Creative Elementary Writing Activities

Step-by-Step in Pictures:

How to Create a Motivational Classroom Door Decoration

I love creative elementary writing activities...because they get kids motivated to put pencil to paper when they'd really rather not.

Writing is very tough for kids...actually, writing is very tough for humans in general! How many adults do you know who love to sit down and write creatively? (Or even un-creatively!)

I saw this classroom decoration idea and just had to put it into place on my own classroom door. I added the words on the inside of the door to remind my students of the whole point of education.

Jump down for some notes on implementing this in your room! Get out those thesauri and get started!

PS - Do you know who had the original idea? I'd love to give them credit...
Use my contact form.

Creative Elementary Writing Activities

One thing I have learned from teaching writing: Most kids don't like to correct their work. To them, a rough draft is just fine, thank you, and they'd rather not "polish" it...or even fix spelling errors.

And getting them to use more imaginative words? Not on their to-do list.

So when I send them to a thesaurus (or other resource) to encourage creative writing, they don't really embrace the wonder of words...they do it because their teacher expects it.

Somewhere in that process, the good old thesaurus doesn't get it's full measure of respect as a reference.

Squeezing learning into every classroom activity

This project changes that because it separates the activity of researching words from the dreaded task of correcting their writing; it lets the search for descriptive words stand on its own.

After coming up with some starter words to describe themselves, the students eagerly dive into their references and come up with truly innovative - and inspiring - word choices.

Of course, this is a sneaky way to expand their vocabularies...and to give me the ability to point at the door and say:

"I've seen you come up with great word choices...and you know how to use a resource to do it again!"

Writing Activities for Primary Grades

Are you working with younger grades that aren't up for word research? Group brainstorming with those little smarties will turn up a surprising number of great word options without cracking open a reference book.