Creative Writing
Creative writing opportunities begin as soon as children can put ideas into writing or into pictures. Students are always given mentor texts to guide them. These texts push them beyond what is expected.
In Lower School, students utilize graphic organizers to generate, organize, develop and expand upon ideas.
As students progress to, and through, Middle School, creative writing becomes more independent and open-ended, as well as more complex in level of thinking and use of figurative language.
In Middle School, creative writing permeates the curriculum.
In English class, literature response activities include diary entries, poems, point-of-view switches, newspaper articles, comic strips, creating new characters, designing apps for a character, and so much more! Each year, students study poetry and create a poetry journal.
In Middle School, there is at least one major creative writing task each year: writing a spooky story, crafting a memoir, writing a novel as part of National Novel Writing Month, and developing speeches. Students often come up with ideas for creative writing tasks that we embrace and move forward with. They have a lot of voice and ownership in the process.
