creative writing warm ups high school

• Writing Activities

105 Creative Writing Exercises To Get You Writing Again

You know that feeling when you just don’t feel like writing? Sometimes you can’t even get a word down on paper. It’s the most frustrating thing ever to a writer, especially when you’re working towards a deadline. The good news is that we have a list of 105 creative writing exercises to help you get motivated and start writing again!

What are creative writing exercises?

Creative writing exercises are short writing activities (normally around 10 minutes) designed to get you writing. The goal of these exercises is to give you the motivation to put words onto a blank paper. These words don’t need to be logical or meaningful, neither do they need to be grammatically correct or spelt correctly. The whole idea is to just get you writing something, anything. The end result of these quick creative writing exercises is normally a series of notes, bullet points or ramblings that you can, later on, use as inspiration for a bigger piece of writing such as a story or a poem. 

Good creative writing exercises are short, quick and easy to complete. You shouldn’t need to think too much about your style of writing or how imaginative your notes are. Just write anything that comes to mind, and you’ll be on the road to improving your creative writing skills and beating writer’s block . 

Use the generator below to get a random creative writing exercise idea:

List of 105+ Creative Writing Exercises

Here are over 105 creative writing exercises to give your brain a workout and help those creative juices flow again:

• Set a timer for 60 seconds. Now write down as many words or phrases that come to mind at that moment.
• Pick any colour you like. Now start your sentence with this colour. For example, Orange, the colour of my favourite top. 
• Open a book or dictionary on a random page. Pick a random word. You can close your eyes and slowly move your finger across the page. Now, write a paragraph with this random word in it. You can even use an online dictionary to get random words:

• Create your own alphabet picture book or list. It can be A to Z of animals, food, monsters or anything else you like!
• Using only the sense of smell, describe where you are right now.
• Take a snack break. While eating your snack write down the exact taste of that food. The goal of this creative writing exercise is to make your readers savour this food as well.
• Pick a random object in your room and write a short paragraph from its point of view. For example, how does your pencil feel? What if your lamp had feelings?
• Describe your dream house. Where would you live one day? Is it huge or tiny? 
• Pick two different TV shows, movies or books that you like. Now swap the main character. What if Supergirl was in Twilight? What if SpongeBob SquarePants was in The Flash? Write a short scene using this character swap as inspiration.
• What’s your favourite video game? Write at least 10 tips for playing this game.
• Pick your favourite hobby or sport. Now pretend an alien has just landed on Earth and you need to teach it this hobby or sport. Write at least ten tips on how you would teach this alien.
• Use a random image generator and write a paragraph about the first picture you see.

• Write a letter to your favourite celebrity or character. What inspires you most about them? Can you think of a memorable moment where this person’s life affected yours? We have this helpful guide on writing a letter to your best friend for extra inspiration.
• Write down at least 10 benefits of writing. This can help motivate you and beat writer’s block.
• Complete this sentence in 10 different ways: Patrick waited for the school bus and…
• Pick up a random book from your bookshelf and go to page 9. Find the ninth sentence on that page. Use this sentence as a story starter.
• Create a character profile based on all the traits that you hate. It might help to list down all the traits first and then work on describing the character.
• What is the scariest or most dangerous situation you have ever been in? Why was this situation scary? How did you cope at that moment?
• Pretend that you’re a chat show host and you’re interviewing your favourite celebrity. Write down the script for this conversation.
• Using extreme detail, write down what you have been doing for the past one hour today. Think about your thoughts, feelings and actions during this time.
• Make a list of potential character names for your next story. You can use a fantasy name generator to help you.
• Describe a futuristic setting. What do you think the world would look like in 100 years time?
• Think about a recent argument you had with someone. Would you change anything about it? How would you resolve an argument in the future?
• Describe a fantasy world. What kind of creatures live in this world? What is the climate like? What everyday challenges would a typical citizen of this world face? You can use this fantasy world name generator for inspiration.
• At the flip of a switch, you turn into a dragon. What kind of dragon would you be? Describe your appearance, special abilities, likes and dislikes. You can use a dragon name generator to give yourself a cool dragon name.
• Pick your favourite book or a famous story. Now change the point of view. For example, you could rewrite the fairytale , Cinderella. This time around, Prince Charming could be the main character. What do you think Prince Charming was doing, while Cinderella was cleaning the floors and getting ready for the ball?
• Pick a random writing prompt and use it to write a short story. Check out this collection of over 300 writing prompts for kids to inspire you. 
• Write a shopping list for a famous character in history. Imagine if you were Albert Einstein’s assistant, what kind of things would he shop for on a weekly basis?
• Create a fake advertisement poster for a random object that is near you right now. Your goal is to convince the reader to buy this object from you.
• What is the worst (or most annoying) sound that you can imagine? Describe this sound in great detail, so your reader can understand the pain you feel when hearing this sound.
• What is your favourite song at the moment? Pick one line from this song and describe a moment in your life that relates to this line.
•  You’re hosting an imaginary dinner party at your house. Create a list of people you would invite, and some party invites. Think about the theme of the dinner party, the food you will serve and entertainment for the evening. 
• You are waiting to see your dentist in the waiting room. Write down every thought you are having at this moment in time. 
• Make a list of your greatest fears. Try to think of at least three fears. Now write a short story about a character who is forced to confront one of these fears. 
• Create a ‘Wanted’ poster for a famous villain of your choice. Think about the crimes they have committed, and the reward you will give for having them caught. 
• Imagine you are a journalist for the ‘Imagine Forest Times’ newspaper. Your task is to get an exclusive interview with the most famous villain of all time. Pick a villain of your choice and interview them for your newspaper article. What questions would you ask them, and what would their responses be?
•  In a school playground, you see the school bully hurting a new kid. Write three short stories, one from each perspective in this scenario (The bully, the witness and the kid getting bullied).
• You just won $10 million dollars. What would you spend this money on?
• Pick a random animal, and research at least five interesting facts about this animal. Write a short story centred around one of these interesting facts. 
• Pick a global issue that you are passionate about. This could be climate change, black lives matters, women’s rights etc. Now create a campaign poster for this global issue. 
• Write an acrostic poem about an object near you right now (or even your own name). You could use a poetry idea generator to inspire you.
• Imagine you are the head chef of a 5-star restaurant. Recently the business has slowed down. Your task is to come up with a brand-new menu to excite customers. Watch this video prompt on YouTube to inspire you.
• What is your favourite food of all time? Imagine if this piece of food was alive, what would it say to you?
• If life was one big musical, what would you be singing about right now? Write the lyrics of your song. 
• Create and describe the most ultimate villain of all time. What would their traits be? What would their past look like? Will they have any positive traits?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: Every time I look out of the window, I…
• You have just made it into the local newspaper, but what for? Write down at least five potential newspaper headlines . Here’s an example, Local Boy Survives a Deadly Illness.
• If you were a witch or a wizard, what would your specialist area be and why? You might want to use a Harry Potter name generator or a witch name generator for inspiration.
• What is your favourite thing to do on a Saturday night? Write a short story centred around this activity. 
• Your main character has just received the following items: A highlighter, a red cap, a teddy bear and a fork. What would your character do with these items? Can you write a story using these items? 
• Create a timeline of your own life, from birth to this current moment. Think about the key events in your life, such as birthdays, graduations, weddings and so on. After you have done this, you can pick one key event from your life to write a story about. 
• Think of a famous book or movie you like. Rewrite a scene from this book or movie, where the main character is an outsider. They watch the key events play out, but have no role in the story. What would their actions be? How would they react?
• Three very different characters have just won the lottery. Write a script for each character, as they reveal the big news to their best friend.  
• Write a day in the life story of three different characters. How does each character start their day? What do they do throughout the day? And how does their day end?
•  Write about the worst experience in your life so far. Think about a time when you were most upset or angry and describe it. 
• Imagine you’ve found a time machine in your house. What year would you travel to and why?
• Describe your own superhero. Think about their appearance, special abilities and their superhero name. Will they have a secret identity? Who is their number one enemy?
• What is your favourite country in the world? Research five fun facts about this country and use one to write a short story. 
• Set yourself at least three writing goals. This could be a good way to motivate yourself to write every day. For example, one goal might be to write at least 150 words a day. 
• Create a character description based on the one fact, three fiction rule. Think about one fact or truth about yourself. And then add in three fictional or fantasy elements. For example, your character could be the same age as you in real life, this is your one fact. And the three fictional elements could be they have the ability to fly, talk in over 100 different languages and have green skin. 
• Describe the perfect person. What traits would they have? Think about their appearance, their interests and their dislikes. 
• Keep a daily journal or diary. This is a great way to keep writing every day. There are lots of things you can write about in your journal, such as you can write about the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of your day. Think about anything that inspired you or anything that upset you, or just write anything that comes to mind at the moment. 
• Write a book review or a movie review. If you’re lost for inspiration, just watch a random movie or read any book that you can find. Then write a critical review on it. Think about the best parts of the book/movie and the worst parts. How would you improve the book or movie?
• Write down a conversation between yourself. You can imagine talking to your younger self or future self (i.e. in 10 years’ time). What would you tell them? Are there any lessons you learned or warnings you need to give? Maybe you could talk about what your life is like now and compare it to their life?
• Try writing some quick flash fiction stories . Flash fiction is normally around 500 words long, so try to stay within this limit.
• Write a six-word story about something that happened to you today or yesterday. A six-word story is basically an entire story told in just six words. Take for example: “Another football game ruined by me.” or “A dog’s painting sold for millions.” – Six-word stories are similar to writing newspaper headlines. The goal is to summarise your story in just six words. 
• The most common monsters or creatures used in stories include vampires, werewolves , dragons, the bigfoot, sirens and the loch-ness monster. In a battle of intelligence, who do you think will win and why?
• Think about an important event in your life that has happened so far, such as a birthday or the birth of a new sibling. Now using the 5 W’s and 1 H technique describe this event in great detail. The 5 W’s include: What, Who, Where, Why, When and the 1 H is: How. Ask yourself questions about the event, such as what exactly happened on that day? Who was there? Why was this event important? When and where did it happen? And finally, how did it make you feel?
• Pretend to be someone else. Think about someone important in your life. Now put yourself into their shoes, and write a day in the life story about being them. What do you think they do on a daily basis? What situations would they encounter? How would they feel?
• Complete this sentence in at least 10 different ways: I remember…
• Write about your dream holiday. Where would you go? Who would you go with? And what kind of activities would you do?
• Which one item in your house do you use the most? Is it the television, computer, mobile phone, the sofa or the microwave? Now write a story of how this item was invented. You might want to do some research online and use these ideas to build up your story. 
• In exactly 100 words, describe your bedroom. Try not to go over or under this word limit.
• Make a top ten list of your favourite animals. Based on this list create your own animal fact file, where you provide fun facts about each animal in your list.
• What is your favourite scene from a book or a movie? Write down this scene. Now rewrite the scene in a different genre, such as horror, comedy, drama etc.
•  Change the main character of a story you recently read into a villain. For example, you could take a popular fairytale such as Jack and the Beanstalk, but this time re-write the story to make Jack the villain of the tale.
• Complete the following sentence in at least 10 different ways: Do you ever wonder…
• What does your name mean? Research the meaning of your own name, or a name that interests you. Then use this as inspiration for your next story. For example, the name ‘Marty’ means “Servant Of Mars, God Of War”. This could make a good concept for a sci-fi story.
• Make a list of three different types of heroes (or main characters) for potential future stories.
• If someone gave you $10 dollars, what would you spend it on and why?
• Describe the world’s most boring character in at least 100 words. 
• What is the biggest problem in the world today, and how can you help fix this issue?
• Create your own travel brochure for your hometown. Think about why tourists might want to visit your hometown. What is your town’s history? What kind of activities can you do? You could even research some interesting facts. 
• Make a list of all your favourite moments or memories in your life. Now pick one to write a short story about.
• Describe the scariest and ugliest monster you can imagine. You could even draw a picture of this monster with your description.
• Write seven haikus, one for each colour of the rainbow. That’s red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. 
• Imagine you are at the supermarket. Write down at least three funny scenarios that could happen to you at the supermarket. Use one for your next short story. 
• Imagine your main character is at home staring at a photograph. Write the saddest scene possible. Your goal is to make your reader cry when reading this scene. 
• What is happiness? In at least 150 words describe the feeling of happiness. You could use examples from your own life of when you felt happy.
• Think of a recent nightmare you had and write down everything you can remember. Use this nightmare as inspiration for your next story.
• Keep a dream journal. Every time you wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning you can quickly jot down things that you remember from your dreams. These notes can then be used as inspiration for a short story. 
• Your main character is having a really bad day. Describe this bad day and the series of events they experience. What’s the worst thing that could happen to your character?
• You find a box on your doorstep. You open this box and see the most amazing thing ever. Describe this amazing thing to your readers.
• Make a list of at least five possible settings or locations for future stories. Remember to describe each setting in detail.
• Think of something new you recently learned. Write this down. Now write a short story where your main character also learns the same thing.
• Describe the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your whole life. Your goal is to amaze your readers with its beauty. 
• Make a list of things that make you happy or cheer you up. Try to think of at least five ideas. Now imagine living in a world where all these things were banned or against the law. Use this as inspiration for your next story.
• Would you rather be rich and alone or poor and very popular? Write a story based on the lives of these two characters. 
• Imagine your main character is a Librarian. Write down at least three dark secrets they might have. Remember, the best secrets are always unexpected.
• There’s a history behind everything. Describe the history of your house. How and when was your house built? Think about the land it was built on and the people that may have lived here long before you.
• Imagine that you are the king or queen of a beautiful kingdom. Describe your kingdom in great detail. What kind of rules would you have? Would you be a kind ruler or an evil ruler of the kingdom?
• Make a wish list of at least three objects you wish you owned right now. Now use these three items in your next story. At least one of them must be the main prop in the story.
• Using nothing but the sense of taste, describe a nice Sunday afternoon at your house. Remember you can’t use your other senses (i.e see, hear, smell or touch) in this description. 
• What’s the worst pain you felt in your life? Describe this pain in great detail, so your readers can also feel it.
• If you were lost on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere, what three must-have things would you pack and why?
• Particpate in online writing challenges or contests. Here at Imagine Forest, we offer daily writing challenges with a new prompt added every day to inspire you. Check out our challenges section in the menu.

