Creative Writing Workshops
Published on Nov 18, 2015
An education presentation on facilitating creative writing workshops in secondary schools.
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
How creative writing workshops benefit teens
- Creative writing workshops help secondary students feel comfortable with writing in general.
This means that creative writing workshops will help students' academic writing improve as well.
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How creative writing workshops benefit teens
- Creative writing workshops create a sense of community in the classroom.
Having students share their work with peers who provide feedback makes the writing process more collaborative.
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How creative writing workshops benefit teens
- Creative writing workshops teach students important skills, such as how to give and receive critiques (O'Connor, 1990, p. 314)
Students also learn how to distance themselves from their own work, as well as how to criticize the work, not the writer.
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How creative writing workshops benefit teens
- Creative writing workshops expose students to writing that is perhaps more fun and expressive than academic writing
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How creative writing workshops benefit teens
- Creative writing workshops allow students to feel ownership over their work (King, 2015, p. 7)
Students are given the opportunity to feel like artists, and this feeling of artistic agency may carry over to other forms of writing.
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How creative writing workshops benefit teens
- Creative writing workshops aid students in discovering or reflecting on parts of their identities (Kookogey, 1974, p. 86).
Reflection and self-identity is especially important in middle school, when students typically feel the most liminal.
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How creative writing workshops benefit teens
- Creative writing workshops provide a therapeutic tool for students (DiMarzio & Dupre, 2011, p. 26)
DiMarzio & Dupre (2011) suggest that students keep a diary at home to aid their free-writing progress.
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Instructions
How to hold creative writing workshops in your classroom
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1. Create a safe and comfortable environment for students.
This can be achieved by establishing rules and norms, as well as aesthetic choices in the classroom (decorations, wall color, etc).
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2. Start classes with free-writes
DiMarzio & Dupre (2011) suggest that you inform students who are having trouble getting started that free-writing is a rare moment in school where you have no constraints and you may express yourself freely (p. 27). You may also tell students that free-writing is like writing in a diary.
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3. Provide choices for students
King (2015) offers that students should be allowed to write in whatever way feels comfortable and important to them. Her students, for example, attended a low-income, urban school, and many of them were attracted to writing slam poetry because it was a mode of expression they were familiar with (p. 13).
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4. Model how to give and receive writing feedback.
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References
- DiMarzio, E., & Dippre, R. (2011). Creative and critical engagement: constructing a teen vision of the world. The English Journal, 101, 25-29.
- King, C.L. (2015). Creative writing programs as supplement to the common core standards to support literacy among inner-city high school students. Honors Research Projects.
References continued
- Kookogey, A. (1974). Junior high/middle school workshop. The English Journal, 63, 85-86.
- O’Connor, P. F. (1990). Instructions based on some of what I’ve learned about conducting creative writing workshops. Mississippi Review, 19, 313-
