actions the character might take to try to overcome the story problem. What might happen as a result of the character's actions? How might the character react to that ?

You can use this exercise as an introduction to conflict and the way it moves a story forward.

Write about a job interview, family dinner, celebration, or vacation where something goes terribly wrong. Your character attempts to fix the situation, but their initial efforts only make things worse...

• Plot Templates

Narrators and Narrative Point of View - Teaching Ideas

• Types of Narrators and How to Choose

1) Give students this ten-minute writing task: Write about a first date from the perspective of a character who perceives the date as a disaster. 2) Pair up the students and give them ten minutes to rewrite their partners' scenes from the viewpoint of the other character on the date. This character should view the date as a great success.

Rewrite a fairy tale from the point of view of a character other than the traditional hero. Ideas: "Cinderella" from the point of view of one of the stepsisters, "Little Red Riding Hood" from the point of view of the wolf.

More exercises here

Dialogue - Teaching Ideas

• How to Write Dialogue

Discussion:

Have students read and discuss Hemingway's “ Hills Like White Elephants ” as an example of dialogue where neither character is speaking sincerely. This is a story about a man trying to convince a woman to have an abortion. The man is insincere because he's trying to persuade the woman, and the woman is insincere because she's afraid of losing the man if she refuses to do what he wants. Students can discuss:

• How they know the characters are talking about an abortion, even though abortion is never mentioned specifically.
• How they can tell what each character is feeling, even though it doesn't match what the characters say.

1) The story takes place on a long bus ride between two cities. Two strangers are sharing a seat. Each one secretly hopes to get something from the other. For example, one of them wants a job, money, or a place to stay in the city where they're headed. The other one wants love or a one-night stand. Neither of them mentions directly what they want. They pretend to make casual small talk, but each one is actually trying to manipulate the conversation to achieve their secret goal. Write the conversation. 2) This story takes place at a restaurant. Three acquaintances have gone out to dinner together. Person A has just left their spouse and family. Person B supports this decision. Person C thinks this was criminally irresponsible. Write the conversation. (Suggestion: try giving each character the voice of a different person you actually know. For example, Person A might talk like one of your coworkers, and Person B might talk like your brother or sister. Choose people who are very different from each other. Then try to express each one's unique voice so clearly that you don't need to tell the reader which character said which sentence; the reader can "hear" the difference between who says what.)

Showing Versus Telling, and Summary Versus Scene - Teaching Ideas

• The Truth About "Show, Don't Tell"

Present students with "telling" statements, such as:

•  Julie's angry at Tim.
• Lorena is shy.
• The house is creepy.

Ask students to suggest ways of showing these things instead. Use this to start a discussion the difference between showing and telling, and when it might be better to do one or the other.

1) Your character and their spouse are looking at a house they're thinking of buying. Write a scene which shows (without telling) the following:

• The character doesn't really want to buy a house.
• The character's spouse desperately wants to buy a house.
• The real estate agent is trying to hide something about the house.

2) Two old friends get together for dinner after a long time apart. One of them is secretly in love with the other one. Show this, don't tell it.

Descriptive Detail - Teaching Ideas

• Descriptive details

Group activities:

For an in-person class: if possible, take students somewhere outdoors.

• First, have them take notes on visual details they observe.
• Next, have them spend a few minutes paying attention to, and taking notes on, what they hear.
• Then, have them take notes on smells.
• After that, have them take notes on temperature, textures, and tactile sensations.
• Finally, have students compare notes to discover additional details they might not have noticed.

For an online class, you can conduct a similar activity. Ask students to take notes on their surroundings, starting with visual details, then moving on to sounds, smells, and tactile sensations. Afterwards, have students describe their surroundings to the class.

1) Have students keep a journal, where they take notes on sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations they observe or experience. 2) Prompt: Your character has to leave their hotel in the middle of the night (you decide why; e.g., to catch an early flight, for a clandestine meeting, to avoid paying for the room, etc.). Right when your character is opening the door of their room, all of the lights in the building go out. Your character is determined to leave anyway, even though they can't see a thing. At some point, your character realizes they've lost their way and are in a part of the building they never intended to go. Write the scene, using descriptive details from senses other than sight; i.e., sound, touch, etc.

Story Beginnings - Teaching Ideas

• Great Story Beginnings

Give the students some story beginnings to read, and discuss:

• What expectations are set by each one?
• Which beginnings make them want to read more, and why?

Take a story you've previously written and see if you can improve the beginning.

Try beginning later in the story to see if that works better. Experiment with starting the story in different places.

Experiment with beginning with dialogue, action or something that will provoke the reader's curiosity.

Revision Techniques - Teaching Ideas

• Novel Revision Checklist

For an adult creative writing class, you could offer students the chance to workshop their pieces. It's important to manage the workshops to maintain a positive tone and prevent students from getting discouraged, especially if you are teaching beginning writers.

1) Pretend you're a reader coming to your story for the first time. Read the story from beginning to end. What are your overall impressions?

2) Go through this checklist and see if it gives you ideas for anything you might improve.

3) Experiment with revising or changing different aspects of your story to see if you can make it better. Keep a copy of your original version so that you always have the option to go back to it. That way you can revise without fear, knowing that none of your experiments need to be permanent.

4) Once you have a version you're happy with, go through it again and look for everything you can cut—unnecessary scenes, paragraphs, sentences, or words.

5) Read through your manuscript out loud to look for places where you can smooth or polish the language.

How to Run a Writing Workshop

In most workshops, students read an author's piece ahead of time to prepare for classroom discussion. It's important to keep the discussion encouraging and respectful. Here are two possible workshop formats. Workshop for an advanced class:

• The author should try not to talk during the critique except to ask clarifying questions.
• First, students discuss what they think the piece is about and what it is trying to achieve. At this stage, they are not judging the piece or offering suggestions. This discussion helps the author understand how well the group has grasped the piece.
• Second, students talk about what they think works well in the piece and what caught their interest. Starting with positive feedback makes it easier for the author to listen to criticism later without becoming defensive or discouraged.
• Third, students give constructive criticism. Ensure that criticism is respectful and delivered in a way that helps the author make specific improvements. Keep comments as specific as possible and clearly focused on the piece, rather than on the author.

Workshop for other groups: What is most helpful for beginning writers is often experimentation and practice. The first priority is to help these writers build their confidence and stay motivated. I have found "positive feedback only" workshops to be useful both for beginners and more advanced writers. In these workshops, the authors share their work, and group discussion is limited to the following question:

"What caught your attention about this piece, or what did you think was working well?"

How to Teach Writing - Next Steps

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Creative Writing Lesson Plans: Week One

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?

Some good creative writing exercises include writing prompts, free writing, character development exercises, and fun writing games.