Do you have any more fun creative writing exercises to share? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Kid-Friendly Writing Warm-Ups That Spark Creative Writing

by Kim Kautzer | Feb 15, 2021 | Teaching Homeschool Writing , Writing Games & Activities

Have you ever put off a tough task only to realize it wasn’t as bad as you imagined—once you simply got started? It seems that beginning   something new is often the most challenging part of a project.  Marquise du Deffand says it perfectly:

The distance is nothing; it’s only the first step that is difficult.

Writing can feel the same way. A blank piece of paper stares back at your child. He imagines how long the writing assignment is going to take and all the drafts and edits that await him. Taking the very first step is the hardest part. Once he plunges in and the words start flowing , he may even find he doesn’t want to stop!

This natural inertia that makes those first steps so hard is why young writers need warm-ups . These pre-writing activities and kid-friendly writing warm-ups provide structure for thinking about the writing task and a low-risk way to take those first forward motions.

1. Writing Prompts

While some students are full of ideas and resist being forced to write about an assigned topic, most children appreciate the nudge that an interesting or humorous writing prompt offers. We have an entire category of  writing prompts   here on the WriteShop blog to keep you stocked with ideas.

Don’t expect every prompt to appeal to your child. That’s why we write so many of these—so your young writer can choose a topic that genuinely interests him .  And since writing prompts are merely starting points, allow your child to tweak the prompt to his own liking. One prompt can even be a springboard to a completely different writing topic altogether.

The point is not that your child sticks with a prescribed topic, but that he has a starting point for his own writing.

2. Story Starters

Again, all a child needs sometimes to begin a creative writing project is a gentle push in the right direction. While prompts offer a topic or ask a question,  story starters actually provide the first sentence . Write one of these on a sheet of paper to  avoid the blank page panic .

Kid-friendly story starters make great writing warm-ups! Here is a list of 15 first lines with  humorous or far-fetched themes that you can use as story starters. For added fun, print the prompts on cards and let the kids draw a prompt from the pile.  Blank game cards are perfect for this!

Story Starter Ideas

• I will never forget the day I became a whale (mole, giraffe, sea gull, ladybug, etc.).
• I had an exciting adventure when I rode a camel through the desert.
• It had rained all night and all day. I was lost and far from home.
• When I looked in the mirror yesterday, a monkey’s face was staring back at me.
• My Uncle Pye lived in an upside-down house.
• Ethan’s pillow told him exciting bedtime stories. One night . . .
• Bella’s aunt invented a board game with pieces that could move by themselves. Bella would tell the pieces where to move and they would obey her voice. One day, the pieces began ignoring her.
• Hunter bought a robot that cleaned his room. But last week, the robot forgot how to do the chores.
• Finola Feather was always floating away. Her feet wouldn’t stay on the ground. One day . . .
• The trouble started when Sofia brought home a _______ last week.
• Yesterday, Grandpa came up with the craziest invention in his laboratory!
• I remember the year it snowed in July.
• Micah flew to the moon in his new rocket ship. But when he landed, he was in for a big surprise!

