FUN with Writing!
As writing teachers, we can get so bogged down with meeting the demands of standardized testing and drilling our students on analytical writing skills that we can lose sight of the fact that writing can be FUN!
I think it’s so important to strike a balance between the writing students need to do in order to master necessary skills and the writing they want to do— writing they will enjoy— writing that will make them laugh with joy— writing that will show students WHY people write in the first place.
This reminds me of the poem “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins where the narrator speaks of “beat[ing] a [poem] with a hose to find out what it really means.” No wonder our students don’t all read and write outside of class. The constant drill and kill we put them through in class can leave them with a distaste of all things related to English Language Arts.
So, how can we fix this situation? How can we work FUN writing into the syllabus? And what kind of writing would students call FUN anyway?
Writing assignments don't have to be boring and mundane! There are many fun ways to engage students in their writing. Here are a few of our favorite ideas for fun writing assignments that can help spark creativity and get students excited about writing.
Free Choice Writing
Just like adding a flex day to a weekly schedule, we can also work in “free choice writing” time once per week. This gives students the time and freedom to explore the writing they like. I give my students a list of “free choice” writing options to get them started. Grab this freebie from the Bespoke ELA Teachers Pay Teachers shop by clicking here.
This list helps students who might not know how to start a new piece of writing, but some students won’t need the list, which is perfectly fine! They can use free choice writing time to work on any piece of writing— even if it’s a stream-of-consciousness brain dump of what’s happening in their lives. So many memoirs can come out of life story brain dumps, so they are definitely worthwhile.
Fun with Puns
Which dinosaur knows a lot of synonyms? A thesaurus!
If you love puns as much as I do, then this is the unit for your high school students. For this activity, students learn all about puns, and they can create a punny greeting card. Students can also create Poe puns that are all the rage on the internet. Punny merchandise is so much fun— from t-shirts to dish towels to wall art, and more— like these punny kitchen towel sayings:
“Chop it like it’s hot!”
“Don’t go bacon my heart.”
“Let’s give them something to taco about.”
After creating their own puns, students can share them with the class and even analyze the satire or irony of their creations.
Check out the Bespoke ELA unit Fun with Puns: An Engaging Unit with Creative Writing, Close Reading, + Analysis. Students will have fun being creative with puns before they move on to the more challenging task of analyzing puns in literature, culminating in the analysis of a Shakespearean sonnet, which makes this unit more suitable to high school in grades 9-12.
Choose Your Own Adventure Story
Create a choose-your-own-adventure story. Have students create a story in which the reader can choose the direction of the plot. The story should provide multiple paths and endings, and can be as creative and imaginative as the student wants.
Students can even opt to share out their stories via a platform such as Google Slides that allows students to choose their own paths, creating totally unique journeys for each “reader.” To do this, students can link slides to different locations based upon the reader’s choice to create a unique journey for each reader.
Write a letter
Students can write a letter to a famous person. Have students pick a famous person (living or dead) and write them a letter. The letter could be a thank you note, a question they have, or a request for advice.
Sometimes, it can be quite cathartic to reach out to an influential person in our lives to express our feelings about them and how they impacted us or helped us. I remember being so profoundly impacted by Anne Franks’s diary that I wrote her a letter to express my sorrows for what happened to her and for how I imagined her in heaven with her family. I think this letter was a way for me to cope with the atrocities of the Holocaust at a young age. I remember that I tore up my letter and pretended that she got it. It was a therapeutic process for me.
Write a Script
Have students write a script for a play, skit, or movie. Give them a theme to work with, or have them create their own. Students LOVE film and TV shows, and I typically assign an entire Screenplay Project to my students each year and watch them just be on fire with excitement about the creative process. You can click here to go over and see the entire project.
If you aren’t interested in the entire project (for time reasons), try out this bundle of Ten Brainstorming Guides for Screenplay Writing instead. Students can use these guides to brainstorm ideas and then share them out with the class. We have fun voting on which ideas we think a movie production studio might purchase to make into a real film. Students LOVE this project!