The first week, though, we establish trust—and then we begin powerful creative writing exercises to engage young writers and our community.

How can add encouragement in creative writing lesson plans?

I’ve found students are shy about writing creatively, about sharing pieces of themselves. A large part of the first week of class is setting the atmosphere, of showing everyone they are free to create. And! These concepts will apply to most writing lesson plans for secondary students.

Feel free to give me feedback and borrow all that you need! Below, find my detailed my day-by-day progression for creative writing lesson plans  for week one.

Creative Writing Lesson Day One: Sharing my vision

Comfort matters for young writers. I’m not a huge “ice breaker” type of teacher—I build relationships slowly. Still, to get student writing, we must establish that everyone is safe to explore, to write, to error.

Here are some ideas.

Tone and attitude

For day one with any lesson plan for creative writing, I think it is important to set the tone, to immediately establish what I want from my creative writing students. And that is…

them not to write for me, but for them. I don’t want them writing what they think I want them to write.

Does that make sense? Limitations hurt young writers. My overall tone and attitude toward young writers is that we will work together, create and write together, provide feedback, and invest in ourselves. Older kiddos think that they must provide teachers with the “correct” writing. In such a course, restrictions and boundaries largely go out the window.

Plus, I specifically outline what I believe they can produce in a presentation to set people at ease.

The presentation covers expectations for the class. As the teacher, I am a sort of writing coach with ideas that will not work for everyone. Writers should explore different methods and realize what works for them. First, not everyone will appreciate every type of writing—which is fine. But as a writing community, we must accept that we may not be the target audience for every piece of work.

Therefore, respect is a large component of the class. Be sure to outline what interactions you find acceptable within your classroom community.

Next, as their writing coach, I plan to provide ideas and tools for use. Their job is to decide what tools work for their creative endeavors. My overall message is uplifting and encouraging.

Finally, when we finish, I share the presentation with students so they can consult it throughout the semester. The presentation works nicely for meet-the-teacher night, too!

After covering classroom procedures and rules, I show students a TED Talk. We watch The Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Adichie. My goal is to show students that I don’t have a predetermined idea concerning what they should write. This discussion takes the rest of the class period.

Establishing comfort and excitement precedents my other creative writing activities. Personalize your “vision” activities for your lessons in creative writing. Honestly, doing this pre-work builds relationships with students and creates a positive classroom atmosphere.

Creative Writing Lesson Day Two: Activating prior knowledge

Students possess prior knowledge concerning creative writing, but they might not consider that. Students should realize that they know what constitutes a great story. They might not realize that yet. An easy lesson plan for creative writing that will pay off later is to activate prior knowledge. Brainstorm creative, memorable, unforgettable stories with students. Share your thoughts too! You will start to build relationships with students who share the same tastes as you (and those that are completely different!).

Activation activity

During this activity, I want to see how students work together, and I want to build a rapport with students. Additionally, activating prior knowledge provides a smooth transition into other creative writing activities.

This creative writing activity is simple:

I ask students to tell me memorable stories—books, play, tv shows, movies—and I write them on the board. I add and veto as appropriate. Normally doing these classroom discussions, we dive deeper into comedies and creative nonfiction. Sometimes as we work, I ask students to research certain stories and definitions. I normally take a picture of our work so that I can build creative writing lessons from students’ interests.

This takes longer than you might think, but I like that aspect. This information can help me shape my future lessons.

With about twenty minutes left in class, I ask students to form small groups. I want them to derive what makes these stories memorable. Since students complete group and partner activities in this class, I also watch and see how they interact.

Students often draw conclusions about what makes a story memorable:

• Realistic or true-to-life characters.
• Meaningful themes.
• Funny or sad events.

All of this information will be used later as students work on their own writing. Many times, my creative writing lessons overlap, especially concerning the feedback from young writers.

Creative Writing Lesson Day Three: Brainstorming and a graphic organizer

From building creative writing activities and implementing them, I now realize that students think they will sit and write. Ta-da!  After all, this isn’t academic writing. Coaching creative writing students is part of the process.

Young writers must accept that a first draft is simply that, a first draft. Building a project requires thought and mistakes. (Any writing endeavor does, really.) Students hear ‘creative writing’ and they think… easy. Therefore, a first week lesson plan for creative writing should touch on what creativity is.

Really, creativity is everywhere. We complete a graphic organizer titled, “Where is Creativity?” Students brainstorm familiar areas that they may not realize have such pieces.

The ideas they compile stir all sorts of conversations:

• Restaurants
• Movie theaters
• Amusement parks

By completing this graphic organizer, we discuss how creativity surrounds us, how we can incorporate different pieces in our writing, and how different areas influence our processes.

Creative Writing Lesson, Days Four and Five: Creative Nonfiction

Students need practice writing, and they need to understand that they will not use every word they write. Cutting out lines is painful for them! Often, a lesson plan for creative writing involves providing time for meaningful writing.

For two days, we study and discuss creative nonfiction. Students start by reading an overview of creative nonfiction . (If you need mentor texts, that website has some as well.) When I have books available, I show the class examples of creative nonfiction.

We then continue through elements of a narrative . Classes are sometimes surprised that a narrative can be nonfiction.

The narrative writing is our first large project. As we continue, students are responsible for smaller projects as well. This keeps them writing most days.

Overall, my students and I work together during the first week of any creative writing class. I encourage them to write, and I cheer on their progress. My message to classes is that their writing has value, and an audience exists for their creations.

And that is my week one! The quick recap:

Week One Creative Writing Lesson Plans

Monday: Rules, procedures, TED Talk, discussion.

Tuesday: Prior knowledge—brainstorm the modeling of memorable stories. Draw conclusions about storytelling with anchor charts. Build community through common knowledge.

Wednesday: Graphic organizer.

Thursday and Friday: Creative nonfiction. Start narrative writing.

Students do well with this small assignment for the second week, and then we move to longer creative writing assignments . When classesexperience success with their first assignment, you can start constructive editing and revising with them as the class continues.

These creative writing activities should be easy implement and personalize for your students.

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Are you interested in more creative writing lesson ideas? My Facebook page has interactive educators who love to discuss creative writing for middle school and high school creative writing lesson plans. Join us!

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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.

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!

How to Plan Your Writing Workshop

Planning your Writing Workshop is no easy feat.  With a limited amount of time and a wide range of moving parts, having a great game plan is essential to teach writing well.  In the past two weeks of the Summer Writing Workshop Series , we have covered how to keep your students engaged and tackled the issue of time  in Writing Workshop .

Okay, so you’ve got engagement strategies up your sleeve and you are not going to let time get in your way.  So what’s next? What are you teaching? How are you teaching it? When are you teaching it?