If your child struggles to put words on paper, it may be helpful to set a timer and write a little each day . Start out with five minutes, increasing the time as his confidence grows. When time is up, he can stop writing. His story will build day by day! Encourage him to wrap it up by the end of the week.

Verbal children might enjoy dictating their story as you write it down , especially if they are struggling or reluctant writers . Alternatively, let them use a recording device .

3. Round Robin

In a round robin, players take turns adding to a story as it moves around the table from person to person. The writing prompts and story starters mentioned in #1 and #2 above are great ways to get the ball rolling. Or download this free printable round-robin prompt !

• You can play with as few as two people or as many as five (e.g., you and your child, three or four siblings, or small groups of three to five in a class or co-op).
• There are different ways to play, making it easy to adapt for families whose kids read or write at different levels.
• Remind children that as the story passes from one to the next, it will take unexpected or silly twists and turn s. If they understand this ahead of time, it helps ward off disappointment when the story line starts heading in a different direction from what they had in mind.

Oral Round Robin

Kid-friendly round robins, especially when done orally, make awesome writing warm-ups! This activity is ideal for mixed ages. No writing is involved , so even children who can’t read or write well can play.

Directions : Give an older child a writing prompt. Set a timer for one minute, and have her begin adding to the prompt to tell a story. When the timer goes off, even if the story is in mid-sentence, the child to the left picks up where the tale left off. Keep going around the table from child to child.  After 7-8 minutes, give notice that it’s time to draw the story to a close so the last two children will know to wrap it up.

Write Around the Table

This activity is better for children who are reading and writing independently.

Directions: Each child chooses a story prompt and begins writing. When the timer rings, stories pass to the person on the left, who will add to the plot. Each time papers are passed, increase the amount of time allotted , as children will need time both to read and add details to the growing stories. When four or five students are playing, they will write the conclusion when their original story finally makes its way back to them. Alternatively, you can simply give a heads up when it’s time to wrap up the story that’s in front of them.

4. 6-word Rhyming Poems

Challenge your kids to write 2-line, 6-word poems using active, descriptive words. Here are four examples:

OUCH ! Climbed the tree, Skinned my knee.

NIGHT SKY Moon glows white, Black sky’s nightlight.

PLAYTIME Shaking rattles, making noise. Baby toys .

AT SEA Stormy sea! Crashing waves frighten me.

Rhyme Zone is a kid-friendly, helpful resource to use during writing warm-ups that involve poetry. Invite your children to glean from it whenever they write  rhyming poems .

5. Poetry Strips and Word Banks

Writing is made up of words , so words themselves may inspire your children to write. Offer themed word banks of related words  you have pre-selected, or let your children help you create the word banks.

Content-area word banks are a great warm-up for writing across the curriculum . Use new vocabulary from your science or history lessons to make word lists that can then inspire creative writing. 

Upper-elementary students may enjoy browsing the dictionary for interesting words to include in a story. For younger kids, download this free printable of word strips or, better yet, make your own!

6. Storyboards

Storyboards are great for children who like to draw. Their sketches can serve as a launching pad to creative writing .

• Provide writing prompts or StoryBuilders  and ask your kids to choose a story idea.
• Give them nine index cards. On the first three cards, invite them to draw simple pictures of what might happen at the beginning of the story (one scene per card).
• On the next three cards, have them draw pictures of what might happen in the middle of the story.
• Ask them to think about how their story could end, and draw their ideas on the last three cards.

The beauty of storyboarding? They’re not getting caught up worrying about word choice, spelling, or grammar. They’re just playing with ideas. And if they want to make changes, it’s so easy to move those ideas around—or even swap them out for others.

7. The Sound of Things

Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates a sound. Here’s a fun exercise that helps kids think of sound words.

Hiss  can be an animal sound, the sound of an air leak, or a “quiet” sound. A pipe, a person, or the wind can groan . So don’t worry if there is overlap between categories— it’s just fun playing with the sounds of words!

If you need help guiding your kids, these websites feature lists of onomatopoetic words.

• WrittenSound.com
• 5 Examples of Onomatopoeia
• Examples of Onomatopoeia for Kids
• Onomatopoeia Word List
• Talk about water in its many forms and the different sounds water can make. What sounds would you hear from rainfall or waterfalls? Puddles or oceans? Little creeks or rushing rivers? Hoses or pipes? Faucets or fountains? Straws in a glass of lemonade? What about melting icicles or slush? Together, come up with  a list of water words , such as plop, drip, and gurgle .
• Play again, coming up with sounds animals make , such as  chirp, hee-haw , and moo . Other categories could include air or wind sounds (hiss, rustle, gasp, flap) , machinery or vehicle sounds (whirr, thrum, clank, chug), explosion sounds (bang, kaboom, crash) , or different sounds voices make (mumble, blurt, groan) . You can also ask for “quiet” words or “loud” words.

8. A Great Book

Picture books, chapter books, and reading aloud can inspire great writing too.

Fan Fiction

Write fan fiction that remains true to the setting and to the character’s personalities. Invite your child to:

• Choose a pivotal decision that a character made in the book, and rewrite the story with the character making a different decision.
• Extend the story beyond the ending. Write the sequel or an additional chapter.
• Put the characters into a brand-new setting (maybe via a time machine, for example).

Model Forms

Picture books make great kid-friendly writing warm-ups . Many picture books are based on a formula or structure that  serves as a model for your own story on a different topic. For example, the familiar book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie  can give kids a formula for writing a chain of hilarious events sparked by a single, innocent action.

Wordless Books

While wordless books have no words, they certainly have a story . Your children can  put that story into words after reading a wordless book . This can be especially fun to do in a group setting where kids can compare versions with each other. It’s fun to see how motives and feelings were interpreted by different writers in the group.

WriteShop J unior is a partnership between you and your child—because that’s how writing is best taught! You’ll love all the hands-on activities and tools, including kid-friendly writing warm-ups,  graphic organizers, and detailed brainstorming instructions  for each and every story. Not only that, you’ll learn how to model the brainstorming process with simple dialogues and writing examples.

Would you like to see how WriteShop Junior teaches 3rd-6th grade kids to plan a story?

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10 best creative writing warm ups exercises for High School

10 best creative writing warm ups exercises for High School | Best writing practices

Timed states are in demand for numerous regulatory tests in the public education setting. Rather than try to cloak that truth, embrace it! Show your scholars that timed memos can be a fun challenge and develop their explanatory and logical prowess by beginning every class with a jotting warm-up. These warm-ups must take only five to ten twinkles, and you can fluently apply them into your daily bell-ringer routine.

Then are ten exercises to make your scholars’ jotting confidence

1 Minute Story

Get your scholars in the habit of writing belonging to the word” go.” Set the cadence for 60 seconds and task them with a note of a complete short story with a morning, middle, and end in that time. The first time, many of them will presumably find themselves caught up in the pressure or struggle over what to write.

That is okay! The further they exercise, the better they will allow snappily and ban any gratuitous information. By the end of the time, an essay in forty-five twinkles will feel like a piece of cutlet! It’s stylish not to score these short stories. Instead, work on progress. However, encourage them to keep adding to their account with the one- nanosecond you give them in class, If a pupil has trouble with this.

A Photo is Worth A Thousand Words

Put an image upon the slat, and have your scholars write a short paragraph about it. You can have them biro a short story, a long-form lyric, or explain what a pupil perceives the case depicted to be. This exercise will encourage creative and reproving thinking chops, which are essential in rhetorical analysis.

Note the image should have as essential or as little visual information as is applicable for the type of response you’re seeking. For illustration, a picture of an apple would serve as a lyric, whereas a stock print of a couple might more suit a short story or analysis.

Musical Calligraphies

Using necessary music is a great way to spark your scholars’ creativity and capability to write intimately. Play the piece formerly in its wholeness, and allow your scholars to make notes along the way. Also, have them determine the song’s mood in a single word and write a paragraph about why the theme is” sad,” happy,” romantic,” etc. Because the utmost of your scholars presumably will not yet have written a master’s thesis in music proposition, this exertion will force them to suppose analytically to get their point across. Plus, they’ll get to hear music in class!

Everyone’s A Critic

Have your scholars write a short review of a book, TV show, or movie they lately read or watched! Thoughts have a clear, largely private prompt. Was it good or bad? This warm-up is an awful practice for plot analysis, critical thinking, and supporting claims with substantiation from the source. Plus, you may be suitable to avoid a bad film or two yourself. Kiddies are notoriously harsh critics, after all.

