Using their creativity can be a great way for kids to get to grips with the basics of the English language, and will even allow a more advanced student to appreciate its intricacies.
Online ESL students will find no substitute for simply using the language, and these creative writing prompts will afford them plenty of opportunity to do just that.
Encourage your student to experiment with the tenses, as well as focusing on what can be heard and smelled, not just what can be seen.
1. Arguing with a friend
It happens to us all. Sooner or later, you fall out with someone close to you. Maybe a friend, maybe a family member, or a neighbour. Encourage your student to imagine a character having a difference of opinion with a friend, and then have them construct a resolution.
2. Visiting Mars
Encourage your student to imagine what it would be like to visit an alien world. Does anyone live there? What does it feel like to walk on a different planet?
3. Staying with a foreign family
Ask your student what they think it would be like to stay with a different family for a week – preferably a family from another culture. Maybe they could imagine a week in Peru, or Scandinavia. What would that look like?
4. Driving a racing car
What would it be like to drive a racing car in a Grand Prix? Or a monster truck in a demolition derby? Ask your student to write a story about being in a race, feeling the pressure of the other racers hot on their tail, and what it feels like to cross the finish line.
5. Good vs Evil
The good old fashioned hero vs villain. A brave knight saving a princess from an evil wizard; a warrior girl overthrowing an evil queen to save the man she loves; these stories are as old as humanity itself, and they still resonate. Encourage your student to construct their own medieval-style Romantic ‘Epic’.
6. New kid at school
Many children find themselves in the situation where they are the new kid at school. Encourage your student to consider what this would feel like, what that new kid might encounter, and what they may have to overcome.
7. Moving house
Ask your student if they’ve ever moved house, and if they have then ask them to write about how it felt. If they haven’t, encourage them to imagine what it feels like to leave behind your home and start fresh in a new one.
8. New sibling
Ask your student to imagine coming home today to find a newborn baby in the living room. What happens next?
9. Superhero
The classic question – if you could have a superpower what would it be? Would what you use it for? Now tell a story with those ingredients.
10. Dream house
What would the perfect house look like? What would be in it? How many rooms and what rooms? Are some of them upside down, or maybe some smell inexplicably of chocolate?
Hopefully some of these creative writing prompts for kids will get your students bursting with inspiration!
You can put these teaching tips into practice by exploring teach from home jobs like…
Or use creative writing prompts for adults in platforms like…
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