Today, we are diving into 5 strategies to plan for Writing workshop.  These strategies are the overarching elements that drive everything you do in Writing Workshop. If you are looking for the specifics of each writing unit, including teaching points aligned to the standards, that would be in each of  my writing units .  

Let’s get started, shall we?

1// Identify your Core Beliefs and Values as a Writing Teacher.

A few years ago, I attended a 3 day summer workshop at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and Journalism in St. Petersburg, Florida .  This workshop was ran by Roy Peter Clark and the amazing ELA department in our school district.  The purpose of this institute was to help us implement new-to-us Common Core standards (now Florida standards) without losing all that we already KNOW about teaching Reading and Writing.  At the very beginning of this workshop, we collectively created a list of what we knew needed to be happening in our classrooms to teach writing.  I am sharing this list with you below because standards may change, assessments may change, administration may change, curriculum may change, and ,of course, our students may change.  However, it is essential that we have sound and steadfast philosophies about teaching writing. When we are faced with any of these changes, we can always make decisions based on our core beliefs about teaching writing.  Therefore, we can always do what is best for our students.

Core Beliefs & Values

These core beliefs are the foundation of my classroom and basis for every writing unit.

• Students should read & write everyday.
• Students should see you writing.
• Drafting & revising helps us grow.
• We talk about our writing.
• Writing is connected to reading.
• We help students recognize the value of their own experiences. (reading is a source, their life experiences are a source for writing)
• Read like a writer. How does the author do what they do?
• We should know our audience and purpose for writing.
• Keep students OFF teacher welfare. (Donald Graves)
• Help students see the world as a storehouse for writing ideas.
• Share writing with peers and other audiences- PUBLISH the work of every student writer.
• Students should know what they are doing well.
• Students need to see us get excited!
• Conferring/Talking about reading and writing one-on-one or in a small group.

Why does this matter?

I think it is really important that we identify our core values and beliefs as teachers .  We need to know what we stand for and value in our teaching.  We have to remember that WE are teaching our students. Not anything or anyone else.  I invite you to be empowered by that and remember how much power you do have in your classroom.  When we identify our core values and beliefs, we can use this to guide our instruction and daily decision-making.

2//  Identify Writing Goals for Your Students

Before setting out to think about how you plan your year in writing (OR maybe your district tells you exactly what you are going to do), think about what goals you want for your students by the end of the year. What matters most to you? What results do you think are really important in terms of your students’ writing?

For me, it has never been based on numbers.  Sure, I want my students to write well and achieve a fantastic score on our state assessment.  But that number is NOT going to drive my passion and enthusiasm during my daily writing lessons.  Moreover, I cannot let that number determine my worth as a writing teacher or my students as writers.  We are more than a number.

So when I ask, “What goals do you want for your students?”- I don’t mean just numbers.  I mean how do you want them to feel about writing? Personally, this is what matters most.  I want my students to feel confident about writing, to enjoy the process, and eager to learn new things about writing.  

Of course I know that we also need to be setting tangible goals based on specific skills.  You know the deficits that come into your classroom every year that make teaching writing difficult for your particular grade level.  Let’s identify what goals YOU have for YOUR classroom. I could write all day about what I think is important, but this isn’t about me, it’s about YOU and YOUR students.

Let’s try this out by answering the questions below.

• List 3 (or more) Core Beliefs you have about writing. You can also choose your top 3 from my list.
• What do you want your students to feel, think, or believe about writing?
• Do you think you have achieved this goal in the past?  
• What writing skills do you think are the most important for your grade level?
• Based on classroom, district, or state assessments, what goals do you have for your students?
• What type of mindset do most of your writing students have? (i.e. enthusiastic about writing, lack confidence in their writing, indifferent about writing, do not seem to enjoy writing)
• What prerequisite writing skills seem to be lacking when students get to your grade level?

To make this even more fun and interactive, I’ve created a Google form for these questions.  Don’t worry, I am the only one that will see your responses. What you share will only be used to create more content and resources to meet your needs.  

Answer using a Google Form: 

https://goo.gl/forms/KzzUBxeBUiog4Ucw2

Now, you might be thinking, “Whoa, Jessica! That’s way too personal.”  I feel you. I am a pretty private introvert myself. Just get out a notebook and your favorite Flair pen to jot down your responses to the questions.    

Either way, just take the time to think about what is most important to you and your students when it comes to writing.

3// Begin with End in Mind

This is one of my favorites habits from Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People .

Anytime we are trying to make a plan to do something, we can begin with the end in mind.  So what does that look like in writing?

If we consider our core values/beliefs and writing goals, then we can use this to guide our planning throughout the year.  Your core values and beliefs guide your day-to-day lessons and conversations with your students. It’s like your moral compass when teaching writing.

What does that look like for each unit? Think about what end goal you have for your students at the end of each unit.  What is the endgame? Most likely, it is some form of published writing. Maybe it’s an opinion essay, a personal narrative story, or an informational article.  Whatever type of writing that you want your students to do, provide a model at the beginning of the unit to study the structure and characteristics of that type of writing.  

This is where mentor texts come in.  Nothing gets students more excited about a certain type of writing than by sharing a picture book as a mentor text.   To do this, choose a mentor text that is an exemplar of the type of writing you will teach. This text will be used throughout the unit to teach specific writing skills.  

For example, when I am teaching Opinion Writing, I use A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black .  Not only is it hilarious, but it is a perfect model of the opinion essay structure. He gives his opinion and supports it with reasons and evidence.

Studying  a mentor text is typically the first lesson in the unit.  Below I have identified the steps I use when introducing a mentor text.

Reading a Mentor Text Steps:

1// Read once for the gist.  (Let students simply enjoy the book, but tell them this is a specific example of the type of writing they will do.)

2// Read a second time with purpose. Before reading, tell your students that they will be reading the text a second time to look specifically for characteristics of [insert genre].

3// Create a Chart.  You can create this chart as you have students take notes in their notebook, or use a pre-made chart. (see below)

Opinion Writing (Grades 3-5)

Narrative Nonfiction (3rd Grade)

Personal Narrative Writing Unit

This chart was created after a discussion to highlight the certain skills.  We had to move VERY quickly through this unit, so I made a chart specific to the needs of my classroom.  This went along with the text Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts.

4//  Yearly Planning

This next section truly depends on where you teach.  I’ve taught in some places where the teacher has a lot of control and flexibility over the yearly scope and sequence of their writing.  I’ve taught in other places where you are expected to follow the district scope and sequence. So, I am going to address this area of planning your Writing Workshop by what I would do in an ideal world.  

Begin with Personal Narrative

Ideally, you want to start off with Personal Narrative.

Narration is the art of storytelling.  Besides the fact that half our Reading Standards are based on literature (STORIES) , storytelling is part of the human experience.  The art of storytelling is found in social, academic, and career situations.  I’ve got a whole blog post planned and entitled The Importance of Teaching Narrative .  I feel compelled to share these thoughts and points because I teach 4th Grade in Florida.  This is the first year students take the Writing Florida State Assessment.