Alphabetical Order

This exertion will make your scholars moan, but it’ll get them focused. This exercise will bear your scholars to write a 26 line account of their day so far, each line beginning with the matching letter of the ABC. For illustration, “A raspberry flew by my window this morning. Catcalls are nice. “Caw,” the raspberry said …” Scholars may witness frustration, but the structure will help them come habituated to producing monumental work while working with strict guidelines. Likewise, this exertion will get them involved in the process of jotting.

Rear! Rear!

Still, look no further! In this exercise, you’ll select any word out of the English language and present it to your scholars, If you enjoy crazy fun. Also, reverse all the letters, creating an entirely new word. 

Each of your scholars will decide the meaning of this unique word and give a dictionary entry for it, complete with a description and an illustration judgment. This fun little exercise gets the creative authorities flowing, and lets scholars feel more in control of language.

Tip To make the exertion more grueling, place-specific guidelines on how the word fits into the English speech, i.e., “this word is a verb,” etc.

Dear New Me,

Letters are a great, low-stress exertion that still helps your scholars exercise communicating their studies effectively in jotting. In this exercise, scholars will write a short communication to their unborn characters, detailing particular pretensions or worries about the near future. 

I recommend doing this on the morning of a new unit or, indeed, before an extended assignment/ design so that scholars can go into the coming literacy experience with a more focused mindset. Tone check- sways are necessary!

Dear Old Me,

Then is a fun glass of the below warm-up, in which your scholars will write to their once characters! It can work in a broader sense, similar to writing a letter full of effects they’d wish they had known when they were six. 

They can also use this to reflect the ending of a unit or design . It can indeed pair with the” Dear New Me” design, performing in a constant sluice of discussion that marks each pupil’s progress. It’s a great way to remind scholars that we’re all literate and growing every day.

Dear Alter Pride,

Yet another twist on letter writing. One scholar can engage with this exertion every day, and bone allows them a grain of fantasy to amp up the classroom. Ask your scholars to produce an altar of pride for themselves. 

Set aside countless twinkles on the morning of the individual class for your scholars to write to their altered self-esteem. Not only is this an exercise in jotting, but it’s also an exercise in tone- regard. 

Frequently altered self-esteem is who we imagine ourselves as, but sweat we’re too plain or weak to be. The more acquainted your scholars come with their altered self-esteem , the further they will realize that they’re exalting themselves and their eventuality.

Everything comes out finer when love is appending to the blend. When you ask someone all over a subject they adore, it seems as if they could talk for hours. Ask your scholars to write down a list of effects they’re passionate about. It can be something from food to a sport to a stuffed beast they always keep on their bed. Have them choose one, set the timekeeper, and let them write! They’ll surprise themselves with how much they’ve to say.

• You can use more specific questions to prompt them: 
• Why is it unique to you tête-à-tête? 
• When did you first become interested? 
• What are 3 data you know about?

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30+ Creative Writing Prompts for High School Students

By: Asiyah Jilani

Here are some unique creative writing prompts for high school that students can use to think creatively, expand their writing skills, and find enjoyment in writing. The prompts are sorted by genre, including poetry, science fiction, flash fiction, narrative, and even some creative and open choice prompts.

Poetry Prompts for High Schoolers

• Beginnings - Write a poem where every line begins with the same letter.
• Diminishing Verse - Write a poem in which the end word in a line is the same end word in the previous line, but with the first letter removed. A three line stanza, for example, could have the following end words: “smart”, “mart”, and “art” Or, rather than removing a letter and keeping the spelling of the remaining word the same, you have the option to remove sounds. “Stare” could turn into “tear”, for example, and “tear” into “air”.
• Collective Nouns - Write a poem with a collective noun as its genesis and theme, highlighting the characteristics of a creature we share the planet with. Seek to emphasize the poetic nature of these terms; for example, alliteration in ‘a parcel of penguins’ or the imagery of ‘a bouquet of hummingbirds’. If you’re feeling extra creative, invent a collective noun of your own to include as the basis of your poem.
• Life through a Window - Write a poem that captures the images of life and activity seen through a window over the course of one single morning, day, evening or night.
• Fan Poetry - Write a poem imitating the style of a popular poet, whether it be a Shakespearean sonnet or a naturalistic poem like those of Mary Oliver’s. Be sure to include a footnote, crediting the poet or poem that inspired your piece.

Science Fiction Creative Writing Prompts for High School Students

• Solar Power - In 1960, physicist Freeman Dyson proposed a hypothetical megastructure that could encompass a star and suck energy from it to power the earth—an idea known today as a "Dyson sphere." What are the benefits of energy captured from a star? The consequences? Imagine what the world would be like with a Dyson sphere. In prose or poetry, take us into a scene or offer a description of this reimagined world.
• False Familiarity - Medically, déjà vu is false familiarity. Your brain creates an illusion of a feeling that you have lived this moment before. But what if there was more to the story? Write a story explaining déjà vu through fantasy or the supernatural. Is there more to the illusion? Maybe it’s a wild mind control conspiracy in a distant future world, or maybe a disorganized higher power forgot to finish sculpting human minds properly. Be as creative as you like!

Personal Narrative Prompts for High School Students

• Lost things - Anywhere from a paragraph to a page long, tell the story of an object that you’ve lost, detailing: 1. How it was lost. 2. How it changed you. 3. Where you imagine it is now.
• Your world in three senses- Think of a place you love... transport your readers there with three detailed and telling descriptions, each using a different sense: SIGHT, SMELL, SOUND, TASTE, or TOUCH. Perhaps it's the feeling of the dry desert wind that defines this place for you. Perhaps it's the sound of the dogs howling. Perhaps the smell of smog or sea salt. Pick details that are particular and specific, and bring them to life with vivid sensory language.
• Subtotals - In his story, “Subtotals,” Gregory Burnham shares details of his life in number form. For example, he tells us how many rotten eggs he's thrown (1), the number of postcards he's sent (831), the number of miracles he's witnessed (0). Write a story composed of subtotals from your life. Try to select and pair subtotals that speak to each other. For example, the following two numbers aren't very interesting on their own, but together they tell a story: "Number of compliments, given: 4,051; accepted: 2,249."

Flash Fiction Creative Writing Prompts for High School Students

• 99 words - “There was more room to think,” wrote novelist David Gaffney on becoming a flash fiction convert, “more space for the original idea to resonate, fewer unnecessary words to wade through.” Stories of the sudden/skinny/mini/micro variety pack the best parts of fiction into brimming, half-pint packages. Celebrate the art of concision, and write a story in 99 words or less.
• All in a minute - Write a story that takes place in one minute of your character's life. Avoid flashbacks (memories or information from the past) and flash forwards (projecting into the future). Instead, focus on the details of the moment.
• Countdown - Write a story in which your first sentence should have ten words, your second nine words, your third eight, etc., until you’re down to one in your final line.

Check out more flash fiction and other writing resources .

Other Creative Writing Prompts for High School Students

• Global Correspondence - Respond to a current event, whether it be local, regional, or global, in your choice of writing form.
• Advertising - Write an advert for a product that doesn’t exist.
• Feel the Music - Write a story about a pair of headphones that actually take you inside a song.
• Personality traits - Write about an argument between two different traits of someone’s personality.
• Other shoes - Put yourself in shoes that you wouldn’t normally imagine yourself in. Create a scenario for that fictional character. Embody a protagonist that showcases your wit, empathy, and imagination as a writer.
• Selecting a Reader - In his poem, ‘ selecting a reader ’ Ted Krooser cleverly imagines whom he would want to be his reader, and how he would like them to treat his work. imagine your reader in vivid detail - their appearance, thoughts, actions, inner world… how might they have arrived at your writing? How do they interact with it? Describe their idiosyncrasies, intentions, and consider how your writing will affect them!
• Musical - Write a piece inspired by your favorite song.
• 200 years ago - Imagine traveling back 200 years, to the exact spot where you are right now. Who was here? How did the landscape look different? Write a passage of historical fiction that takes place in your current location!
• The Pangram - A Pangram, or “holoalphabetic” sentence, contains every letter of the alphabet at least once. Take the following, rather infamous, pangram: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Try your hand at crafting a perfect pangram, or instead use this restricted form to craft the basis of a longer sentence, or even story. You could even link a few pangrams of varying length together.
• First meeting - Think of your favorite fictional character. What would you say to each other?
• Lens change - Write about a particular memory of yours, but in third person instead of first person.
• You - Write a passage of fiction, employing the second person—“you”—point of view.

Tips for Using Creative Writing Prompts in the Classroom

Writing prompts and other activities are low-stakes and can help to create a culture of writing in your classroom. Here are a few tips to getting started:

• Mix up the types of prompts to connect to your curriculum or promote creative thinking.
• Leave time to share some responses out loud and build a sense of community.
• Write when students write to model continuous learning.
• Keep it brief and open to interpretation.

