An Interesting Writing Activity

The following is an in-class writing activity used by Ms. Chiu (邱佳琦老師), an NHSH English teacher.

1. Students sit in lines.  Every student gets a piece of paper.

2. Everyone writes the first sentence of a story at the same time, based on the pattern given by the teacher,  for example,  "S + be V-ing + place + time."

3. After finishing the first sentence, the student passes the paper to the one sitting behind him/her, who goes on with the second sentence, then the third, the fourth, etc. until the last one in the same line.

4. The students in each line read together the several stories that have been completed and choose the best one to hand in to the teacher.

P.S.

*The teacher can require the fourth student start his/her sentence with the word "Suddenly."

*In this activity, everyone is busy writing at any time before all the stories are completed, so there will be no classroom management problem.

*If there are seven students in a line, then the line will create seven different stories.

*Instead of handing in the best story to the teacher, each line can have a "narrator" read it to the whole class.