How To Inspire A Love of Creative Writing

The capacity for children to be creative is continually surprising – they’re always coming up with new ideas and inventions. Yet, encouraging them to translate these to the page is often a challenge, and once the pens come out, kids creativity seemingly dries up. Encouraging kids to write can be a challenge, but it’s incredibly important for their development and can set them up well for later life. We’ll explore why creative writing is so valuable for kids and how you can spark their inspiration.

The Value Of Writing

Writing Is A Practical Skill

When kids grow up, it’s likely that they’ll be required to write, at least a little, every day. “Without a strong command of writing even mundane daily tasks can become insurmountable challenges for kids later in life,” says Kirsten Hicks, educator at BOOM ESSAYS and State Of Writing. “Whether it’s filling out forms at the DMV or participating in email correspondence, writing is a big part of life.”

Writing Promotes Education

If your kids are struggling when it comes to creative writing, this can have a knock-on effect in other areas. Many exams require a written element and if kids are lacking in writing skills, then they’ll struggle to demonstrate their potential. Further down the line, your kids are going to need to write college application letters and personal statements. Preparing them early will help them get ahead when these challenges are looming.

Writing In Employment

Whatever career path your pupils take, it’s likely that writing will be a relevant part of it. The process of applying for a job and being brought on board by an HR team often involves writing on multiple levels, from resumes to applications to internal forms. There are so many roles these days that have an administrative element that writing becomes inescapable in the professional world.

Writing Promotes Communication

Taking time to write down your thoughts, feelings and emotions can help kids going through difficult transitions understand what they’re feeling and communicate better with the world around them. Often, the simple act of writing crystalizes something that was abstract before. This helps young people regulate their emotions and interact with the wider world.

Ways To Inspire

Writing is such a valuable skill for kids to develop, as we’ve seen above. Inspiring them to write can be a tough job, however. We’ll look at a few tips, tricks and games that can get them working on the page.

Create The Space

Creating a specific writing space in your classroom is a great way of indicating to kids that it’s time for some creative writing. This initiates a mental shift that helps them focus on the task at hand. This can be as simple as a single table set aside, covered in writing materials. Colored pens, various notebooks and other books for inspiration will get your pupils scribbling.

Showing Off

Kids love to see their hard work celebrated, so finding somewhere to showcase their writing will naturally encourage them to invest in it. A bulletin board on the wall can provide a space to pin kids’ work, sending the message that writing is of value.

Sharing Their Work

“If you have a digital blackboard installed in your classroom you’ll be able to bring your pupils’ work to the big screen,” says Clinton Martinez, writer at Write My Paper and EssayRoo. “Kids love to see their work shared in this way – it can help them inspire each other and even trigger collaborative efforts amongst the class.”

Writing Games

There are loads of writing games that challenge kids to combine their imagination and writing skills to produce a body of work. Kids can work together to write a story following a series of prompts. These can be incredibly simple, building a story by going back and forth between “fortunately…” and “unfortunately…” or more complex, introducing characters and prompting kids to produce dialogue with “he said…” and “she said…”

Wrapping Up

Writing is an essential skill for kids to learn, and as they keep practicing and encountering new challenges they’ll get better at it. Starting this process with younger kids instils the value of writing and demystifies it, enabling them to take part in more writing projects later in life. Teaching kids writing can be tough at first but with a few tweaks to your classroom you’ll have them inspired in no time.

Katherine Rundell is an educational writer at Essay Services and Academic Writing Services services. She has been teaching elementary age children in some capacity for over a decade and loves the constant surprises that kids’ creative minds throw up. She is also a proof-reader at Paper Fellows.