Looking for more tips for using writing prompts as a daily classroom practice? Check out the full Tips for Using Daily Writing Prompts and other resources for teaching writing .

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100 Creative Writing Prompts for Middle & High School – 2024

April 15, 2024

Some high school students dream of writing for a living, perhaps pursuing an English major in college, or even attending a creative writing MFA program later on. For other students, creative writing can be useful for school assignments, in English and other subjects, and also for preparing their Common App essays . In a less goal-oriented sense, daily freewriting in a journal can be a healthy life practice for many high schoolers. Not sure where to start? Continue reading for 100 creative writing prompts for middle school and high school students. These middle/high school writing prompts offer inspiration for getting started with writing in a number of genres and styles.

Click here to view the 35 Best Colleges for Creative Writing .

What are Creative Writing Prompts?

Similar to how an academic essay prompt provides a jumping-off point for forming and organizing an argument, creative writing prompts are points of initiation for writing a story, poem, or creative essay. Prompts can be useful for writers of all ages, helping many to get past writer’s block and just start (often one of the most difficult parts of a writing process).

Writing prompts come in a variety of forms. Sometimes they are phrases used to begin sentences. Other times they are questions, more like academic essay prompts Writing prompts can also involve objects such as photographs, or activities such as walking. Below, you will find high school writing prompts that use memories, objects, senses (smell/taste/touch), abstract ideas , and even songs as jumping-off points for creative writing. These prompts can be used to write in a variety of forms, from short stories to creative essays, to poems.

How to use Creative Writing Prompts

Before we get started with the list, are a few tips when using creative writing prompts:

Experiment with different formats : Prose is great, but there’s no need to limit yourself to full sentences, at least at first. A piece of creative writing can begin with a poem, or a dialogue, or even a list. You can always bring it back to prose later if needed.

Interpret the prompt broadly : The point of a creative writing prompt is not to answer it “correctly” or “precisely.” You might begin with the prompt, but then your ideas could take you in a completely different direction. The words in the prompt also don’t need to open your poem or essay, but could appear somewhere in the middle.

Switch up/pile up the prompts : Try using two or three prompts and combine them, or weave between them. Perhaps choose a main prompt, and a different “sub-prompt.” For example, your main prompt might be “write about being in transit from one place to another,” and within that prompt, you might use the prompt to “describe a physical sensation,” and/or one the dialogue prompts.  This could be a fun way to find complexity as you write.

Creative Writing Prompts for Middle School & High School Students (Continued)

Write first, edit later : While you’re first getting started with a prompt, leave the typos and bad grammar. Obsessing over details can take away from your flow of thoughts. You will inevitably make many fixes when you go back through to edit.

Write consistently : It often becomes easier to write when it’s a practice , rather than a once-in-a-while kind of activity. For some, it’s useful to write daily. Others find time to write every few days, or every weekend. Sometimes, a word-count goal can help (100 words a day, 2,000 words a month, etc.). If you set a goal, make sure it’s realistic. Start small and build from there, rather than starting with an unachievable goal and quickly giving up.

100 Creative Writing Prompts for Middle School & High School Teens

Here are some prompts for getting started with your creative writing. These are organized by method, rather than genre, so they can inspire writing in a variety of forms. Pick and choose the ones that work best for you, and enjoy!

Prompts using memories

• Begin each sentence or group of sentences with the phrase, “I remember…”
• Describe a family ritual.
• Choose an event in your life, and write about it from the perspective of someone else who was there.
• Pick a pathway you take on a regular basis (to school, or to a friend’s house). Describe five landmarks that you remember from this pathway.
• Write about your house or apartment using a memory from each room.
• Write an imaginary history of the previous people who lived in your house or apartment.
• Write about an ancestor based on stories you’ve heard from relatives.
• What’s your earliest memory?
• Who was your first friend?
• Write a letter to someone you haven’t seen since childhood.
• Write about yourself now from the perspective of yourself twenty, or eighty, years from now.
• Write about the best month of the year.
• Write about the worst day of the year.
• Rant about something that has always annoyed you.
• Write about the hottest or coldest day you can remember.
• Visualize a fleeting moment in your life and as though it’s a photograph, and time yourself 5 minutes to write every detail you can remember about the scene.
• Draw out a timeline of your life so far. Then choose three years to write about, as though you were writing for a history book.
• Write about a historical event in the first person, as though you remember it.
• Write about a memory of being in transit from one place to another.

Objects and photographs as creative writing prompts

• Describe the first object you see in the room. What importance does it have in your life? What memories do you have with this object? What might it symbolize?
• Pick up an object, and spend some time holding it/examining it. Write about how it looks, feels, and smells. Write about the material that it’s made from.
• Choose a favorite family photograph. What could someone know just by looking at the photograph? What’s secretly happening in the photograph?
• Choose a photograph and tell the story of this photograph from the perspective of someone or something in it.
• Write about a color by describing three objects that are that color.
• Tell the story of a piece of trash.
• Tell the story of a pair of shoes.
• Tell the story of your oldest piece of clothing.

Senses and observations as creative writing prompts

• Describe a sound you hear in the room or outside. Choose the first sound you notice. What are its qualities? It’s rhythms? What other sounds does it remind you of?
• Describe a physical sensation you feel right now, in as much detail as possible.
• Listen to a conversation and write down a phrase that you hear someone say. Start a free-write with this phrase.
• Write about a food by describing its qualities, but don’t say what it is.
• Describe a flavor (salty, sweet, bitter, etc.) to someone who has never tasted it before.
• Narrate your day through tastes you tasted.
• Narrate your day through sounds you heard.
• Narrate your day through physical sensations you felt.
• Describe in detail the physical process of doing an action you consider simple or mundane, like walking or lying down or chopping vegetables.
• Write about the sensation of doing an action you consider physically demanding or tiring, like running or lifting heavy boxes.
• Describe something that gives you goosebumps.
• Write a story that involves drinking a cold glass of water on a hot day.
• Write a story that involves entering a warm house from a cold snowy day.
• Describe someone’s facial features in as much detail as possible.

Songs, books, and other art

• Choose a song quote, write it down, and free-write from there.
• Choose a song, and write a story in which that song is playing in the car.
• Choose a song, and write to the rhythm of that song.
• Choose a character from a book, and describe an event in your life from the perspective of that character.
• Go to a library and write down 10 book titles that catch your eye. Free-write for 5 minutes beginning with each one.
• Go to a library and open to random book pages, and write down 5 sentences that catch your attention. Use those sentences as prompts and free-write for 5-minutes with each.
• Choose a piece of abstract artwork. Jot down 10 words that come to mind from the painting or drawing, and free-write for 2 minutes based on each word.
• Find a picture of a dramatic Renaissance painting online. Tell a story about what’s going on in the painting that has nothing to do with what the artist intended.
• Write about your day in five acts, like a Shakespearean play. If your day were a play, what would be the introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution?
• Narrate a complicated book or film plot using only short sentences.
• Read a short poem. Then write a poem that could be a “sister” or “cousin” of that poem.

Abstract ideas as creative writing prompts

• Write about an experience that demonstrates an abstract idea, such as “love” or “home” or “freedom” or “loss” without ever using the word itself.
• Write a list of ways to say “hello” without actually saying “hello.”
• Write a list of ways to say “I love you” without actually saying “I love you.”
• Do you believe in ghosts? Describe a ghost.
• Invent a mode of time travel.
• Glass half-full/half-empty: Write about an event or situation with a positive outlook. Then write about it with a miserable outlook.
• Free-write beginning with “my religion is…” (what comes next can have as much or as little to do with organized religion as you’d like).
• Free-write beginning with “my gender is…” (what comes next can have as much or as little to do with common ideas of gender as you’d like).
• Write about a person or character that is “good” and one that is “evil.” Then write about the “evil” in the good character and the “good” in the evil character.
• Write like you’re telling a secret.
• Describe a moment of beauty you witnessed. What makes something beautiful?

Prompts for playing with narrative and character

• Begin writing with the phrase, “It all started when…”
• Tell a story from the middle of the most dramatic part.
• Write a story that begins with the ending.
• Begin a story but give it 5 possible endings.
• Write a list of ways to dramatically quit a terrible job.
• Write about a character breaking a social rule or ritual (i.e., walking backwards, sitting on the floor of a restaurant, wearing a ballgown to the grocery store). What are the ramifications?
• You are sent to the principal’s office. Justify your bad behavior.
• Re-write a well-known fairytale but set it in your school.
• Write your own version of the TV show trope where someone gets stuck in an elevator with a stranger, or a secret love interest, or a nemesis.
• Imagine a day where you said everything you were thinking, and write about it.
• Write about a scenario in which you have too much of a good thing.
• Write about a scenario in which money can buy happiness.
• Invent a bank or museum heist.
• Invent a superhero, including an origin story.
• Write using the form of the scientific method (question, hypothesis, test, analyze data conclusion).
• Write using the form of a recipe.

