This exercise encourages students to think creatively about their own origins. It reinforces that our own lives and experiences i.e. our own stories, are rich, interesting, unique and important. …
Writing Exercises
Free classroom resources
Explore our creative writing exercises, intended for students in Key Stages 3-4 and for use in the classroom.
Writing in colour
This exercise uses colours and objects as descriptive writing prompts. It encourages students to closely observe using all their senses and to experiment with bold imagery alongside subtle details. …
I remember
This exercise encourages students to use memories as a source of inspiration and creative material. Topics: writing autobiography and memoir; describing emotions and feelings; valuing our experiences. …
Finding gems
This fun writing task encourages creativity and develops confidence. The exercise helps find exciting new ideas and imagery through random juxtaposition. It uses play to generate structure. …
Plot: Where to Begin?
What makes a story? Where should stories begin? This two-part exercise identifies narrative engines and helps students break from ‘cradle to grave’ storytelling to focus on the interesting points. …
Dialogue
Writers use what they see and (over)hear in real life as material. This two-part exercise explores differences between spoken and written dialogue. Focus areas: dialect, idioms, idiosyncratic styles. …
Tags and labels
This activity opens up a space for connection, even in difference. It encourages students to help point out the ways that we use tags, as well as the ways in which we are labelled by others. …
Unusual vocabulary
This exercise develops descriptive writing skills and passion for language, through using made-up and portmanteau words. The exercise encourages individual responses and writing in any form. …
Creating characters
This is a fun ice-breaker exercise to engage a group with writing fiction. It encourages students to develop a new fictional character through a focus on descriptive detail, mixing imagination and creativity with observation skills. …
Alternative Valentine’s
A fun poetry writing game for beginners. This exercise highlights cliches — in this case writing about love and romance — and encourages students to be more daring and original in their work. …
Famous opening lines
A more advanced exercise about beginnings. This is for writers who already have a reasonable level of confidence, needing only the smallest of prompts to get them writing. …
Looking back
This exercise uses an object as a prompt to begin writing about life experience and memories. Physical objects often help take us back to a particular time or place. They can also be integral to the stories we tell. …
Cambridge Digital Library resource
A downloadable, nine-page resource, including icebreakers and exercises on the themes of cosmography and evolution, with stimulus pieces by Darwin and Tennyson. From the digital archive of the Cambridge University Library. …
Autumn: observation and memory
Writing about a change in season is a great way of getting students to focus on evocative details. Combined with writing about a memory, it can encourage students to add concrete details to their writing. …
