Software Smoothie
Imagination Box - Colors, Shapes, Numbers and Letters
This app provides young learners with opportunities to be creative while they work with different colors, letters, numbers, and shapes.
Curated OER
Short Poems Are Scary!
What do all those chairs and pencils do in the classroom once everyone leaves? Allow imaginations to run wild with frighteningly short poems!
Curated OER
Bringing Household Items to Life
Use folk tales as inspiration for learning about and using personification in creative writing. Learners brainstorm together in order to practice personification before writing their own poems or paragraphs about a household object.
American Museum of Natural History
Space Travel Guide
Scholars showcase their narrative writing skills with a science fiction writing assignment. Six pages present writers with a question to answer accompanied by a detailed picture to draw. All together, pages create a space-travel guide.
Roald Dahl
The Twits - Muggle-Wump Has an Idea
If a bar of chocolate was on the floor, would you try to pick it up? What if it was covered with glue? The eighth lesson in an 11-part unit designed to accompany The Twits by Roald Dahl has scholars imagine crazy scenarios. The...
Education Oasis
Creative Writing Unit: Analyzing, Interpreting, Discussing and Writing Various Genres of African-American Literature
A six-week unit takes high schoolers through various works of African-American literature, including poems, plays, and short stories. The lesson plan format includes a week-by-week description of activities, goals, materials, and...
Scholastic
My Favorite Activity (Grades K-2)
Scholars discuss the many ways they use persuasion in their everyday lives and brainstorm specific ideas for encouraging someone to do something. With the list of persuasive techniques they made, young writers complete a graphic...
Curated OER
Whale Song Acrostic
What do whales sing about? Invite your class to imagine the thoughts of whales before writing acrostic poems on the topic. The plan blends together a bit of life science with plenty of opportunities for creativity and writing.
ReadWriteThink
A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words: From Image to Detailed Narrative
A picture's worth a thousand words—and even more inspiration! A visual activity uses photographs to inspire writers. The process teaches aspects of narrative writing, such as point of view and characterization.
Poetry4kids
Creativity Exercise - Describe the Sky
Scholars stretch their writing muscles with an exercise that asks them to describe the sky using similes and metaphors.
Film English
We've All Been There
What does empathy look like? Encourage your pupils to put themselves in another person's shoes with several writing and discussion activities that relate to a featured short film. Over the course of the lesson, individuals collaborate...
Novelinks
Words by Heart: Guided Imagery
Sad, depressed, miserable, inconsolable, forlorn: so many synonyms have a lot of variety with their connotations. Through the guided imagery activity, writers explore the use of connotation and its influence on imagery and description by...
K12 Reader
Narrative or Expository?
Narrative or expository? That is the question readers face on a two-part comprehension learning exercise that asks kids to read a short passage about these two different types of writing, and then to answer a series of comprehension...
Curated OER
Did You Know?
What would happen if you woke up one day and had become a housefly? What kinds of things would you do? Use the facts at the top of a worksheet to write a paragraph or short story about being a housefly.
Curated OER
My Antonia: Prereading Guided Imagery
What makes a place safe? What makes a setting effective? Explore the safe spaces and descriptive language with a prereading activity for Willa Cather's My Antonia. The teacher describes his or her own safe space and then prompts pupils...
National WWII Museum
Communities at War: Reading Primary Sources Imaginatively
Uncle Sam wants you to support the troops. Learners use an engaging lesson plan to analyze primary and secondary sources to discover what life was really like for American citizens at home during WWII. Pupils complete...
Curated OER
Picture Writing Prompt
In this picture prompt worksheet, students look at a picture and try to imagine what is being said, where people are going or have come from and choose a character to write a story about.
Curated OER
Art Analysis and Creative Writing
Students write an acrostic poem and analyze a work of art. In this art lesson plan, students look at a picture and answer questions about it, write a poem, write about the setting in the painting they saw, and answer short questions...
Curated OER
Leaf People
Kids create leaf people out of sticks, glue, and leaves. They use their imagination to construct leaf people and then glue them onto construction paper. Tip: Extend this craft by incorporating writing. Have learners write a short story...
Curated OER
Time Capsule Survey
Here's a fun way to incorporate technology into your curriculum. E-mail each of your class members a picture and 10 questions about the photo. Individuals then imagine the story behind the image and e-mail back their responses. Although...
Curated OER
Officer Buckle and Gloria
Students write a class letter to a local policeman asking him to come and talk to the class and create a list of safety tips as a class. Students research information on police dogs: type of dogs used, where they come form, how they are...
Curated OER
Magic Pencil Story Starters
While mentioning adult learners in the description, this instructional activity could be used at any grade level. This activity gives a list of procedures and writing prompts to help unlock the writer in everyone. Learners of all ages...
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 7: The Elements of Story
Budding novelists work on character development by relating to the characters in their stories. They imagine their own hopes and dreams and recall those of characters from books they've read. Learners also consider struggles the...
Curated OER
The World Around Me
Combining visual and language arts, here is a resource that prompts middle schoolers to write stories based on pictures of their surroundings. They use digital cameras to take pictures of favorite areas in the school. Next, they choose...