It’s a big deal.  

However, the Informational and Opinion Writing Standards are the only standards assessed.  So, guess what is all too often not taught? You guessed it- Narrative.

Personal narrative is a way to not only build community, but it gets students engaged and excited about writing right from the start.  They care about what they are writing because it is about them .  

It is a natural human instinct to want to be heard, to share your story.  Look at the world of social media.  People are all over Instagram stories, IGTV, Facebook stories, and YouTube. No matter where our technology goes, most developments are made to deepen the human experience.  People want to share their stories. You know who else wants to share their stories? Your students. (Whether they know it or not.)

The first unit of the year would be Launching Writing Workshop. (coming soon to a shop near you!)  The purpose of this short, 10 day unit is to establish routines, procedures, and build community.  Throughout this unit, students will complete their first personal narrative so that they can get the overall writing process and understand how writing workshop goes.  As the teacher, you can also see what students are able to produce. This will also help you go deeper with craft in the second unit: Personal Narrative.   (NOTE: This unit is being updated on August 1st.)

While teaching Narrative, I also like to align the writing standards to the reading standards.  This helps to make connections across Reading and Writing. It doesn’t always fit perfectly, but when I can make it work, I go for it!  Below you can see two examples of how you might plan out your year trying as best as possible to align the Reading and Writing standards.

5// Step by Step

Last week we learned a writing lesson from Ant-Man.  This week our writing teacher comes from New Kids on the Block.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay6GjmiJTPM

This song always gets in my head when I teach my students this lesson.  As writers, we go STEP by STEP in the process. No matter what genre of writing I am teaching, we follow the same process.

STEP by STEP

• Get Ideas/Unpack a Prompt/Set a Purpose (if writing in response to text)  
• Make a Plan
• Write a Lead/Introduction
• Draft (Use Transition Words, Craft Moves, Organized into Paragraphs)
• Write an Ending
• Revise (Does my writing make sense? Is this my best work?)
• Edit (Spelling, Punctuation, Capitalization)

For each of these parts, I would absolutely have different teaching points on the genre and we go into depth on how to use various writing techniques. However, this is the very basic process we follow in writing.  Having a clear vision and structure helps students see the parts of their writing and make decisions about their next steps.

( Sidebar: Last year, I played the beginning of this song for my class to teach this lesson.  One of my girls knew exactly who this was.  Other guesses included Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and the Beatles.)

6//  Your Writing Notebook

Setting up YOUR model notebook before you begin any writing unit will help you establish clarity and confidence in your own teaching, which will lead to your students’ success.  In reality, you might not have time to set the whole unit up at once inside your notebook. Honestly, I don’t have that much creative brain capacity to sit and do it all at once.  Plus, I find things along the way that I want to add in, change or make even better. Instead, I sit down a few times throughout the unit to reflect on what I’ve taught, the students sitting in front of me, and where I need to go next.  A huge benefit of setting up your notebook with examples of your own writing is that you can continue to use the notebook year after year. Sure you may have multiple notebooks with new writing, but that just means more material to teach from! 🙂

Using your Notebook as a Mentor Text

One of the best ways that I learned how to teach writing was by going through the process myself.  If there was something I was having specific difficulty with teaching, I knew I needed to go through that process so that I could understand the struggles my student would go through, but also how to push through the struggle.  

We don’t have to be the most amazing expert writers in the world.  We just have to be a step ahead of our students. In fact, the struggles we go through make us better teachers.  They need to see us make mistakes, play with words, and the thought struggle that goes with creating quality writing.  That’s part of the process and they need to see it. Be okay with not knowing answers. Your writing doesn’t need to be perfect.  In fact, it shouldn’t be. What a great way to model revision work!

To help myself (and my students) stay organized, I try to title what I am teaching on a specific page or on the page to the left so that I can go back to that again and again.

I hope you have found some great value in these planning strategies for Writing Workshop.  At the very least, I hope you enjoyed listening to some NKOTB!

If you are looking for more specific support in teaching writing, be sure to get on the waitlist for our Writing Membership site coming August 2018.

I’ll see you next week when we dive into one of my FAVORITE topics: How to Integrate Writing into Content Areas

Until then, you can find me on Instagram and Facebook. 

You’ve already signed up for the Free Resource Library , right? 😉

If not, be sure to sign up HERE!

Let me know in the comments:

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Teaching with Jennifer Findley

Upper Elementary Teaching Blog

Types of Writing Lessons (Writing Workshop Ideas)

I recently spoke with a teacher who asked me what writing program I use to teach writing. When I told her I didn’t use a program, she was a little shocked and wanted to know how I knew what to teach.

As I explained to her how I generate my lesson topics, I realized this might be something useful to share on my blog. Keep reading for three types of writing lessons, how I generate those lessons, and tips for how you can do the same.

Management Writing Mini-Lessons:

Management writing lessons are basically the procedures and expectations you want the students to follow during writing time. I teach the bulk of these lessons in the first month of school and then revisit them (or new ones) as needed based on my students’ writing behaviors.

Here are some examples of management writing lessons:

• Materials and how to use them
• Using writing forms
• Using the computer to publish
• Expectations during independent writing
• Expectations for self evaluation of writing
• Peer conference procedures and expectations
• Procedures for editing and the different ways to edit (partner, self, teacher)
• Using editing and revising checklists
• Procedures for requesting a conference
• Ways to publish drafts
• Any other areas of concern based on your students’ writing behaviors

Here is an example of my writing expectations for independent writing time. For the lesson, I have this particular anchor chart prepared ahead of time. The students and I go over each expectation, discuss why it is important, and how we can ensure we meet those expectations.

Where do I get more ideas for management writing mini-lessons?

To get more ideas for management writing lessons, I observe my students during writing time and look for behaviors that need to be stopped or procedures that need to be put in place. Here are some ideas:

• Do your students constantly ask you how to spell words? Teach a mini-lesson on spelling strategies for unknown words.
• Do your students get off-task frequently? Teach a mini-lessons showing them how to stay on-task during writing time.
• Do your students not know what to do when they finish a writing draft? Teach a mini-lesson of the necessary procedures for when students finish a draft.

Craft Mini-Lessons:

The craft mini-lessons are the lessons aligned to my standards. These lessons are how I actually explicitly teach my students genres of writings and the craft of writing in each genre.