Middle School & High School Creative writing prompts for playing with fact vs. fiction

• Write something you know for sure is true, and then, “but maybe it isn’t.” Then explain why that thing may not be true.
• Write a statement and contradict that statement. Then do it again.
• Draft an email with an outlandish excuse as to why you didn’t do your homework or why you need an extension.
• Write about your morning routine, and make it sound extravagant/luxurious (even if it isn’t).
• You’ve just won an award for doing a very mundane and simple task. Write your acceptance speech.
• Write about a non-athletic event as though it were a sports game.
• Write about the most complicated way to complete a simple task.
• Write a brief history of your life, and exaggerate everything.
• Write about your day, but lie about some things.
• Tell the story of your birth.
• Choose a historical event and write an alternative outcome.
• Write about a day in the life of a famous person in history.
• Read an instructional manual, and change three instructions to include some kind of magical or otherwise impossible element.

Prompts for starting with dialogue

• Write a texting conversation between two friends who haven’t spoken in years.
• Write a texting conversation between two friends who speak every day and know each other better than anyone.
• Watch two people on the street having a conversation, and imagine the conversation they’re having. Write it down.
• Write an overheard conversation behind a closed door that you shouldn’t be listening to.
• Write a conversation between two characters arguing about contradicting memories of what happened.
• You have a difficult decision to make. Write a conversation about it with yourself.
• Write a conversation with a total lack of communication.
• Write a job interview gone badly.

Final Thoughts – Creative Writing Prompts for Middle School & High School 

Hopefully you have found several of these creative writing prompts helpful. Remember that when writing creatively, especially on your own, you can mix, match, and change prompts. For more on writing for high school students, check out the following articles:

• College Application Essay Topics to Avoid
• 160 Good Argumentative Essay Topics
• 150 Good Persuasive Speech Topics
• Good Transition Words for Essays
• High School Success

Sarah Mininsohn

With a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Sarah is a writer, educator, and artist. She served as a graduate instructor at the University of Illinois, a tutor at St Peter’s School in Philadelphia, and an academic writing tutor and thesis mentor at Wesleyan’s Writing Workshop.

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10 Warm-Up Activities For High School English

Welcome, fellow adventurers of the mind, to a world of linguistic whimsy and grammatical games! As a high school student, you are probably familiar with the dread of walking into an early morning class and having to dive right into the lesson without any sort of preparation. But fear not, just like bell ringers, with the right warm-up activities, you can start your English class off on the right foot and set the tone for a successful and engaging lesson.

In this wondrous world of linguistic lunacy, we will explore various activities that will test your critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills. From unraveling scrambled sentences to creating alphabet stories, from guessing games to storytelling marathons, we will traverse through a landscape of language, where words come alive, and creativity reigns supreme.

So, whether you’re a seasoned wordsmith or a budding linguist, whether you love the sound of your own voice or prefer to listen and learn, there’s something here for everyone. Let’s dive into the depths of language, and emerge victorious as masters of the written and spoken word. Are you ready to let your linguistic prowess shine? Let’s begin!

High-energy warm-up activities for high school English

1. word association.

Let’s get our creative juices flowing with a fun game of word association! We’ll start with a word and take turns saying words that are associated with it. Who knows where this game will take us?

In this activity, start by writing a word on the board and have students take turns saying a word that is associated with the previous word. For example, if the first word is “cat,” the next student might say “dog,” and the next might say “pet,” and so on. Encourage students to be creative and think outside the box.

As a variation, you could also play the game with categories, such as “things you find in a kitchen” or “types of animals.” This game will allow students to enhance their vocabulary, and hence, can be a suitable SAT Prep Activity .

2. Alphabet Story

Get ready to put your storytelling skills to the test with Alphabet Story! We’ll start with the letter A and go around the room, each adding a sentence that starts with the next letter of the alphabet. Are you up for the challenge?

This activity is a fun way to encourage students to practice their storytelling skills. Begin with the letter A, and have the first student start with a sentence that begins with that letter. For example, “Allison was walking through the park when she saw a strange creature.”

The next student would continue with the letter B, “Before she could get a closer look, the creature darted off into the bushes,” and so on. You could also make it more challenging by adding a rule that each sentence has to be a certain number of words or have a specific theme.

3. Pictionary

It’s time to let our inner artists shine with a game of Pictionary! One person will draw while the rest of the team tries to guess what they’re drawing. Who will be the best artist in the room?

In this classic game, divide students into teams and have one student from each team draw a picture of a word or phrase while the rest of the team tries to guess what it is. For example, if the word is “ocean,” the student might draw waves, a beach, or sea creatures. This game encourages creativity and teamwork and can be a fun way to start a lesson on descriptive writing.

4. Sentence Scramble

Let’s put our critical thinking skills to the test with Sentence Scramble! I’ll write a sentence on the board but scramble the words out of order. Can you work together to put it back in the correct order?

This activity can be a great way to help students understand grammar rules and practice critical thinking and problem-solving skills. You can write a sentence on the board, but scramble the words out of order, and then have students work together to put the sentence back in the correct order. This can be a fun and engaging way to reinforce parts of speech, sentence structure, and other grammar concepts.

Get ready to flex your persuasive muscles with a debate! You’ll work with a partner or small group to argue for or against a topic. Can you convince the other side to see things your way?

This activity can be a great way to help students develop critical thinking, communication skills, and personality, as well as the ability to respectfully disagree with others. You can assign students to break into pairs or small groups and debate a topic of your choice, or you can let them choose their own topics.

They can be related to politics , fashion, lifestyle, health, etc.  Encourage students to research their positions and present their arguments in a clear and persuasive manner. This can be a great way to build confidence and encourage students to think critically about important issues.

6. One Word at a Time

Let’s work together to create a story with just one word at a time! We’ll go around the room, each adding one word to the story. Who knows where our imagination will take us?

This activity can be a fun and engaging way to get students thinking creatively and working together. You can start the story with a sentence, and then have each student add one word at a time, going around the circle until the story is complete.

This can be a great way to reinforce vocabulary and grammar concepts, such as sentence structure, parts of speech, and more. To make it more challenging, you can limit the number of words each student can add, or set a theme for the story.

7. 20 Questions

It’s time to put your detective skills to the test with 20 Questions! You’ll work together to guess a place, or thing or solve a mystery by asking yes or no questions. Can you narrow down your options and solve the mystery?

This classic guessing game can be a great way to encourage critical thinking and deductive reasoning skills in your students. You can choose any place, thing, or mystery for the students to guess, and they can ask yes or no questions to try to narrow down their options. This activity can also be a fun way to reinforce vocabulary and grammar concepts, such as synonyms and antonyms.

8. Who Am I?

Let’s see if you can guess who you are with a game of Who Am I? You’ll ask yes or no questions to figure out which famous person or character you are. Can you crack the code and discover your identity?

This activity can be a great way to get students thinking creatively and working together. You can choose any famous person or character for the students to guess, and they can ask yes or no questions to try to figure out who they are.

This activity can be especially effective in reinforcing vocabulary and grammar concepts related to adjectives, as students will need to ask questions that describe the person or character.

9. Mad Libs

Get ready to get creative with Mad Libs! We’ll fill in the blanks of a story with our own words and see what hilarious and wacky stories we can come up with.

This classic fill-in-the-blank game can be a great way to encourage creativity and reinforce vocabulary and grammar concepts. You can provide students with a story or passage with keywords removed, and then have them fill in the blanks with their own words. This can be a fun way to practice using parts of speech correctly, and can also lead to some hilarious and creative stories.

10. Tongue Twisters

It’s time to practice your pronunciation with Tongue Twisters! We’ll try to say these tricky phrases as fast and accurately as possible. Can you become a tongue twister master?

This activity can be a great way to help students develop their pronunciation skills and work on enunciation. You can choose any tongue twister for the students to practice, and they can take turns saying it out loud until they can say it clearly and accurately. This activity can also be used to reinforce vocabulary and grammar concepts related to pronunciation and phonetics.

Warm-up activities are an essential part of any high school class, be it math, English, or history. They can help students start the day on a positive note, build community and camaraderie, and set the tone for the rest of the class. By incorporating creative and engaging warm-up activities, high school English teachers can help their students develop critical thinking skills, improve their writing and communication abilities, and foster a love of literature and language.

