Creativity Quickfire

Creativity Quickfire. Writing activity.

First ten minutes:

Every student receives three slips of paper. Students will write the name of an everyday object on one slip. Teacher will model appropriate examples. Students will write the first sentence of a story and the last line of a story on the other two slips. Teacher will again model appropriate examples:

Object: model airplane
First sentence: Yesterday I got my first tattoo.
Last sentence: And now I know I love macaroni and cheese.

Tells students to stay away from first sentences like, "Once upon a time" or "One day I was walking down the street." Encourage them to choose quickly without over-analyzing.

Teacher will gather the slips into the 3 separate piles or hats. Students will be divided into groups of 3. One member of the group will pull out of a hat their group's first sentence, object, and last sentence. As a group students will write a story or a character's monologue using the three pieces of information. They must use the starting sentence to start their story or monologue and end with the last sentence. They must mention the object at some point in their writing.

Technology component:

Students will use iMovie to create a short video where they will read their story, accompanied by appropriate images and choose music to accompany it. Music must help to establish the writing's mood.

Students will have 20 minutes to write their story and 30 minutes to create their iMovie.

Students should concentrate on creating a compelling character or a story with narrative flow.

Their images should be taken from an Advanced Search on Google Images: go to Usage Rights and choose "labeled for reuse" in the dropdown menu. They must save the links from their chosen images and site them at the end of their iMovie.