Create a Utopian World or School
Have students write a story about a world they create from scratch. They can include any kind of details that they like such as different species, cultures, governments, and even magical creatures. Students can compile their creations into presentations to share with the class, and students can vote on which world they would most want to live in.
Another take on this project would be to have students create their own utopian schools. For this spinoff, students can design their perfect schools from the ground up and present them to the class. Students can vote on the school they’d most like to attend.
Creative projects such as these allow students the chance to dream, imagine, problem-solve, and innovate while targeting essential critical thinking, research, and presentation skills. A triple win!
Create a Character
Likewise, students can create a character that they can use for any creative writing project in the future. Have them include details such as physical appearance, personality traits, and even a backstory.
The quickest way to develop an interesting character (according to many professional writers and teachers) is to give the character a quirky trait— and then backtracking to how this character developed this bizarre trait. It’s a quick way to flesh out a character with depth and complexity.
Some quirky character traits might include:
Stealing spoons from fine restaurants
The need to do every action eight times (such as opening a door eight times before walking through it)
Living life as a furry
Collecting dead animals and their bones
Only wearing the color pink (ala Elle Woods)
Have students brainstorm funny, weird, bizarre, disturbing quirks as a class to use as inspiration for a new character.
WRite a funny Amazon review
There are some HILARIOUS reviews on Amazon products. I’ve written about these in another post here. Certain brands have become a haven for inspiring creative writing through online reviews. One of the more popular ones is the Haribo Gummy Bears reviews found on Amazon by going here.
For some reason, the mythical nature of the gummy bear has spawned an entire world of creative stories inspired by these cute, little, yummy, gummy bears— that apparently are also LAXATIVES!!!
Click here to check out hilarious example reviews.
These reviews are particularly hilarious because people go to great lengths to describe their explosive stories using vivid imagery and literary devices. Not only that, but these gummy bears have inspired reviewers to craft entire short stories. Haribo Gummy Bear reviews have become an Internet sensation. Students can enjoy the hilarity of reading reviews and then writing their own creative versions.
Create a dream vacation itinerary
Where would you go in the world if you could? What would you do there? Where would you visit? What would you eat? What would you buy? Why would you want to go there?
Students can let their imaginations SOAR with this fun group activity and compile a presentation in which they share an itinerary for their dream vacation. As an extension to this fun assignment, students can even work up a budget plan for how much it would cost to actually go on this dream vacation— the best of STEAM all rolled into a single activity!
Create a Savage Chickens Cartoon
I wrote about this over on my personal blog at Bespokeclassroom.com here. I am a HUGE fan of Doug Savage's Savage Chickens "comics." Savage Chickens is a single-frame comic drawn on a sticky note that illustrates the life of chickens whose experiences reveal the "savage" truths of the human existence. Savage Chickens is sometimes absurd, sometimes dark, sometimes Shakespearean, and sometimes profound. Savage Chickens takes a satirical look at life through the lens of chickens to satirize what it means to be human. Isn't that the entire point of comedy and the entire point of satire?
Direct your students to www.SavageChickens.com and have them select a "sticky note" comic to analyze either individually or with a group. Alternatively, select a comic to share with the entire class. Check out the book publications by Doug Savage and consider purchasing his books for your classes. One of my FAVORITES is his book on Shakespeare! Students can use these as a lens to further their understanding of Shakespeare's plays.
What other fun writing activities would you suggest? We’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment below.
In the meantime, you might also like…
Satire Through Subtlety-- Using the Comics of Savage Chickens to Teach Satire in High School English
Five Ways to Infuse Humor into Your ELA Curriculum
TEN Children's Books for Secondary ELA
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About the Author
Meredith is the founder and creator of TeachWriting.org and Bespoke ELA. She has taught high school English for 10+ years in Dallas, Chicago, and New York City and holds a M.A. in Literature from Northwestern University. She has always had a connection to the written word-- through songwriting, screenplay writing, and essay writing-- and she enjoys the process of teaching students how to express their ideas. An avid tea drinker and anglophile, Meredith enjoys life with her husband, daughter, and sweet pups.