These activities don’t have to be complicated or time-consuming, but they should be relevant, interesting, and challenging enough to capture the attention of high schoolers. With the right mix of fun and educational activities, teachers can create a dynamic and exciting learning environment that helps students reach their full potential. So, don’t underestimate the power of a good warm-up activity – it can make all the difference in a successful high school English class.

Sananda Bhattacharya, Chief Editor of TheHighSchooler, is dedicated to enhancing operations and growth. With degrees in Literature and Asian Studies from Presidency University, Kolkata, she leverages her educational and innovative background to shape TheHighSchooler into a pivotal resource hub. Providing valuable insights, practical activities, and guidance on school life, graduation, scholarships, and more, Sananda’s leadership enriches the journey of high school students.

Explore a plethora of invaluable resources and insights tailored for high schoolers at TheHighSchooler, under the guidance of Sananda Bhattacharya’s expertise. You can follow her on Linkedin

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The Writing-Based Curriculum

Students and Teachers living a writing life together

• About Leif Gustavson
• Curved Lines On The Terrestrial Sphere

Limbering up in the ELA Classroom: The Serious Fun of Writing Warm-Ups

Note: For those of you just looking for the warm-up ideas, click on the links below to take you directly to them. Thanks for returning to this post and if you have a moment, let me know what you think. 

New Entries: Only in the room – 6/18/2021; The Gift – 7/8/2021

Writing warm-up ideas.

# A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Other Warm-Up Ideas

Over the years, I have had teachers ask me if I had a comprehensive list of the writing warm-ups that I do with students. This post is my attempt to get that list started. The goal of the writing warm-up is to provide a space at the beginning of the class for my students to limber-up and consistently practice being a writer. I learned after several years of teaching that just because my students walk into my classroom and sit down in their desks does not mean that they are ready to take advantage of the time. Just like a musician or an athlete, we need to warm up our writing muscles to be ready for the work ahead. We also need to signal our brain to be present in the moment instead of lingering on what happened in the hall or what happened the night before. Once I started warming up through writing, I found that my students were more awake, more engaged, and more excited about the rest of class. Most importantly, I found that they were becoming very skilled writers. In fact, I would argue that there are few better ways to get more skilled at writing than to dedicate five to ten minutes every day to just putting the pen to paper.

I intentionally throw my students challenges so that they are thinking and acting in divergent and convergent ways. I want them to surprise themselves on the page because if they do that, their sense of what is possible in writing, in their writing, expands exponentially. I work hard to never schoolify the warm up. It is rarely a time for students to show me what they have learned in some artificial way. Instead, we are being real writers, playing around with words on the page, often in a collaborative way.

Collaborative writing is just plain fun. Collaborative writing is creating texts together one word, one phrase, one sentence at a time. The piece is constructed by passing paper between two, three, five, ten, 26 people. While it can be done on a screen, it is a heck of a lot more fun to do it the ol’ fashion way – with paper and pencil, pushing it back and forth across the desk, seeing your partner gasp, laugh, or just pause with what you have offered him/her. Collaboratively building a text takes the burden of the whole off of the individual and frees him or her up to throw something down on the page, knowing that others will pick up the offer and build on it. Collaborative writing also pushes writers to think and act strategically, a skill that makes for interesting writing. Jack Collom beautifully describes what happens when we write collaboratively:

  As you trade off, you note with renewed amazement how different your thought process and speech rhythms are from those of your partner. Your attention is thus plunged into language as something to dance with, not just as the means of expressing your opinion. You don’t have to worry about what to say; there’s always something to respond to. You become conscious of your own ‘voice’ as it adapts to, opposes, ignores, or imitates the other ‘voices’ present in the poem.

Isn’t this exactly what we want our students to be able to do – dive into language, swim around in it, play with it, and in the process become more skilled at how to use their voices on the page? So, I suggest to you that you try many, if not all, of these writing warm-ups as collaborations. Have your students get out pieces of paper, give them the constraint (one word, three word, four words and pass) and then let them go to town. You will be surprised by the results. I also recommend that you read a bit more about collaborative writing. Jack Collom is the master, and you can find his thoughts on the form here .

I have divided the warm-up ideas into Collaborative Warm-Ups, Five Minute Quickies, and Other Ideas. Most of the collaborative warm-ups can be done individually, though you won’t get that wildness of energy and thought that you would by doing it in small or large groups. All of the ideas on the list have been road tested in actual classrooms, with actual students, grades PreK through Graduate School. When writing with young kids, I suggest being the conduit for the writing by writing what you hear the kids say on a big sheet of paper or the board. More on that below. My hope is that you will add to the ideas for great writing warm-ups. In the comment box below, include your idea for a great writing warm-up, with a description of how to go about doing it, and I will add it to the list with your name attached, if you would like.

Important note : writing warm-ups, particularly collaborative writing, get better over time. Students need to develop the skills associated with it. So, don’t be surprised if the first few weeks are difficult and result in so so writing. Like any form, students need to practice warming up to get good at it. There are a few moves you can make as the teacher to ensure that your students develop the foundation for deep skills very quickly.

Move 1 : Stick to it! Make the promise to yourself and your students that you are going to take the first few minutes of every class to warm up, and don’t back down, no matter how slow the start is. Your students will thank you and the benefits of the warm up will spill over into the rest of the class as well as across disciplines (for you self-contained teachers out there).

Move 2 : Write with them! Sit right down amongst your writers, get out that pencil and write along with them. Let ‘em see you take on the challenge. There are fewer teaching moves more powerful than students seeing their teachers genuinely getting involved in the work that they are doing, struggling and enjoying with them along the way.

Move 3 : Share the writing! In all of its glorified messiness. Our minds are manipulative beasts. They will make us think that what we have written is junk. It isn’t until we read it aloud, and let more than one sense in on the action, that the possibilities of the writing emerge. Sharing doesn’t need to take a lot of time. Break ‘em up into groups of two and let them share. And you should share your writing too!

Move 4 : Talk a bit about the writing! We get better as writers when we talk about the craft of writing, the moves that the writers is making on the page. Once folks have shared, spend a few minutes talking about what makes some of the pieces work. Listen to your students articulate for themselves why a particular piece was funny or surprising. Focus on the moves that the writer is making in the piece, not what the piece means. This is not a space for interpretation. It is a space for appropriation. We are becoming writers, not critics!

Move 5 : Don’t grade it! This is an evaluation free zone. Students should feel like they can throw anything down without reprisals. That is the only way that we can get a sense of the impact of our writing and feel that we can experiment unfettered.

If you have all of these things in play, you and your students will be firing on all cylinders very soon, and chances are that they are going to come to your class begging for the next warm-up. And after a time, you are going to see how rich these warm-ups are. You will see how the warm up itself is a fantastic mix of intense reading, writing, and thinking. You will begin to think to yourself, “That warm-up could be a whole lesson!” And you will be right. The warm-ups will also reveal to you numerous ways to extend them into longer pieces and larger projects.  And when that happens, you have achieved what I like to call “Serious Play” – learning that is filled with deep skill and conceptual development, challenge, wonder, discovery, and joy.

Now, on to the warm-up ideas…in alphabetical order and indicating which are particularly good for individuals, partners, small groups, and/or large groups.

Collaborative Writing Warm-Ups

6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 (individual, partners).

You are probably familiar with   6 word memoirs  where you tell a personal story in 6 words. This experiment takes that idea and expands it…or shrinks it as the case may be. The overarching question for this series of experiments is “Can you tell a story in six words? 5? 4? How about three or two or one?” For the first day, share some examples of 6 word memoirs or stories. You can click on the link above to find some good ones. Here’s an example:

Wanted mohawk, got a bald spot.

Talk for a minute or two about what makes them tic: Establishing the who, what, where, when in very few words; concreteness and specificity in terms of word choice; surprise, the well-placed comma. Then, let them go to town. Have them write as many six word memoirs or stories as they can in the amount of time that you have. The more they write, the better they will get. Once time is up, have them look through the pieces they have written and find one or two that seem to stand out. Have your students read them aloud to each other in pairs or small groups.

Next day, change the constraint to five words. See what they can do with one less word. Go through the same process. Once they have read one or two to each other that they really like, have a brief conversation about the difference between 6 and 5 words. What changes? Does anything change? Are you forced to do something differently as a writer?

Next day, change the constraint to four words. You get the idea. Go all the way to one, having brief craft conversations at the end of each experiment to develop an understanding of what the word limit does to the writer and to the writing.

This experiment in the form of a series encourages all kinds of writerly behavior. The constraint of the word limit pushes strategic thinking. Students will spend time considering what words will convey the most meaning and the most multiple meanings. They will scrutinize the use of grammar for effect. And when you put the added constraint of taking a word away each day, you provide your students the chance to see how the stories change because of the amount of words one has to use. “Can you tell a story in one word” becomes a highly debatable topic and a conversation your students will definitely want to have once they have experienced writing in the form.

