5 Creative Writing Prompts for Classroom Use

1) Have the students randomly choose twoadventure.4) Have each student choose
nouns, two verbs, two adjectives and twosomething in the room and then describe it to the
adverbs. Write these eight words on the board.best of his or her abilities. Then, if that inanimate
Tell the students to use all eight words, along withitem could speak, have the student describe what
any other words, in either a poem, an essay or ait would say.5) Write one short sentence per
short story.2) Hand each student a slip of paperpiece of paper with enough pieces of paper for
with a single word on it. Have the students writeeach person in the class. Have the student who
a story working that word into the storyhas been handed the sheet of paper first add
somehow. Sample word list:another sentence. Then rotate the pieces of
air alligator ball boy cat dog daisy dreadlockpaper around the room, with each person first
elephant eagle frog freedom giraffe gym handcuffreading what others have written and then adding
horse ice cream igloo jeans jar kite kindergartenone sentence of their own. Read the results
love life moon movie nest night ocean oil pathaloud.Jill L. Ferguson is a writer, editor, public
palace quiet queen race roof safe spirit taxi tiespeaker and professor of creative writing,
unhappy ugly vacation vegetable watch whaleliterature and communication. Hundreds of her
x-ray yard year zipper zoo3) Imagine you arearticles have appeared in print in national
alone on a desert island. What would you do? Howmagazines and newspapers. Her first novel,
would you live? Who or what would you missSometimes Art Can't Save You, was published by
from home? Write a story or a poem about yourIn Your Face Ink ( in October 2005.