Writing skills are pivotal for students. As the learner passes through grades from elementary to high school, they may need some additional skill sets and brush up on their writing abilities. As the academic responsibility also increases, transforming learning sessions into interesting activities can be a viable option for them.
Reading through this post, you will be able to understand where writing skills can be eminent for these young adults. In this post, you can find out a list of activities that can be employed either as an icebreaker, brain-breaks, or an after-school practice of writing.
How do writing activities help in the development of students?
Activities in general offer a real-time experience for the students to learn new concepts. When it comes to writing, specialized writing activities can assist schoolers on the following grounds:
- It encourages active learning and thinking. Activities can create real-time writing sessions for learners along with guidelines and teacher support. This way, they can use critical thinking to discern easy tips to apply later. All this motivates and encourages the learners gradually.
- Writing assists to learn new insights. Exploratory writing activities are used to explore concepts, ask questions, reflect on learning, and look for links between theory and practice. These tasks aim at polishing their writing and enhancing their skills. Exploring the depth of multiple concepts can bring about new insights to the adults, which may help academically too.
- Better writing abilities can make them explain better. In these activities, students are expected to take multiple roles to deliver intent in a clear and accessible manner. Such tactics can often result in fresh ideas and improved expertise.
Fun activities to practice writing
1. A Poetry Maker
In this activity, the students need to make a poem impromptu, with the help of the words given by the teacher.
- The teacher starts by listing out a set of new words and writes them on chits and later puts them down in a box.
- Now each student in the class is asked to pick one chit.
- Pupils need to understand the word or refer to a dictionary to comprehend its meaning.
- Later, the mentor starts a timer of a particular time, within which learners need to write a poem based on the word they got. The time can be decided as per the level of the student, and the words are given. The length of the poem should also be kept in mind before setting the time limit.
- After accomplishing this, the teacher evaluates the poems and gives appropriate feedback.
This exercise has multiple edges apart from stipulating the youngsters to write. They learn new words every time and also discern how to write down a verse.
2. Story Chains
Before starting the activity, students are divided into teams of 3. Each member of the team will write either an Intro, Body and Conclusion. These members would basically decide the introduction, body, and conclusion of the story.
- To start with, The instructor writes a cue for a tale on the whiteboard. For example, nature and investigation.
- The team procures a piece of paper, and the first student (Intro) writes down the introduction of the story. This may include settings, character introduction, and other details.
- Next, the second student (Body) takes the paper from Intro and writes the narration
- Later, the third student (Conclusion) gives a proper payoff to end the narration.
- The teammates can sit and rearrange the story later to make it interesting.
Writing as a solitary activity is adorned with teamwork here. This way, students get a chance to exchange insights and prepare a better piece of writing, ensuring a learning session.
3. Relationships with an Acrostic Form
Acrostics are simple poetry in which each letter of a word or phrase begins a new line in the poem. Younger adults can start by writing anything simple, like their name or a favorite pet, vertically down the page.
- Before beginning to write, students should jot down a particular word or phrase. This can be something they wish to talk about or something they have an interest in.
- Next, the children can elaborate on the topic they have chosen for themselves.
- The only catch would be to make it in the form of an Acrostic.
- Basically, the first letter of every first word of the line should be such that they vertically make a word.
For example:
A piece of fruit.
Painted red or green.
Perfect for a snack.
Lovely with peanut butter.
Excellent in taste.
Here, if you notice, the letters in bold are A, P, P, L, and E, which make up APPLE; and that is the fruit being talked about!
4. The ‘ What if game‘
This activity focuses on asking the most basic question like ‘what if.’
- Begin by asking the children to think of a single What If question that they should write down on a piece of paper.
- The more unusual, the better! ‘What if everyone on the planet knew exactly what you were thinking? ‘An example is ‘What if your pet dog could talk?’ Students place their queries in a hat and toss them. Each student draws a question from a hat and writes about it for a set amount of time.
This assignment allows students to see the link between posing interesting hypothetical questions and generating pleasant writing.
5. Piece of motivation
Writing with a purpose is often exciting. In this activity, feedback is the central motive.
- To start with, the teacher arranges a marker and a bunch of papers
- One student called upon an instructor and asked them to write a message for any person in the class. The pupil writing this message does not mention their name, but the recipient’s name is added.
- The instructor fold this paper and puts it in a box
- The same cycle is repeated for all the students.
- Once chits are ready, the mentor opens one after another to read the messages along with names. And gives a score for the style of writing for the ghostwriter.
Through this activity, the writing is evaluated, and only the writer can know their score. Moreover, a motivating message is sent to a peer, encouraging them to perform better.
6. Color with Words
A picture can be colored with paints, but using words for the same makes an interesting writing activity.
- To start with, the teacher procures sheets of outline drawings. For instance, a hut and a moon form a simple scenery.
- After distributing one each to the students, the instructor asks them to fill these drawings with words describing them and assigns a time limit for the same
- The pupils need to brainstorm, choose the appropriate colors, and write about it in the space to fill it. For instance, if the object is the sun, the student can choose red or orange to describe it inside the picture thereby filling it up.
Once the child has successfully described each and every element of the picture, they now need to write the picture composition. For example, the picture has a hut, which is brown in color. The sun is shining bright and is peaking and gazing through the clouds. The children must remember to use good vocabulary and be as creative while writing as possible.
7. Express With Words
This activity would be one in which the students have to read the expressions of their classmates, and based on that; they need to write a story. The story should be exactly as per the expressions of the student.
- Basically, the students would be divided into two teams – Team A and Team B.
- One member from Team A will enact an expression in front of Team B. It could be any, like happy, sad, frustrated, angry, excited – anything about which a story can be written.
- Next up, the entire Team B needs to guess the expression and write a story based on the expression. If the expression that the opponent members give was ‘angry,’ the story should portray anger, but not clearly say it by such lines like ‘Jack became angry.’ The plot should be such that it could convey anger.
- The word limit can be decided collectively.
- Later, the opponent team will read the stories, and whoever guesses it right wins and becomes the next person to give the expression.
This game is somewhat like dumb charades, but with expressions and words. This game allows students to understand emotions based on expressions. At the same time, this game encourages students to get involved in making an impromptu story and use their words wisely so that their team can guess the story.
8. Embed the Quotation
We see and hear quotes on a daily basis. These quotes now need to be explained along with real-life examples on paper by the students to boost their writing skills.
- The teacher first needs to give 5 quotes of their choice to the students.
- The students now need to pick one of them, brainstorm, and first understand what that quote or phrase means.
- Next up, they need first to write their meaning and then relate it with a real-life example.
- The teacher must guide the students to be as creative as possible.
In this activity, the teacher can set up a word limit of say, 200 words and 10 minutes which can make this activity more effective. This activity will not only help students understand specific quotes or phrases but also, they would now be able to relate them to real-life examples and situations.
Summing Up
By now, we may infer that polishing writing skills with activities can be exciting and engaging. The choices stated above are classroom-based activities. But, most of them can be employed at a personal level at home as well. Also, gaining expertise in writing can help children for better academic results as they can better present their answers on sheets effortlessly. Indulge in these activities; do not forget to mail us or comment down below if you have such a striking activity that we can include in this post for all your fellow readers!
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,