Lesson Plans: Creative Writing Class Midterm

I really like to use visual images to get students started with creative assignments. Giving them a starting point seems to take away some of the intimidation factor, in addition to providing some (often needed) inspiration.

Theme: Using Photography for Creative Writing

Preparation:

Teachers need to collect black and white “headshots” of various people. These can be historical images (only use photos of people the students would not be familiar with), snapshots, advertisements (without writing), little-known actors, or any other type of image the teacher can find.

You will need two copies of each photograph and should have the same number of photographs as you have students. Have a couple extra copies on hand in case there are an odd number of students and you need to use three of one photo.

Label each image with some type of “code” (not a name) so that the students can record which image they worked with.

Lesson One: Searching for Details

Use half of your photographs (for example, 2 copies of 20 different shots for a class of 40). Each student will be given one image so there are two copies of each photograph distributed. Try to separate the images around the room so that two of the same photographs are not near each other.

Have students “study” their images for 2 minutes before writing.

Brainstorm: Have students write 30 words describing the physical attributes of the person in their photographs. These words can be any part of speech and should be the first things that come to mind. (This is a good place to insert a grammar mini-lesson if you want to require a certain number of each part of speech.) Students should focus only on the physical characteristics of the person in the photograph.

Write: Have students create a poem from their lists of words. The poem may be created with any additional words, but MUST include the 30 words they brainstormed. Be sure each student puts the “code” on his poem so you can later match the poem to the image.

Pair & Share: Have each student pair up with the person in the room who has the same photograph. Have the paired students compare their poems. Once finished, have the pairs present their poems to the class and give a brief synopsis of what they found when comparing their poems.

Lesson Two: Inference

Distribute the second half of images (for example, 2 copies of 20 different shots for a class of 40). Each student will be given one image so there are two copies of each photograph distributed. Try to separate the images around the room so that two of the same photographs are not near each other.

Have students “study” their images for 2 minutes before writing.

Brainstorm: Have students write 30 words describing the personality traits of the person in their photographs. These words can be any part of speech and should be the first things that come to mind. (This is a good place to insert a grammar mini-lesson if you want to require a certain number of each part of speech.) They should focus on the perceived/inferred personality/mental characteristics of the person in the photograph, but should also extend to things like education level, career, family life, etc.

Write: Have students create a poem from their lists of words. The poem may be created with any additional words, but MUST include the 30 words they brainstormed. Be sure each student puts the “code” on his poem so you can later match the poem to the image.

Pair & Share: Have each student pair up with the person in the room who has the same photograph. Have the paired students compare their poems. Once finished, have the pairs present their poems to the class and give a brief synopsis of what they found when comparing their poems.

Reflection: Have each student reflect individually on the differences between the comparative processes when they were writing only about viewable physical characteristics versus inferred characteristics. Were there more or less differences between themselves and their partners in one case over the other? Why do they think that is?

Lesson Three: Dialogue

Redistribute the photographs the students used for Lesson Two. Have students review the photograph and their brainstorming and poems.

Write: Have students write one sentence this person might say.

Pair & Share: Have each student pair with a student who has a different photograph. Have the students share their poems and sentences from Lesson Two.

Write: Have the students develop a scene where the two people from the two photographs might interact with each other. Working with this scene, have them create a dialogue between the two characters. This may take the form of a poem or a short story, but it MUST include the original two sentences created by each student.

Present: Have students act out their dialogue, each student acting out the part of the person whose photograph they were originally working with.

Lesson Four: Final Project

Have students find photographs on the internet or in magazines to craft a creative writing piece. Their photograph may be of any subject, including people or not. But, it must be something that inspires them to write a work of poetry or fiction.

Once they have chosen an image, have them work through the steps practiced earlier:

Brainstorm #1: Have students write 30 words describing the physical elements apparent in the photograph. These words can be any part of speech and should be the first things that come to mind. They should focus on the physical aspects of the photograph.

Write #1: Have students create a poem from these lists of words. The poem may be created with any additional words, but MUST include the 30 words they brainstormed. Be sure each student attaches the original image to his poem.

Brainstorm #2: Have students write 30 words describing what they can infer from the photograph. These words can be any part of speech and should be the first things that come to mind. They should focus on anything not physically apparent in the photograph.

Write #2: Have students create a poem from these lists of words. The poem may be created with any additional words, but MUST include the 30 words they brainstormed. Be sure each student attaches the original image to his poem.

Write #3: Using writing exercises #1 and #2 from this lesson, have students write a poem or short story about the photograph they have chosen.

Present: The poems/stories may be presented orally with the image displayed during the performance, or they may be presented visually on a poster board or digital medium.