Got reluctant writers? Your students will love these engaging creative writing activities. To begin, practice the concept of Show, Don't Tell with a quick activity that gets kids communicating, collaborating, and thinking critically about using strong details in their narrative stories. It feels like a game, but it isn't!

Then, students work together to build a story from scratch, first selecting a character and a conflict, before selecting cards for sensory details (see, hear, smell, taste, touch), dialogue, and emotions. The word cards act as a word bank, giving kids a starting place to work from. Kids can use the SWBST summarization tools to help plan out their storyline. With the support of peers, students physically plan and orally rehearse their story multiple times before committing the storyline to paper. Kids can switch stories and use their SWBST tools to summarize another team's story, allowing the young authors and readers to compare and contrast how the story may have changed from the planning to the actual writing or publication stage. These three resources are all you need for hours of creative writing fun.

In my own classroom, I used the Show, Don't Tell writing activity to teach the concept of elaboration. Several days later, we used the character, conflict, and sensory detail cards to develop a story of our own. I even used these resources during an observation this year. We took about an hour to plan out our stories and then another hour for the actual writing. The kids had a lot of fun and everyone was engaged.

Resources Included:

• SWBST Story Planning and Summary Writing with Editable Character/Conflict Cards

• Show Don't Tell Story Elaboration with Editable Sensory Detail Word Cards

• Show, Don't Tell: A Writing Activity for Grades 4-8

I'd love to hear how you use this resource in your classroom! Feel free to email me at iteachiwrite@yahoo.com with any questions or suggestions you may have.

Copyright © iTeach & iWrite by Betsy Newmeyer.

All rights reserved by the author.

Permission to use for single classroom use only.