Here are some craft mini-lesson ideas that I do in the first month to generate ideas for writing:

• What do I write about?
• Using seed notebook for ideas (Click here to read about how we use writing lists to help generate writing topics)
• Updating seed notebook
• Pulling from personal experiences for writing
• How do writers choose topics?
• Why do writers write?
• Expanding ideas from seed journal

Here are some craft mini-lessons that I do throughout the year for the genres I teach:

• Writing for specific audiences
• Writing from specific points of view
• Writing for specific purposes
• Small moments
• Adding details
• Sequencing ideas
• Leads and conclusions
• “Show, Not Tell”
• Transitions
• Developing characters
• Adding voice
• Strong descriptions
• Word choice
• Adding figurative language
• Adding sound devices
• Research skills
• Adding research into writing
• Writing in different genres

Where do I get more ideas for craft writing mini-lessons?

One strategy that I use to come up with craft mini-lessons is to analyze released writing samples from my state assessment. As I analyze the writing samples, I take note of what the students did well in the samples that my students are not doing well.

Another strategy is to use your student writing to reflect on what the students need to include in their writing to advance their writing to the next level. For example, one year I had students who were constantly making lists in their writing. After noticing this, I taught the students a mini-lesson on how to avoid making lists and instead expand on the details (or leave them out if they are not relevant to advancing the plot).

Conventions Mini-Lessons:

Convention mini-lessons are just what they seem: lessons you teach your students to improve their writing conventions, such as:

• Spelling Patterns
• Paragraphing
• Grammar Rules
• Punctuation
• Capitalization

For a more detailed list of ideas for convention mini-lessons, click here to grab the checklist of ideas shown below.

Where do I get more ideas for conventions writing mini-lessons?

To get ideas for my convention lessons I use my students’ writing to guide me and my language/writing standards. As you are reading/grading your students’ writing, look for patterns in their errors. If you see something that the majority of your students are doing incorrectly or not even doing at all, jot down a note and add that to your mini-lessons for the next week.

While I am reading my students’ essays, I use this printable to help me jot down ideas for convention lessons. Click here to grab a copy.

Do you use a writing workshop model to teach writing? Do you have other strategies for generating writing lesson ideas than the ones I use? Let me know in the comments!

Share the Knowledge!

Reader interactions.

December 31, 2016 at 5:08 am

Thank you so much for all the wonderful ideas. There is always so much to teach and do, it is awesome to have organized way of teaching like yours that will definitely help me and I am sure many orhers too.

December 31, 2016 at 11:36 am

Hi Nagihan, Thank you for your comment! I am so glad this will help you! It really helped streamline my writing instruction for sure.

August 27, 2017 at 8:13 pm

I was wondering if you had the lesson plans and printables for all your lessons. I would like to purchase.

September 2, 2017 at 4:35 pm

Thank you so much! I’m teaching writing for the first time to and I’ve loved all of your posts! They are so detailed and specific, when you spoke on a previous post about the specificities of your 9 week units I got a much better sense of what to do, making planning so much easier! I was hoping I could see more about how you ask students to organize their mini lesson section in their notebooks, mine always seem so messy and hard to find. Do you use a table of contents? Thank you again for everything!

September 18, 2017 at 9:22 pm

This is my first year ever teaching ELA (5th Grade) and this blog is saving my life!

October 24, 2017 at 7:40 am

thanks for the information is very helpful to be read and known

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Welcome Friends!

I’m Jennifer Findley: a teacher, mother, and avid reader. I believe that with the right resources, mindset, and strategies, all students can achieve at high levels and learn to love learning. My goal is to provide resources and strategies to inspire you and help make this belief a reality for your students.

Planning a Dynamic Writing Workshop

Planning for and Implementing a Dynamic Writing Workshop:

How to create and implement a writing workshop that adapts to your writers’ needs.

This is a free Writing Workshop plan for your classroom created by The Curriculum Corner.

We have been thinking a lot about Writer’s Workshop and its flow in the classroom.  We are often asked about the best way to make all the pieces fit together while still providing the fluidity and individual instruction that needs to occur for writing in a classroom full of diverse needs.

In the summer of 2018 we had the opportunity to present our ideas for creating a dynamic writing workshop at NAESP in Orlando. Below we are sharing the resources we created along with other relevant materials.

It All Centers Around Conferencing

Conferencing is at the heart of a workshop approach and is what provides you with the vital information for your instruction.  The knowledge you gain from conferring with each of your students independently is the basis for the decisions you make for upcoming mini-lessons, small group instruction and even future one-on-one conferencing.   It is this same information that changes so often as children grow and develop as writers at various paces.

The following flow chart is something we came up with to help new teachers (or those new to Writer’s Workshop) think about the process and flow of Writer’s Workshop as they start to plan and work through what this will look like within their classrooms.

Conferencing is the center of everything you do in workshop.  It not only affects your future instruction, but is what you analyze and reflect upon as you make daily decisions about your students and create action plans to meet the needs of the writers in your classroom.

As a workshop teacher, your goal is to keep your planning and instruction dynamic. This will allow you to provide continuously for your individually changing student needs. Below you will find our resources to assist you in this.

Implementing Your Writer’s Workshop

These resources might be useful to you if you’re wanting to start your journey with writer’s workshop or even if you have been doing workshop, but wanting to restructure things a bit.

Writing Conference Guide (click title to access resource)

If you (or even your student teachers) are new to conferencing and need a little guidance during your conferencing we have JUST what you need.  This resource contains guiding questions for the six traits of writing to help you get the most out of your one-on-one time with students.

Writing Management Binder   (click title to find resource)

 There is much information to record and so much data you may need to keep to track your students’ progress.  This collection of resources may help in that process.

Writing Continuums (click title to find resource)

Use these as a way to determine where your writers fall in their writing.

Writing Strategy Menus (click title to find resource)

This collection of strategy menus is designed to help you assist your students when you find needs either during conferencing or whole group instruction.

Launching Writer’s Workshop   (click title to find resource)

Some of you may need a way to start the next school year of writing instruction in a different way.  This full set of launching lessons may help you to establish procedures and get your writers started in a structured way so that your workshop is successful.

Setting Expectations

Keep in mind that the time you spend at the beginning of the year preparing your students and communicating your expectations will pay off. Making sure your students know procedures will save you valuable time as you are doing the important work of conferencing with your students.  It is well worth the time it takes at the beginning of a school year.

Resources for Training

If you are new to writing workshop and looking to learn along with your staff, we have created a PowerPoint and accompanying resources to help you work through the process. These materials are ones we shared at NAESP during our session on writing workshop.

Here you will find our PowerPoint that contains the key points: Presentation

Resources we have created for planning and record keeping: Resources

Student writing samples for teacher practice: Samples

Interested in having us guide your teachers through this process? We are available for school trainings! Please contact us at [email protected] to learn more.

Writing Workshop Units of Study

After launching your workshop and getting your students into the day to day understanding of how workshop works, you may want to have some ideas for writing lessons and meeting standards.  While we know that these lessons will most likely NEVER be followed exactly in the order they are written, they may provide you with some ideas and planning for your dynamic workshop.

