It was when I was in sixth grade that I fell in love with writing. We had been reading Greek mythology (still some of my favorite reading material) and as a supplementary activity my teacher asked us to create our own myths. We had to basically create a story describing the genesis of an object or idea. I chose to create the story of a rose (I was far more sentimental during those days). It was a story of a love affair between a beautiful woman and handsome man. I don't quite remember how the story went, but I do remember that the rose became a symbol for the couple's undying love. What can I say? Was it cliche? Yes. But, I was young and naive and loved the idea of love.
Despite the cliche plot, this activity awakened something inside of me that has yet to crawl back into its hole. I had such a wonderful time writing the story that I made everyone read it. My mom, my dad, even my cousin and his girlfriend. I wanted to share my writing experience with everyone that I knew (which at that time was not too many people). It was a turning point in my life. Writing was still challenging, but it also became fun. Writing was no longer something I had to do, it was something I wanted to do.
I still take the time to sit down every once in a while and just get words on a page. Sure, I write essays, papers, blogs, and lessons all of the time, but sometimes it is important just to write for the sake of writing, not for a specific purpose. This "free writing," as I like to call it, helps me in so many ways. It gives me time to reflect upon my life or just to engage with a creative outlet. It also gives me a forum to work my imagination - something we all need to work more often.
I share all of this with you because I have been pondering how I can help my students enjoy writing as much as I do. The writing that we engage in during a typical English class is formal because that is what is utilized in the collegiate and professional world. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of writing that makes students love the practice. I am well aware that there will always be those students that will never enjoy writing, just as I will never enjoy working out or watching golf. But, for those students who have a writer curled up inside, I want to help them set it free.
So, I am asking for your help. I want suggestions for ways that we can foster creative writing together. I am open to anything. More creative journals? Incorporation of a creative writing unit/project? Lay it on me. I am looking forward to your suggestions...
20 comments:
This is a hard suggestion to make! After taking time to think of one, my suggestion would be to have a free journal day more often. Instead of giving us, questions to ask and answer you can give us a topic and we can just express ourselves. Let our mind roam and see what comes out. That would be kind of interesting and more of a free writing. Along with free writing, a lesson on writing would be helpful. Projects wouldn't be too enjoyable, so I personally don't suggest that.
I write letters every so often to my boyfriend and I find it to help my creativity and structure a little. I won't be graded on those letters, so I can’t say if I'm actually improving, but what I can say is that I find writing less of a challenge when I am writing freely.
Although I do not like writing, I am excited when I write a really good essay or story and want to share it with everybody just as you did. I think what made me not like writing was the fact that my past teachers were not really good at giving us writing assignments so I never got the chance to practice. I think the blogs have helped us because most of us enjoy writing our new blog posts. One thing I think would help would be to help us learn how to start an essay topic. When I am given a free write, I simply do not have any idea of anything to write about. I'd like to learn more of how to incorporate my knowledge in writing and really getting my thoughts down efficiently on the page.
You're a very inteligent individual and i think that you should share some of your stories with us. I don't think that we should have a project because then we're being forced to do it, so we won't enjoy it as much. What i do think we should do is have days where we can work with each other to create our own free writing pieces. These blogs are really helping us to say what we feel.
I'm the type of person that likes writing when they like the topic. If I am familiar with or really love the topic than I am able to write without a problem. But usually I don't enjoy writing. My suggestion would be to have "free writing" more often rather than topics. Free writing allows us to write what ever we are feeling on paper and I like the idea of that.
I would suggest maybe having more creative writing journals every once in a while. I think that adding more creative writing pieces instead of the usual information based writing will give us a chance to show our more creative sides. I know that I would like to have a little more creative writing pieces to switch it up from the everyday assignments.
I myself have never been the fondest of writing. However, if I'm going to write something, I much prefer it not to be formal. I enjoy being asked to write journals on things usually dealing with your everyday life. This helps to allow me to discuss topic’s which are fairly easy to reflect on. In other words I love to talk about things in my past or present, and even goals in my future. Not only that, but I also enjoy writing about figurative stories. Being able to, in some ways, write your own book, seems pretty intriguing to me rather than reading someone else’s.
For these reasons, I would be quite pleased if you began to give us perhaps free writes every once and a while in our journals. It might even help to benefit the flow of our imaginations, if you assign us essays that can be composed of short stories of our own. This would help to give us a break from always writing about plain old essay prompt questions. I hope, as your student, I will begin to build somewhat of a love for writing. I already know that my writing skills have improved just from what you have helped to teach the students and me alone. And I'm sure that this improvement will help lead me towards more of a love for writing!
I find writing much easier when I am writing because I want to, not because I have to. Writing is definitely not my strong suit, I agree that lessons on the topic would be very helpful. More free write journals would be fun as well. When I get stressed out or very confused, I open a new word document and just start typing. Sometimes I like to just let my words flow straight from my noggin to my paper (or screen). I find that this helps me sort out my thoughts and relax.
