Opening the door to the imagination

Background

At the beginning of the creative writing process, an experience, image, word or other impulse inspires the student to express their own imagination, personal memories or subjective feelings in a text. The open, sensual and creative use of language and writing takes centre stage; normative rules do not have to be observed. Creative writing thus encourages experimentation and leads to writing success even for children who struggle with spelling and grammar. It provides readers with fascinating insights into children's experiences.

Letter pictures

Letters and words can also be used for colouring: The word sun forms the rays of a drawn sun, many small letters form the first letter of a name, etc. The children can use the letter pictures to design special greetings cards or name tags, for example.

Worm parakeet and trout parakeet

Two animal names are put together to form new zoological creations. Then the children draw their imaginary animal and label it. On the back, they can write (or rhyme) other special features of the animal: What does the animal eat? Where does it live? Who are its parents, siblings, friends?

Story cube

The players roll the dice for symbols and make up a story to go with them. Older children write at the same time as the other players within a time limit. At the end of the time limit, the texts are read out in the round. Suitable dice are available, for example, from «Icon Poets» by the Frei brothers or from «Rory's Story Cubes» (the latter are also available as an app).

App tip

About the author:
Johanna Oeschger is a literature and linguistics scholar, teaches German and English at upper secondary level and works as a media didactician at LerNetz.