It is suggested that you think about the standards you are required to teach along with your specific learners to choose lessons from these units as you teach these different types of writing.

You will also want to do as much collaborating as possible with grade level team members to get great ideas for addressing other standards or to help your students understand an important writing concept of skill as the need arises.  Your team’s PLC is the best time to look at data and information about students collectively and make decisions for your own classroom based on the team’s brainstorming and problem solving efforts.

Below you will find links to the writing units of study we have created over the years for various grade levels.  Each unit will contain lesson ideas and the resources needed to carry out the unit in your classroom. All of the units of study are free.

Units of Study for Writing Workshop

• Writing Personal Narratives
• Informational Text Writing
• How-To Writing Unit of Study
• Writing Like a Scientist
• Animal Research
• Punctuation
• Fantasy Writing
• Persuasive Writing
• “All About” Books (Informational text for younger authors)
• How-To Writing for Young Authors
• Opinion Writing for Intermediate Grades
• Writing Research Papers

Author Units of Study

A wonderful way to teach students about a particular type of writing is to immerse them into a particular author’s style of writing.  If you are looking to stand on the shoulders of famous writers, you might like the following units of study:

• Gail Gibbons

Other Useful Resources for Implementing Your Writing Workshop

In primary classrooms we always gave students the opportunity to write on different types of papers.  For our youngest writers, pre-made books is a great way to get them engaged, help them stay organized and provide for some structure as they are learning to write.  You can use the pages linked below to stand alone as options for your writers or you might choose formats that work best for your students and staple pages together to create those pre-made books.

• Lined Papers
• Lined Papers for Info Text
• Portable Word Walls

Getting Started with Writing Workshop & Word Study

Friday 6th of August 2021

[…] *Curriculum Corner also has some great resources for getting started with writing workshop HERE. […]

Launching Your Writer's Workshop **Updated** - The Curriculum Corner 123

Wednesday 10th of July 2019

[…] Planning a Dynamic Writing Workshop […]

Unit of Study: Personal Narratives - The Curriculum Corner 123

Tuesday 9th of July 2019

[…] If you are new to writing workshop, start here: Planning a Dynamic Writing Workshop […]

Back to School Lined Papers - The Curriculum Corner 123

Friday 21st of June 2019

[…] New to writing workshop? Start here: Planning a Dynamic Writing Workshop […]

Back to School Writing Interventions - The Curriculum Corner 123

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5 Writing Workshop Mini Lessons That Shouldn’t Be Skipped

January 12, 2022 | Leave a Comment

No matter what time of the year writing workshop starts, these are 5 writing workshop mini lessons that shouldn’t be skipped! I find that doing these lessons will start my workshop on the right foot and help students know all about my expectations.

Writing Workshop Mini Lesson #1: The Components of Writer’s Workshop

Before introducing the writer’s workshop model, plan out the pieces you’ll be using in your workshop. I modified my workshop slightly from the traditional model so that it skips the daily check in. 

Each day I cover a mini whole class lesson, independent writing time, and share time. My first mini lesson when I am starting writer’s workshop is to teach my class about each component. Sometimes it may be necessary to break it apart in several lessons (especially if you want to really focus on the dos and don’ts of each section).

I like to take my time and explicitly teach the roles of a student and the teacher (like in the Daily 5 process ). Going over exactly what I want it to look like helps minimize off task behaviors at the start.  Likewise, it’s important not to skip the step of what it shouldn’t look like. Not only do students find it pretty funny when they see off task behaviors modeled, but it really sticks in their memories.

Writing Workshop Mini Lesson #2: Writer’s Workshop Materials

The next important writing workshop mini lesson is teaching about the writer’s workshop materials and their appropriate uses. In my class we call these writing tools. This may feel like a silly lesson to teach but it’s important to teach expectations for using their supplies.

Things to consider when planning this lesson:

• Will students be allowed to color pictures heavily during each writing block?
• Will students be using pencils or pens for their writing?
• Will students use notebooks or folders to store their pieces?
• Where will they keep their daily materials?
• Where will they keep their revising and editing pens?
• Will they need highlighters?
• Will they be using loose leaf paper or a notebook? Spiral or composition?

My Writing Tools Set Up

Each answer to these questions will help you plan what to say during your lesson. For example, in my class students are only allowed to color pictures during the publishing phase. I chose this rule because we only have 45 minutes and it’s more important for them to be writing than working on coloring. This year I have chosen to use pencils for daily writing but most years I use pen. Writing in pen keeps students from agonizing over writing and erasing the same words.

Notebooks or Folders?

Students are provided a blue three-prong plastic folders with several page protectors. Inside the page protectors they are given an alphabet chart, blends and digraphs, and common rimes chart. I left one blank page protector that gets filled with their writing goals tracker once goals are created. They are also given a very slender bound notebook that we use for planning out our writing. This notebook is thin enough to be kept inside their folder along with any loose leaf writing papers.

Writing Tools Storage

Just like with the first mini lesson we are discussing dos and don’ts of handling the workshop materials and where they should be stored. This year with social distancing guidelines each student keeps their own folder in their desk. In prior years students turned in their folders at the end of each writing block and one student passed out their group’s folders.

I have a series of three metal bins (meant to be flower pots) that keep my black, blue, and red writing pens. Even though I have black pens I don’t often have students use them to write this year. Having them write in pen saves me from sharpening a ton of pencils each day. Since editing (red pens) and revising (blue pens) only happen every few weeks, I prefer to keep the pens out of their desks and on my writing center table. Unfortunately this year the table is not used except to hold my writing center cards and letter templates as well as my pen selection.

Writing Workshop Mini Lesson #3: Building Writing Stamina

My students now know what writer’s workshop should look like and how to use the tools appropriately. This means it is time for them to practice building up their writing stamina. Although this isn’t going to be a one and done type of writing mini lesson, it is an important one.

Just as readers need to build up their reading stamina, I feel the same is true for writers. My class seems to do really well with writing the whole time during independent practice, but if you are lucky enough to have a nice long writing block you will want to make sure you build up their practice time. 

Many years ago I used to have a good hour for my writer’s workshop. During those days I would have a second mini-lesson in the middle of our writing time. This way I could address immediate things I was seeing about sentence structure or punctuation. It was also another way to address what was going well with students applying the day’s lesson. Don’t be afraid to break up your writing block like this if you notice students getting squirrely halfway through.

When students work with a writing partner, they can also increase their stamina. It naturally takes longer to work on a writing piece when both partners need to share and work together. This brings me to the next mini lesson.

