Children love to use their imaginations as they create through writing. Once a teacher that is teaching creative writing prepares students for a writing activity, she simply needs to step back and allow their creative juices to flow. The following are five strategies that will enable a teacher to start students off on the right foot.

1. Free writing: This tool is used to get the students writing without the inhabitions that would put a damper on the students’ creativity. A free write can be about a topic suggested by the teacher or on a student-generated topic.

Students don’t need to worry about grammar or punctuation while free writing. This activity is a great way for them to come up with story ideas, or to get a start on a more involved writing assignment. They can use the free-write as a guide for further work.

2. Working in groups: Once a piece is written, students can read their work aloud to each other. Their peers can give suggestions on grammar, content and anything that doesn’t make sense. Students could also work in groups on a collaborative piece– this is a great vehicle for writing poetry and skits. To take this activity one step further, a teacher could ask the students to act out a play as a group for their class.

3. Writing prompts: When a writing prompt is given as part of teaching creative writing, it can be a question, in the form of a picture or object, a beginning sentence, an invitation to remember when…, a detailed setting, or a phrase or idea.

Some examples of writing prompts for elementary-aged children are: “What is your favorite animal and why?”, “Pretend you are at the circus…Describe what you see, smell and hear”, “Imagine creating an invention– how would it work? What would it do?”, “My favorite day of the year is…”, “If you could do one thing to make the world a better place what would it be and why?” This should be a free writing exercise, allowing the children to use their imaginations.

4. Journaling: This activity can be an on-going one that is practiced at the beginning of each class. Teachers may ask students to journal the traditional way, or encourage them to write poetry, story ideas, etc. Teachers must make sure that the journals are kept privately so that the students will feel free to write informally. Journals are in no way meant to be a formal writing tool—they should not be graded or discussed during class.

5. Rough draft through final copy: When giving a formal writing assignment, one should first ask for a rough draft. In the rough draft, the student does not have to pay close attention to the grammar or punctuation. The point is for him to get his ideas down on paper—much like free writing. The student may want to skip lines on the paper while writing to leave room for additions and corrections.

It is most helpful for the students to read their writing aloud as this will make it easier to detect errors. After all corrections are made, the final copy must be written. The final copy should be single spaced, grammatically correct, contain correct punctuation and capitalizations, have a beginning, middle and end, and be well presented. The student should be left feeling proud of her work and ready to share it with others.

While there are many ways to go about teaching creative writing to children, the five strategies above should give teachers a good place to start. Free writing, journaling and writing prompts are all non-threatening ways to get students thinking and writing. Working in groups helps students to critique others’ work, or to write a piece collaboratively.

Writing a rough draft and then re-working and correcting the piece into a final copy teaches students the steps of the writing process, how to edit their own work, and what a finished piece of writing should look like. Students should be given the chance to express themselves through writing and to be proud of themselves for a job well-done.

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Jen received her master's degree in Literacy Education in 2003 and since then has worked on helping to grow awareness about children's literacy and writing. Jen has 16 post(s) at Free Writing Center