Using Props as a Writing Prompt

Creative Writing in the Classroom: 

Quick Writing to Short Story Publishing

Last week my associate teacher was explaining a writing activity she has carried through her classes over the past 5 years, inspired from a technical fluke of her Halloween classroom decorations. She had an inflatable lawn ornament of a cat that she brought into the classroom and set up the week before Halloween. The students loved the big cat in their classroom, and gave it a name (I think Cookie was their consensus).

One day she plugged it in, and for some reason, it inflated in a way that legs of the cat were awkwardly up in the air. The students shuffled into class, and started to laugh at Cookie’s position, asking the teacher what happened to him. Inspired by her student’s questions, my associate teacher used their engagement for her unplanned opening activity for the day. She asked the students to take out their language journals and to write what Cookie had done to get into that position. The students eagerly wrote creative scenarios about the cat chasing a mouse and how the mouse had outsmarted him, or that Cookie was a secret agent sleuthing through the students’ desks and was trying not to get caught when the students came in. Delighted by the response, the teacher would place Cookie in odd places or positions before the students came into the classroom and then the students would start their day writing a short reason behind his position.

What an exciting way to engage students to begin creative writing! By using a prop and a guiding question, students are given a focused channel for their creativity. Journaling gives them a space to write their ideas freely and keep track of their ideas for later reflection or developing. My associate teacher used this as a quick writing exercise for students to practice their creative writing, but the activity could easily be developed into a lesson unit on the creative writing process.

Using Props as Prompts

Writing prompts are key to help students inspire and focus their creative ideas onto the blank page in front of them. Introducing a physical prop or character provides them with a concrete item to build a foundation on, and work from that point. In my associate teacher’s case, she introduced a cat character, Cookie, as the focus of her students' creativity.

Any character prop could work just as well. Similar to the Elf of the Shelf idea parents practice each December, the teacher could manipulate the character into different positions or places around the classroom or in the school. Once the class has all seen the new change in the character, students should be given time to creatively write how the said character got into that there. I personally would do this activity as a quick write, where the grammar and spelling didn’t matter, but shift the focus towards creative thinking. This could be done in a language journal, google document or on a digital classroom forum. Students could include pictures, or create audio files, depending on their preferred style of learning or differentiation needed, as long as the creative ideas are recorded.

Quick Writes to Short Story

Writers rarely just sit and write from a blank screen at a Starbucks for hours, producing page after page of a story. Usually writers plan out their characters, their settings, and their plot long before the actual writing begins. Teachers can easily use a Character Prop, as well as quick write stories to cultivate these development skills.

After a determined period of time, students should have a nice collection of creative ideas in which to create a story. Students should be encouraged to review their ideas and to develop a plot for a short story based on one or more ideas they had. At this point, mini lessons discussing plot diagrams and features of a good short story could be introduced.

To help students develop a plot, a graphic organizer or digital tool could be used. BBC has a really awesome tool called PinBall in which the user can manipulate ideas, images or words, either generated by the program and imputed by the user, in various ways. There is the option of a mind map, a timeline, an idea sorter, and an image manipulator. For an fun extra activity, this MadLibs-style story generator would be an interesting prompting tool.   

This method could then be transitioned towards the details of a story, like character and setting development. After the plot outline is complete or even during the quick write period, give students a graphic organizer in which to determine the details about the prop character. Discuss character traits, descriptions, likes and dislikes, relationships and goals. Ask them to draw a picture of the character on the graphic organizer, or could be included as a task for Visual Art class. Once students have their plot outlined, students could create a character profile for each main character. Students could be tasked to do the same for certain settings in their story.

Writing the Story

Now that they have the plot outline, the characters developed, and the settings organized, students are ready to start writing their first draft. This can be done again by using a graphic organizer for each plot point, or students can be given free range to write. Students should be able to write on paper or on a word processing software. Provide time for students to write in class, as well as give them checkpoints for each draft. 2-3 drafts should be submitted before the final product is complete. No grade should be assigned to any of the drafts, but should be covered with lots of descriptive feedback.

In order to avoid overwhelming students with negative feedback, find an editing focus for each draft.

For the first draft… Focus on the organization of the story, the descriptions and if things need to be clarified. Provide suggestions or questions to prompt expansion of an idea or an alternative solution. Only edit major formatting or phrasing errors.

For the second draft… Focus on the finer details, like formatting or grammar. Correct glaring spelling mistakes. Avoid over correcting, keeping the focus primarily on plot and formatting details.

For the third draft… Now is the time to focus on all the spelling and grammatical errors. They should be ready to publish their story, and this should be more of a proof reading stage. This can also be done through peer editing or on Grammerly.

Publishing

Now the fun part! There are lots of ways students can publish their stories. Teachers can assign one specific way of publishing or offer a few options students can choose from. They could be published in a hard copy or digitally.

"Tyla's Spell",
4 chapter short story, circa 2003
by 12 year old Mrs. Day

Long ago, in my Grade Seven class, (yikes, 13 years ago!), I wrote a short story about a fairy who needed help by some children during Halloween. I drew pictures above my text and created a picture book by putting the pages into a small binder. We later read our stories to our reading buddies in a Grade One class. Technology would have been an interesting way to publish my story though, and maybe the graphics would have been better than my poor illustration skills. Maybe I'll upload the story here using one of the options below.

Some digital publishing options include:

GoogleSlides, PowerPoint or Slide Story- Each slide could be a section of the story with images. Students could also record their voices reading out the story on each slide.

Flipsnack – create a flipbook of pdfs

StoryBird – create a short picture book based on a selection of images

Comic Master or Storyboard That – create a graphic novel by clicking and dragging items, and adding text

Storytop or StoryJumper – create a scene by scene story, by adding text to backgrounds and images

PowToons – create an animated video with sounds, images and text

Final Consolidation

Students should then share their creations with the class, other classes in their division, to younger grades, or create a digital portfolio of all their hard work. Students could create a blog, Prezi, or RealTime Board showing off their creative writing process. They could post a few of their quick write samples, or their character and setting outlines. A video trailer for the plot outline could be created. At the end, the final project should be presented. Students could also post a reflective paragraph, audio or video file explaining their process.

There are so many cross curricular and unit expansions that could develop from a simple prop placed in an interesting position in the classroom. The activity could be modified towards a small journal entry, or to an entire unit lasting a few weeks. Students have lots of ideas. They sometimes just need some unique inspiration.

Happy Planning!