Writing Workshop Mini Lesson #4: Working with a Partner

I like to establish my writer’s workshop routines before I have students begin working with a partner. Once routines have been established then I’ll add writing partners into the mix. If I do it too early I might have some classroom management issues .

When planning your writing mini lesson, establish what you want partners to do. Will students have partners during independent writing time? Will students only be using partners when revising and editing?

Plan to provide several mini lessons on how to work with a partner. Now that students have had a lot of schooling impacted by Covid, it’s important to teach them the basics of how to work appropriately with each other. This might include things like sentence stems for questions to ask and how to respond, what help looks like (i.e. not doing everything for their partner but guiding them), and how to be a good listener.

Writing Workshop Mini Lesson #5: Compliments and Questions for Share Time

Share time is the last component of writer’s workshop and it’s the one I feel is the most important. Students get to see and hear examples of their peers’ writing. Many teachers use an author’s chair specifically for the purpose of this daily share time. I do not have space in my classroom so I just have students stand at the front of the room.

These one or two mini lessons should cover very similar topics as having a writing partner. In fact, many of the expectations for partners crossover to share time which makes it a perfect place to review and reinforce what students should do.

My share time is usually about 5 minutes tops since I only have a total of 45 minutes. If you have a little longer, pick mini lessons to teach about how to choose which partner goes first and how to offer specific feedback. I like to think of writing partners like mini coaches. They should be giving their partner suggestions for improvement but also a positive comment.

What are your go-to mini lessons when establishing your writer’s workshop?

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Shared Ideas

Creative Writing in the Natural World: A Framing

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To promote development, detail, and focus of ideas in students' writing, it sometimes helps to start with a fun, creative writing activity that encourages what you want to see in all of their writing. In this minilesson, students practice writing detailed, sensory-rich descriptions by framing a small piece of nature and freewriting about it. From this, students can develop a variety of types of writing including poetry, short stories, science writing, reflections, and other academic genres.

Featured Resources

• Literal vs. Figurative Language Guide
• Internet access and the Flip Book Interactive

From Theory to Practice

This lesson explores figurative language comparisons formally known as simile and metaphor; however, the focus of the lesson is on students' use of their their imaginations to describe their observations in writing rather than on the official terminology for language use. In Wondrous Words: Writers and Writing in the Elementary Classroom , author Katie Wood Ray advises, "Give it [the craft element you identify in a text] a name so you can refer to it easily in the future as you study craft and as you writing your own texts"; yet the name that students use need not be the formal, "correct" name (42). The formal name of the element simply detracts from the ways that writers work. As Ray explains, "What's important is that, in seeing it and naming it for yourself, you have a new vision of what's possible when you try to write well" (42). When we do use formal names for craft elements, best practice pairs such words with students' definitions of the elements. Ray and Lisa Cleaveland say, "We are careful to use the words most writers in the world use for the important concepts of writing . . . if we embed kid-friendly explanations of what they mean...we need not shy away from the words themselves" (98). Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

• A piece of loose paper, paper to take notes on, and a writing utensil (pen or pencil)

Preparation

• Scout out a good spot to take students outdoors on the school grounds, a place that preferably has grass or that feels somewhat “natural.” If such an area isn’t available, it is okay to do this activity on constructed spaces such as sidewalks, playgrounds, and even inside the classroom if absolutely necessary, but it’s best done outdoors.
• Prepare the Literal vs. Figurative Language Guide by making it into a transparency or making copies for each student.
• Test out the Flip Book Student Interactive .

Student Objectives

Students will:

• freewrite about a specific place that is framed by their piece of paper using imaginative and literal observations.
• identify nouns in their writing that they would like to focus on and develop further.
• write using specific sensory imagery and figurative language in order to accurately describe their framed “worlds.”

Session One

• Ask students to get out a loose piece of paper.
• Have them fold it in half at least once and tear or cut out the center. (Some students may want to fold it more than once in order to create an unusual shape. That’s okay.) The goal is to be left with a piece of paper with a hole in the middle of it like a frame. The frame can be of any shape or size.
• Explain that you will be taking the class outdoors and that each student will find a spot to place his or her frame. Also explain that students will pretend that what is inside the frame is the entire world, the only thing students will focus on. In their notebooks, students will freewrite about what they find in their frames. Encourage students to use their imaginations. Perhaps they’ll find a bug and write about it as a giant dinosaur or a talking creature. However they proceed, students should write as freely as possible to get as much detailed information down about their framed “worlds” as they can.
• Once students have found a place outdoors for their frames, give them ten to fifteen minutes to freewrite.
• Back inside the classroom, ask students to remind you what a noun is. Ask them why nouns are important in writing. How do they function in a sentence, for example? (One answer is that nouns help us know who or what a sentence is about. They are they focus, and they help us visualize ideas as we talk or write about them in any genre.)
• Have them read over their freewriting and underline three to five nouns that they would like to focus on.
• Collect students' freewriting to be returned in the next session.

Session Two

• Return students' freewriting from the previous session where they had finished by underlining three to five nouns to focus on.
• Ask students to list their five senses. Ask for a volunteer or two to provide one of their nouns. Use these to practice developing these nouns into fully described sensory experiences. Help students describe them using all five senses. Encourage imaginative leaps so students understand that their descriptions don’t have to be literal.
• At this point, discuss the difference between literal and figurative language, and explain that the goal is for students to describe their nouns using sensory detail and figurative language. Show students the Literal vs. Figurative Language Guide overhead or give them the handout. If the students were to write literal descriptions of their framed “worlds,” for example, they will simply write exactly what is in their frames (Grass looks green; sand feels rough; grasshoppers make a high pitched noise, etc.), but if they write figuratively, they will use their imaginations to describe their observations. This might include using similes, metaphors, hyperbole, and personification. For example, the grass looks like spiky green hair; sand is solid water; grasshoppers are fiddlers who play their legs, etc.
• Using the Flip Book Student Interactive , have students create a page for each of the three to five nouns they underlined. (Each student should complete at least three pages.) On each page, they will develop these nouns by adding sensory-rich, figurative descriptions of them in paragraph or poetry form. The goal is to describe each noun using as many of the five senses and as much figurative language as possible. Encourage students to be imaginative for this process. What might an ant sound like? How might a rock smell?
• Students may need to finish their Flip Books outside of class, or you might reserve some class time tomorrow to finish these up.
• Give students the opportunity to share their finished pieces with the class.
• Encourage students to develop their flip book pages further by illustrating them.
• Students might also use an additional page in their flip books to create a piece of writing such as a short story, poem, or reflection about the natural world. Encourage them to find connections between the nouns in their list. How might that list become one piece of writing instead of three to five separate pieces?
• Discuss ways students can use these writing techniques to improve other writing that they are doing. You might ask students to review one of their past writing assignments and underline places where they might add detail or figurative language in order to develop their ideas.

