5 Helpful Tips For Teachers To Help Children Overcome Challenges In Creative Writing

When you get lost in your writings and start feeling the flow of words in you, you’ll agree with me that creative writing can be so much fun. 

It also doesn’t negate the fact that some children are trying to overcome some challenges in creative writing.

The purpose of creative writing is to spark up a story or idea and make writing natural for children and writers. In this article I’ll share 5 helpful tips for teachers to help children overcome challenges in creative writing.

No Rules To Writing

I don’t subscribe to a set of rules when it comes to writing, so I always tell my students that can write whatever they like. All stories must not have a hook at the first paragraph or a twist at the end.

As a Teacher, whose aim is to help children overcome challenges in creative writing, you can encourage them to follow two simple rules.

First, they should be able to show, not tell what happens in a story. For example, instead of writing “the woman was angry” they could replace it with”the woman paced the floor and hissed under her breadth”.

Secondly, they should also employ the use of Wow words. In this way they’ll be giving power to verbs, for example, “John ran quickly could become John Sprinted”.

Check this out.

Story Prompts

This is probably not news but the difference is how you use this tip in helping children overcome their challenges in creative writing.

You can many writing prompts and tell a pupil to pick one at random, most importantly write along with them as they write.

You all can agree that by the time 5 minutes is up, everyone should have written up to at least 50 words, including the teacher.

But doing this exercise together, it gets the whole class writing happily and gradually it’ll get to a stage where they can be free to write on their own without occasionally checking up on them.

Short Video Clips

Some pupils think the life or Writers are glamorous, that they just sit down and have the words flow out to their pen, all of which gets to be published without much stress.

Some don’t understand the hours of editing, self promotion and rejections these writers face at times.

As a teacher, you could get video clips of writers talking about their writing, sharing the pain and rejection they’ve being through and their daily processes.

When you play this video clips of writers whose work you’re studying in class, it can help students overcome some of their own challenges in creative writing and engage more with their work.

Use Common Stories

Most of the pupils in your class would have read a particular story or watched a common movies with a storyline they wish had ended differently.

You can encourage then to pick one of those stories they remember clearly and ask them what they liked about it and what they didn’t like about it.

Then they now have the opportunity to rewrite that story in a way they like and wish it would go or end.

In this way they get to rewrite the story in their own unique and powerful way. Here’s one of the reason why writing should be taught in schools

Encourage writing from someone’s perspective

Encourage your pupils to write from someone else point of view, preferably a close friend or a classmate.

They could start by imagining waking up in this persons bed, what it’ll feel like to walk in this persons shoes, react the way this person usual does and feel as they would.

Engaging pupils in this writing exercise will challenge them to develop a real life character and also help them develop more  empathy and understanding which will help they become a good creative writer.

If you’ve found this tips helpful, please share with us in the comments box your experience and other helpful tips