Personally, I think that any writing assignment can be enjoyable to a specific student. It always depends on the student and how they feel about the subject.
You do a pretty good job in promoting creative writing, you have since the beginning. It really depends on whether the student wants it or not.
I would appreciate a good creative project, every now and then those can be nice. Don’t assign a completely free write but introduce a broad topic, maybe a controversial topic people can disagree on (arguments are good). Also I find it easier to write when I feel strongly about a certain subject.
I like the stories that you have shared with us in class, specifically this week. Sometimes reading something of such high caliber can be inspiring.
I enjoy writing, when I write for school I do a really sucky job and it really bothers me, I really want to enhance my writing skills and a project seems like a good way to do it, I kind of feel limited when I write journals in class because they're timed and the little box kind of creeps my out because I feel like I always write too little, and I can't tell.
I have an excellent idea to encourage creative writing in the class. My english teacher for my sophomore year always did this activity where a group of 5 students had to write a story together. However, there's a catch, each student has only 2 minutes to write something down on the paper and once the minute ends they must pass the paper to the next student in the group, and the new student must contribute to the story. At the end of the activity, each group would have a hilarious, and bizarre story. This activity really seemed to get the class going and it's an outstanding way to encourage us to use our imagination.
I have to admit I am one of those students you've mentioned in your a post, a student that will probably never find writing enjoyable. Just because I don't like writing doesn't me I don't like reading what other people have wrote. I think it would be cool and inspiring to hear some of the literature that you have created during class. I also agree with Ashley about the free journals, though I don't enjoy doing them I know it helps to improve me writing and show some of my creativity.
One thing that is very stressful with my writing is that it's so much harder to write about something I don’t like. There should be one day that you let us free write about any topic so we enjoy it. I think having blogs helps a lot. We get to see our other peers writing and improve ours.
Just like most kids, I detest writing when I am told to write about something specific. I sometimes feel like we just give fake answers to please the instructor, and am positive most kids do this. We write to please. However, I do enjoy writing when it is about my point of view on something I care about. Free writing is the only way I enjoy writing, and that is for sure. To incorporate more free writing in your class, the only thing that comes to mind is to have more free journals. This gives us a chance to free those thoughts that are in our head (Rodolfo) and also enjoy the art of writing.
I think that we should do a creative writing but in pairs so that we can improve our writing and have some new ideas. Also this will help us to see if we are making errors and your partner can tell us the errors and how to fix it. Also we can do some creative writing but with a genre like mystery or adventure. This will help us start and instead of doing a free write in which you can always do the same genre everytime you will have a spefic genre which will help you write different types of stories. This will make us a better overall writer.
I think that we have already been participating in more creative writing than ever before. Writing these blogs have fostered a creative side of me that I never knew I had. I enjoy writing about things that interest me such as guitars, music, and woodshop. When teachers tell me what to write it just makes it a chore and then you won't want to do it for fun. The journals are probably the best compromise for speaking your mind but also doing it in a fashion in which it pertains to intellectual literary topics. What we are currently doing I believe is enough.
I love writing short stories, for example what we did today was very creative and very fun. I agree with Ashely that we should sometimes write about anything. I loved what you did on the board, checking some essays, we should do that with the journals sometimes.
Well, for the first time, I'm finally enjoying writing in my English class. I believe our blog is a great way to do this already! Most of us, at least I believe, like writing our blogs, because it's an opportunity to write about what we like. So I find these things something great to promoting us to write more and enjoy it. I do agree on more creative journals, because it will help us foster more of an appreciation for writing. Allowing us to express ourselves freely everyday, will let us become more appreciative of writing and pushing us to write more.
Free journal days definitely will enable more creative writing. The freedom to choose what to write about is great. This is why I also think we should definitely be continuing our blogs.
My blog lets me broadcast my feelings on what I am thinking about pertaining my sports. I absolutely love this blog idea, and I can already see my writing start to grow.
Unfortunately, I despise writing with possibly as much as waking up early on a Saturday. I do it hesitantly. Why should I write it if I can just say it to you? I don't find it fun or interesting. I guess God left out the writing gene when he was creating me.
Personally, I dislike writing. I don't like writing but I will do it if a grade depends on it. Just like you hate wroking out, I hate writing, no offense. I have to admit that sometimes when I am reading one of my classmates papers, I tend to get jealous and frustrated, because I wish I could write as good as some of them do. Although I don't like writing, I do admire the people that write, because I think it takes a lot of effort and creativity on their part. I am more of a reader. I love reading stories, or any kind of reading material written by someone else.
I don't really have any suggestions as to what would make me more interested in writing. I think that no matter what the topic is, it is still writing, and I don't like writing. One thing that I would like to suggest is that you don't give us anymore "free journal day." I know it may sound weird, but the reason for this is that when I'm not giving guidelines to follow or questions to answer, I find myself lost. I completely blankout and I have nothing to write about. I would much rather have you give us certain instructions on what we should write. I'm not a "free writer," I like to write in response to something else.
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