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"write out", in prose format, the pictures they just saw.

Tasks like these draw words and ideas from pictures and encourage students to derive imaginative plot ideas from them. Creative assignments like these also challenge the learner's ability to convert images to words and re-format visual images into verbal descriptions.

THE TOPIC SENTENCE STORY

Another great and fun creative writing assignment for elementary level students is the topic sentence story. The teacher simply instructs students to begin their story with a particular sentence or word, and to develop the topic sentence or word into a story.

Spring-boarding students into creative thought by offering an introductory sentence or word allows teachers to streamline stories to fit certain themes and subjects, while still permitting students enormous latitude to explore different plot ideas. For example, if the teacher would like to relate story writing to a history subject, the teacher can offer an opening line relating to a specific historical event studied in class. A fun class discussion could also emerge about the different ways students developed their stories.

THE CLASS COMPOSED FAIRY TALE

Teachers who want to introduce very young students to the basics of writing can start with an interactive assignment that is well suited to group work with small children. On the chalkboard, the teacher writes several nouns, verbs, and adjectives that relate to fairy tales, such as 'prince', 'witch', 'forest', 'magic' or 'castle'. Using at least two of the words written on the chalkboard, one student in the group then writes the first sentence of a fairy tale. After writing his or her sentence, the student then passes his or her story to another classmate who writes another sentence of the fairy tale using different words on the chalkboard, without repeating the words the first student used in the previous sentence. The stories then circulate among the group and the students take turns writing different sentences of the fairy tale until the multiple sentences form the complete story.

This type of exercise can be a great supplement to a grammatical lesson and gives the teacher the opportunity to introduce young learners to the basics of story writing, while presenting new vocabulary and introducing different parts of speech and their grammatical functions. The young students will also be challenged to write along a specific plot line and use their imagination to stick to a fairy tale fantasy theme.

ALTERNATIVE FORMS

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