New Year's Writing & Drama Ideas
New Year Ideas & Games for Teaching School & Homeschool Writers
Dec 19, 2007
Fun Ways to Teach Language Arts in January
The New Year is a great time to renew kids' interest in learning with fun writing ideas and drama games that teach writing skills. Drama is a natural way to practice developing characters, stories, and settings while having a good time.
A Teaching Tip: A Bowl of New Years Writing Ideas
Print ideas for writing ideas on slips of paper, fold, and put in a bowl. Let children pick a slip and see what creative writing they can come up with from the word, concept, or phrase. Kids can even help come up with ideas of their own.
Some ideas to write on the slips include:
- What is the most unusual New Year's Resolution you have heard?
- If I were New Year's Eve Firework, I would be...
- What goals do I have for the new year?
- Which do you think is better: being cold or being hot? Why?
- A good deed I would would like to do this year is...
- The most interesting holiday gift I received was...
- I think in the year 2038, I will...
- Combine a turtle, a beach ball and an ant into a written creation.
- Combine a puppy, a girl or boy, and a tall wall into a story or poem.
- Dear Baby New Year...
For those who seem to write more slowly than they can think, consider allowing dictation to another student or into a tape recorder. It may turn out that a child with poor handwriting skills still has a lot of creativity to share. Handwriting can be taught as a separate subject at another time.
Drama or Theater Arts Lesson Plan Builds Language Arts Skills with Puppets
Often, children who are fearful of speaking in front of a group may come alive with a puppet to speak for them. Here are some puppet ideas to help in teaching students writing skills.
- Have each child develop a character with art materials. Puppets can be as simple as cut-outs glued to craft sticks, felt finger puppets, sock puppets with yarn hair and draw-on eyes, or paper mache head creatures with fabric (or baby shirt) bodies. Explain to children that the personality, look, voice, attitude, etc of their puppet is all part of making a story character. (Skill learned: character development, personality research)
- Have each child develop a setting and maybe even make cardboard puppet theater stages, complete with changeable backdrops. Some ideas of settings might be a park, a castle, or a house. Explain to children that the setting of a story will change the story. For instance, a princess in a castle sets up a different story than a princess sitting a mud puddle. (Skills learned: setting development, story development, creative thinking)
- Have each child, or small groups of students, come up with a story and skit. Make writing it down optional, but have kids keep in mind that if they are not writing, they need to memorize the lines to their play. Both will teach useful language arts skills. (Skills learned: dialog writing, script writing, cooperative writing, memorization and oral recitation.)
When completed, spend a few days enjoying the puppets and the skits. Premier the newly written skits, hand out pre-written scripts to try, mix puppets and skits up and see what happens. Try to keep everyone's puppets "in character." (Skills learned: creative writing, reading, pre-writing and rewriting, improvisation and quick thinking, character development, and plot enhancement.)
Besides language arts writing skills, puppetry students learn hand-eye coordination through art and puppet manipulation, both of which are important to improving handwriting.
Drama games teach many language arts skills. These are just a few ideas to get the children going. Brainstorm with kids to come up with other writing and drama-type games to play over the year and bring some unique joy into the learning of language arts.
Other articles of interest to language arts teachers may be Teach Writing Without Handwriting: Ideas for Teaching Writing with No Penmanship Needed and Getting Kids Writing Published: Tips for Getting Children's Creative Written Work in Print or Online. Homeschoolers, check out The Homeschool Writing Page.
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