Creative writing boosts confidence in children while putting their phonics, grammar and reading skills into practice. There are ways to get your children’s creative thoughts flowing. And maximum of today’s schools are working in that regard. The schools today have a more structured approach to literacy teaching, science and maths that is by making them more fun and accessible.
The same approach can be applied to encourage creative writing classes too. The classrooms should focus on creating stories around the curriculum of the class and motivate students to pursue this creative writing. Encouraging writing with chapters and illustrations and all that a child wants to bring to the page to tell a story will drastically help the child build on his or her skills of creativity. The same can be done at home as well by giving their story writing ideas a structural approach.
Plotting
Ask your children specific questions regarding the story. This would push them to use and hone their creative skills. Some examples of questions could be:
– Where is the story taking place?
– What is the timeline? When is it taking place?
– What is going to happen?
– How will the story reach its end?
This need not be accurate. In fact, children can come with options in the answers as well. It is just to give a structure to their story. They can move to something else organically.
Characterizing
Ask your children a specific question- ‘Who will be in the story they are working on?’ Let them write it down. Now further push their imagination and ask them to describe the character – how the character will look, behave, relate and speak. Help them organize these thoughts. Tell them they are free to use all the words, pictures, and drawings to describe the characters. This is one of the best approaches to carry out creative writing for primary school.
Starting Point
Encourage the child to pay attention to the start of their story. Help them understand how they can capture the attention of the reader right from the start. Tell them they can begin by mysteriously using language tricks like alliteration or creating some kind of a tension or if they like, they can start with a dialogue first. Numerous options can bring numerous ideas to the whole story.
Inspire them to write stories by buying them their age friendly books and ask them to pay attention how writers have used language in the book to tell stories. Taking the examples of book, ask the children to summarize the stories in their own wordings using their creativity.
Writing
Once the ideas are jotted down ask them to begin writing keeping track of the already made map. Let them start small. Start by writing a short chapter or use drawings for explaining certain points. Let them have a separate book to write in and encourage them to write short notes if they want to. Children need to understand that they need to create content using all the imagination and creativity and not worry about how presentable it looks. The book needs to be their world and where everything and anything is possible.