Creative Writing Lesson Plans Middle School

7 Creative Writing Lesson Plan Ideas

Sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge to teach young minds how to think and write creatively. In this instance, a creative writing lesson plan with lots of different ideas can help. The key to creativity is simplicity. If you keep your lessons simple, then you will be able to get through to your students.

student creative writing assignment

Cover What Creative Writing Is

Before starting any of these lesson plans, it's essential to provide students with a definition of creative writing and offer them several examples of different creative writing types. This gives them a basic understanding of creative writing before diving in.

Brain Scrambler Lesson Plan

When introducing creative writing, it's vital to get the creative juices flowing. This warm-up activity can work for middle and high school students.

Warm-Up

This lesson works as a great warm-up or daily drill to rev up the creative juices and get students working proactively.

Give students three minutes to write whatever is on their minds without really thinking about it.
At the end of the three minutes, collect all of the entries and randomly select several students to disclose what they wrote about.
Each student has about 30 seconds to discuss what they wrote and why they wrote it.

Activity Instructions

With the warm-up out of the way, students can turn their brainstorming session into something more substantial.

Challenge the students to turn what they wrote in their brain scramble into a story, poem or another creative writing piece.
Give them 30 or so minutes to create their writing.
Assist as needed.

Five-Sentence Paragraph Lesson Plan

This will require discipline and likely take the students the duration of the period to complete.

Activity Instructions

This lesson plan can work great as an individual or group activity for middle school to high school students.

Students are to write a five-sentence paragraph.
The catch is: they cannot repeat any word or contraction twice, and, unlike the Brain Scrambler, the five-sentence paragraph will be required to be complete with a theme that keeps the sentences interwoven.
The five-sentence paragraph must make perfect sense. This will be a challenge because the students will need to tap into their vocabularies and their ability to describe something so that it makes sense.

Critique and Feedback

Once the students have accomplished this task, you can read the paragraphs to the class without divulging the student author's name. Get feedback on what the students think makes sense.

Activity Instructions

Have students review a list of situations to which they will need to write a two-sentence response. An example of a situation that the students would need to respond to is as follows:

You are lost in the desert with nothing to eat but sand and tumbleweed. How do you feel?
You are a 10-year-old child, and it is your first day at a new school. How do you feel?
Relate a train ride in New York to peace of mind.

Each response should be completed in two sentences only and requires students to think carefully and creatively to arrive at a good answer.

Critique and Discussion

Read a few of the sentences out loud to the class. Allow them to discuss the answer. Work together to provide positive feedback on what worked in the piece, along with changes to improve it.

Obfuscatory Sentences Lesson Plan

In this creative writing lesson, students learn how to recognize which sentence(s) are lacking content.

Activity Instructions

This lesson plan activity works well as a group activity. However, you can mold it to best fit with your class.

Write out a long sentence that has no apparent meaning.
The students will discuss the sentence amongst themselves and develop sentences related to what you wrote that do have a semblance of meaning.

Critique and Feedback

After approximately 15 minutes, you should have the students tell you if the sentence you wrote has meaning and present to you and the class an original sentence with meaning. Discuss as a class the meaning of the different sentences. Explore how different groups took a different approach to adding meaning to the sentence.

A Day In the Life Of Lesson Plan

For this lesson, your students need a good understanding of what makes a good story, in addition to creative writing.

Lecture

Start by reviewing with students the different parts of a story. Focus on what makes a good story. Have students provide examples of good stories. When you feel they have a good understanding of story parts, start the activity.

Activity Instructions

This activity can take different forms, depending on the level of your students. You might try this as an individual activity or have them work in pairs.

Have students choose an object in the room (pen, pencil, book, ruler, or whiteboard).
It's important to choose a mundane object.
After selecting their object, have students write an adventure story from the perspective of the object.
Give students 30-45 minutes to create a short story from the perspective of their object.
Provide students struggling with different scenarios to consider.

Critique and Feedback

Choose a few to read out loud and allow students to ask questions. Discuss what worked well in the stories and what could have been improved.

Images & Poetry Lesson Plan

For this lesson plan, you need to provide students with several different poetry styles, poetry examples and an image of a path.

Lecture

For this activity, you need to have examples of different poem types like classic and modern poems, Shakespearean poems, haiku, and more. The key is to allow students to see the variety available.

Begin the lesson by defining poetry and the types of poetry.
Show different types of poetry examples.

Activity Instructions

Once students have an understanding of poetry, show the image of the path.

Have students create a poem in any style based on the path.
Challenge students to consider the image and the meaning in it.
After 30 minutes, allow a few students to read their poems out loud.

Discussion

After the readings, have students discuss their poems by asking the following questions:

How was each student's take on the poem unique?
Did they use their imagination to see beyond just the image itself?

Collaborative Story Creation Lesson Plan

This lesson can be fun for students since it's all about working together to create a cohesive story.

Activity Instructions

Let students know they are going to work together to create a 2-3 paragraph story.

Give each student about 5 minutes to think of a story starter.
Have them write one to two sentences of their story.
Each student must trade their paper with a student.
Allow them a few minutes to read the story and write 1-2 more sentences.
Continue this process for three more rotations.
Return each story to the original student.

Discussion

Have students discuss how their story changed or morphed based on the different additions. Was the story different or the same as what they'd imagined?