Children may have in the past found Writing to be such a boring activity. But not now! Writing can be a very exciting activity for children. It helps them with their creativity and their vocabulary. All that you have to do is ensure that you come up with exciting ways to do the writing as well as making it more purposeful to the children. Do you think this is impossible to do? Well not at all.

Recent statistics show that a ¼ of children aged between 7 to 14 years, had not written letters before and that 43% of the 1,200 children from the survey had not been sent any letter. This goes to show that there is a great need and advantage in teaching children how to write.

The survey of some 7 to 14-year-olds affiliated to children’s charity World Vision, found that more than a quarter of the children had not written a letter in the last year. About 43% had never been sent one.

We have highlighted some ideas on how to revamp your children writing activities for your class!

Getting Acquainted

One of the initial things that you should do is to get your students to know one another. This is because they usually come from different schools and may also be from varying grades. Let the students say their names and state their goals for the writing class. This is also an opportunity for you to discuss the rules of the class, for example, no fighting or using abusive language, and the need for punctuality. Here, everyone will get to know what is expected of them. You can also take this chance to discuss the objectives of the class and the kind of activities you will engage the children in.

You can also educate your students on how to analyze and critique the writing pieces as well as how to make comments that are constructive about the writer and the writing. Be keen to give your students the outline for the class so that they can always pull them out and follow the classes, and make their personal class preparations beforehand. You can also make a list of magazines, books or online sites that they could find useful to advance their writing.

Voicing Your Point of View

The points of view include aspects such as first, second or first person as well as the objective.

The best way to go about this is by having the students write or rewrite an already written story from another point of view. An example of this is by writing from the point of view of a bird! This will help the students know how to write in different views. They also get a chance to use quotes as well as dialogue.

Let the students have fun listening to stories written by their fellow students as well as critiquing them constructively.

Revamped Story-telling

You can add a bit of twist to the story-telling sessions of the writing class to make it more exciting and more educative. Here you can have your students use clever as well as creative storylines. This gives them skills on plots. Have them add in creative plots in their stories to make them more interesting. Children usually have very creative minds, explore them!

Experimenting with Genres

Have your students step out of their comfort zones. If a student has been more comfortable writing adventure stories, have him try out fiction, for instance. The ability to write in different styles is one of the core skills of any good writer. Let them try this. It can either be for fictional, suspense and humor stories, among others.

Having Work Published

Get your students to discover the publishing world. Sometime in the future, your students will publish some of their greatest pieces. Teach them how to. Magazines, as well as publications online usually give a good chance for people searching for great freelance writers. They can get into this at some point. There also great sites your students can explore in essay writing like EssayWriterSite.

You can have your students look up websites suitable for writers especially those who would like to publish. You can also have a look at publishers both small and large to gain familiarity with them and so that they can know how they operate.

Watch Videos

Many students who want to pursue writing tend to have only a vague idea of how it is actually to be a writer. At a very early stage in their writing classes, you can have your students watch video clips of various writers. It would help if they understood the amount of work it takes, the long hours of continuous hard work and research it takes.

Most writers get rejected time and again before they make a breakthrough and get famous. These are the kind of stories the children should be watching so they get a clear picture of what is to be expected of them in this journey of becoming a great writer. YouTube is a great resource for this!

Conclusion

Conducting a writing class for children doesn’t have to be such a challenging task. You can hack it by taking your class through an introduction session where they get to familiarize themselves with their classmates as well as the coursework ahead of them. Get your students to try new writing styles as well as be creative in their plots. You can also have your students watch video clips of other writers to know what it takes to be a good writer.

If you have any other interesting tips on having a carrying out a creative class, share with us in the comments section.