Student Assessment / Reflections

As long as students participate fully in the freewriting activity and complete at least three pages on their Flip Books, they should receive full credit for this activity. If you would like to turn the Flip Book into a graded assignment, you might require that each page include at least three sensory images and one instance of figurative language. Students might also earn credit by reading one of their pages aloud in front of the class.

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Poetry Center

Five Creative Writing Lesson Plans for Middle & High School Students

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 Workshop

This creative writing workshop activity also includes:.

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Looking for suggestions on how to organize a creating writing workshop? For topic suggestions appropriate for various grade levels? Check out a resource packet, designed for English language arts instructors, that is packed with ideas that may be incorporated into a course, a unit plan, or for a fun break from routine.

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Instructional ideas.

• Use as the basis of a summer writing seminar
• Incorporate these types of assignments in every instructional unit

Classroom Considerations

• Divided into sections, the packet includes materials for elementary, middle, and high school classes and general information on how to teach creative writing
• While all instructors can find some fresh ideas, the packet is most appropriate for those new to teaching creative writing
• Suggests using the six traits of writing as the basis of assessment
• The 35-page packet includes suggestions for how to teach creative writing to elementary, middle, and high school writers
• Topics appropriate for the various grade levels are included
• Contains few student examples
• While activities are suggested, no specific writing prompts are included
• No rubrics are provided
• Does not emphasize the writing process

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Are you looking for ideas to help your students become successful writers? This post outlines the table of contents for 30+ writing mini lessons that has proven to help students write effectively. It will provide you with creative ideas to teach students sentence structure, paragraph writing, and narrative writing. It will walk you through the writing process in a step-by-step order that scaffolds and builds upon each other. These ideas are ideal for any writing curriculum and writer’s workshop.

1. Writing Mini Lesson 1- Brainstorming for Interactive Notebooks

2. Writing Mini Lesson 2- Complete Sentences

3. Writing Mini Lesson 3- Fragments

4. Writing Mini Lesson 4- Run-On Sentences

5. Writing Mini Lesson 5- How to Teach Paragraph Writing

6. Writing Mini Lesson 6- Relevant Details

7. Writing Mini Lesson 7- Closing Sentences and Clinchers

8. Writing Mini Lesson 8- Table of Contents and Progress Grade for Notebooks

9. Writing Mini Lesson 9- The Writing Process

10. Writing Mini Lesson 10- 3 Steps to Prepare for Narrative Writing

11. Writing Mini Lesson 11- Prewriting for Narrative Writing

12. Writing Mini Lesson 12- Task, Purpose, Audience for Narrative Writing

13. Writing Mini Lesson 13- Setting Writing Goals

14. Writing Mini Lesson 14- Graphic Organizers for Narrative Writing

15. Writing Mini Lesson 15- Plot

16. Writing Mini Lesson 16- Writing an Introduction for a Narrative Essay

17. Writing Mini Lesson 17- Writing the Body Section of a Narrative Essay

18. Writing Mini Lesson 18- Building Suspense and Climax in a Narrative Essay

19. Writing Mini Lesson 19- Developing Characters in a Narrative Essay

20. Writing Mini Lesson 20- Dialogue in a Narrative Essay

21. Writing Mini Lesson 21- Writing the Conclusion of a Narrative Essay

22. Writing Mini Lesson 22- Writing a Rough Draft for a Narrative Essay

23. Writing Mini Lesson 23- Revising a Narrative Essay

24. Writing Mini Lesson 24- Revising a Narrative Essay- DELETE

25. Writing Mini Lesson 25- Revising a Narrative Essay- ADD- Transition Words

26. Writing Mini Lesson 26- Revising a Narrative Essay- REARRANGE

27. Writing Mini Lesson 27- Revising a Narrative Essay- EXCHANGE- Rockin Beginnings

28. Writing Mini Lesson 28- Million Dollar Words- WORD CHOICE

29. Writing Mini Lesson 29- Variety of Sentences

30. Writing Mini Lesson 30- Jammin Conclusion of a Narrative Essay

31. Writing Mini Lesson 31- Crafting a Title

32. Writing Mini Lesson 32- CUPS to Edit

33. Writing Mini Lesson 33- CUPS to Edit- Capitalization

34. Writing Mini Lesson 34- CUPS to Edit- Usage

35. Writing Mini Lesson 35- CUPS to Edit- Punctuation

36. Writing Mini Lesson 36- CUPS to Edit- Spelling

37. Writing Mini Lesson 37- Peer Reflections

38. Writing Mini Lesson 38- Final Copies

Check out my FREE writing masterclass! CLICK HERE .

DO YOU NEED HELP SETTING UP INTERACTIVE NOTEBOOKS?   CLICK HERE.

DO YOU NEED HELP SETTING UP YOUR WRITING CENTER? CLICK HERE .

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TEACHING THE CHARACTER TRAIT PERSEVERE

Teaching the character trait honesty.

Creative Writing Lesson Plans

Keep your class engaged with our creative writing lesson plans! Discover interactive lessons that encourage imagination and self-expression, crucial skills for effective writing. Help students write stories, poems, thank-you notes, and more such creative stuff! With clear learning objectives, fun writin ... Read more g prompts, and simple instructions, our creative writing lesson plans offer exceptional guidance to language arts teachers. Ready to build confident writers in your classroom? Start now for free!

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• Sentences (10)
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Rhyme Time Rendezvous Poetry Lesson Plan

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Book Builders: How-To Writing Lesson Plan

Learn to write a how-to book in this interactive lesson!

Invitation Innovation Lesson Plan

Learn to design an engaging birthday invitation in this interactive lesson.

Poetry Club Sparkle: An Interactive Learning Experience Lesson Plan

Explore the magic of poetry with our interactive lesson plan.

Poetry Playground Rhythm & Rhyme Lesson Plan

Explore the magic of poetry in this interactive lesson!

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An engaging lesson plan that explores the rhythm of poetry through singing.

Magic Wand Mystery: An Interactive Storytelling Workshop Lesson Plan

Engage in an interactive storytelling workshop with activities like narration building and rebus story.

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Eight Free Creative Writing Lessons

February 17, 2012 by Ami 17 Comments

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.

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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Slidesclass' Creative Writing Workshop

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Thanks to an amazing collaboration between professor Jose Antonio Cuenca Abela and Slidesgo, we have created this creative template. It is designed to teach a creative writing workshop, and you won't have to worry about anything, because it includes 100% real content: all the steps to write creatively, tables to organize your ideas, tips... And, in addition, you can find this content available in all Slidesgo languages. Check it out now!

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• Designed to be used in Google Slides, Canva, and Microsoft PowerPoint
• 16:9 widescreen format suitable for all types of screens
• Includes information about fonts, colors, and credits of the resources used
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