Acrostics – (individual, partners, small groups, large groups)

Ah, the thousand year old form that gets mangled in schools. Do it justice and let your students play with it! Come up with a bunch of great “spine words.” Those are the words that the lines of the poem are created off of. Then, do one together so that you can show them the freedom in the form. Throw a word up on the board and have them riff off of it. Acrostics can be stories. They can be riddles. They can be omens. They can be definitions. They can be pretty much anything really. Lines in acrostics can have many words. You don’t need to just write to the right of the letter. You can break the spine, writing on both sides of the spine letter. So many ways to experiment! Then, have each student decide on a word, have them write it vertically down the middle of the piece of paper several times, and let them experiment. You can create a constraint to add intrigue – line trade-offs, one word trade-offs, three word trade-offs, etc.

                G rip                 R ip                 A nd                 S ay                 S o long                                  U rban nature is          R eal,          B eautiful, grit.          A lways changes with the times, it N ever stays the same.          N ot for a second.          A sk yourself-is the world we live in really          T he image of deer prancing thro U gh a meadow, or is it di R ty beauty that E veryone must learn to embrace?

Acrostics – Doubled! (individual, partners, small group, large group

Amp up the acrostic, and have the spine word be at the beginning of the poem and at the end! It can be the same word, like this:

H                                                                     H I                                                                     I S                                                                     S T                                                                     T O                                                                     O R                                                                     R Y                                                                     Y

If you want to be a purist, you could challenge your students to begin each line with a letter from the word and end each line with the letter from the word. You could also just encourage them to work the word or words into the poem, freeing them to break the spine. The two spine words can be the same or different, and it doesn’t matter if they are the same length. The idea here is to create challenging constraints that encourage young writers to think anew about language and its use. Explore all of the ways that they could play around with this form.

Answers with no questions  – (partners)

Swap line for line with writing imaginary answers to unknown questions: Turn right at the 7-11. Simply pause for one moment. It’s behind the bookshelf! See Questions without Answers for a similar form.

Aphorisms – (partners, small group, large group)

Pithy sayings – they hold all kinds of wisdom ie: Ben Franklin’s “Life’s tragedy is we get old too soon, and wise too late”.  Read a bunch of them to your students. Talk about them a bit. What makes them tic? Notice how each aphorism has a “turn” at the end, a little surprise. Once you feel that they get the gist, try this as one word trade-offs.  Each person writes one word and passes it until the wild, made-up aphorism is complete.

Authors’ Notes (individual, partners, small group, large group)

The perfect warm up for when you have come to the end of a writing project. The students have workshopped their pieces. They have elaborated and crafted. They have done the polish, and you are moving toward publishing their pieces. Now it’s time to write an author’s note. Authors’ notes tend to be pretty formulaic and stale: what the author has written before, where they come from, the kind of dog they have, blah, blah. This time around, spice the authors’ notes up by writing them collaboratively. First, take a look at a few examples of authors’ notes.. Read them aloud. Talk about what makes them tic. Then, tell your students that you are going to write your own authors’ notes for the anthology you are publishing, and you are going to write them collaboratively. Coach them to keep the spirit of the author’s note, but work to warp it in as many interesting ways as possible. Do them in the form of a three word trade-off  (see below) and watch the zaniness and creativity that comes out! Here is an example:

Laura Fornwald: Laura Fornwald wants to know – Is your gnome home? A glutton for punishment, she’ll usually end up talking about her cat. Loves apples and tomato soup. Time will slip into California- free the wood into ashes and air! On the crest of morning, breaks for roadkill.

Avalanche (individual, partners)

With a tip of the ol’ chapeau to the OULIPO, this experiment is a doozy, and kids love it. It truly is the linguistic equivalent of an avalanche. Here is the constraint: the first line and first stanza is a one letter word; the second stanza’s first line is a one letter word, the second line is a two letter word; the third stanza’s first line is a one letter word, the second line is a two letter word; and the third line is a three letter word. And so on and so on for as long as the kids can go! The poem visually tumbles down the page. Here is an off the cuff example:

A   I am   O to see   A on sly lips

The longer it goes, the better it gets. I have had fourth graders take it out to an eleven letter word! See here for another great example. Another way to do it is to have the avalanche consist of number of words rather than word length. For example,

Up   The dirt path   which bends left between a split   fallen tree across two paths with lingering scent of pine

Coach your students to go on their nerve. The avalanche doesn’t have to be linear or literal. Remember, the energy for writing comes from specificity, concreteness, and detail.

Avalanche – Story Form – (individual, partners, small groups, large groups)

Ron Sillliman, contemporary language poet, wrote a really interesting book titled “Ketjak.” The premise? I’ll let Ron describe it:

[Ketjak is] written in a series of expanding paragraphs where the sentences of one paragraph are repeated in order in subsequent paragraphs with additional sentences inserted between them, recontextualizing them. As the paragraphs double, the space between the reoccurrence of the sentences doubles and the context from which they reemerge grows thicker. In this, they have reminded some in the language movement of characters in a novel. But the narrative effect is more peculiar as the sentences keep reappearing against different sentences.

You can read the book online here . The gist is that each paragraph doubles in number of sentences. Give this a try: like a poetic Avalanche, have each student start a story. The first paragraph consists of one sentence. Pass the paper. The second writer writes the second paragraph consisting of two sentences, maybe repeating the first for effect. Pass the paper. The third writer writes the third paragraph, consisting of four sentences. Pass. The fourth paragraph has 8 sentences. And so on. Amp it up by coaching your students to repeat certain sentences at different times for surprising effect. As Silliman writes, the form highlights context and narrative effect – great things for writers of all ages to think about. B

Big Swap, The (partners, small groups, large group)

Once your students and you have several warm-ups down on paper, it’s time to think about all of the other things that you can do with them. Remember, good writers reuse, recycle, and repurpose. To get your students into the habit of doing this, have them choose one of their warm ups ( it could also be a draft of a story, poem, play, or speech that they are working on for you). Then, have them select a section from it – a couple of contiguous sentences or a paragraph, for example. They can do this by cutting the section out with scissors or typing or writing it down on a different sheet of paper. Once they have done this, have them pass the cut out section to a partner or someone else in the class. Have the lucky recipients read the section to themselves. Then, challenge them to use the cut-out section as a whole in some way in a new piece of writing. Ask them a few questions: What would happen if you started with the section? Could you write in a way where it was in the middle of a new piece? What if you challenged yourself to make it the last few sentences or the last paragraph of a new piece? Let the cut out section guide you in terms of what needs to happen. Again, remember not to talk for too long about the challenge. Always spend a little time up in the head and far more time down on the paper trying to figure something out when it comes to writing. Give them 10 minutes or so to play, and end of course by sharing in pairs or larger groups.

Ok, so what does this do? It requires your students to be nimble with text. It pushes them to read carefully. It also creates an active writing moment where your students have to write themselves out of a corner, proving once again, that there is no such thing as writer’s block if you are willing to put pen to paper. Finally, it helps your students see that the original intention for a piece of writing can change or can be used for other purposes. All really good things to learn if we are going to help develop flexible, fluent, and precise writers!

Bout Rime – (partners)

French for “End Rhyme.” Have your students take out a piece of paper. Then have them write 14 words down on the page in this rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. For example:

  egg liar beg fire   no tickle foe nickle   left stinky cleft pinky   wrong song

What you have here is the last word of each line of a modern sonnet. Once your students have written down their words, have them switch with someone else in the room. Then, challenge them to write a poem where each line ends with the corresponding word that has been given to them. Don’t constrain them with iambic pentameter or anything like that. The constraint of the rhyming 14 words will push the students to explore rhythm naturally.

Build A Monster (individual, partners, small group, large group)

Great warm up to do around Halloween, but can be done at any time. Spend ten or fifteen minutes…or longer…building a fantastical monster with your students.

First, ask your student “What are some parts of a monster?” Have them suggest parts: e.g. head, mouth, eyes, nails, hair, teeth, feet, legs, horns.

List these body parts on a big sheet of paper or the board. Each part getting it’s own line. Like this:

Head Mouth Eyes Nails Hair Teeth Feet Legs Horns

Once you have a decent number of body parts, 10 to 15, write a monster poem with them where each body part is a line of the poem. You could have them do this in several different ways. You could do it collaboratively as a whole group where each student is responsible for one line. You could do it in groups of two where they pass their papers back and forth with each other, trading lines. You could have each student do their own. To make it easier for your students to get into the spirit of it, turn each line into a simile, like this:

Head like Mouth like Eyes like Nails like Hair like Teeth like Feet like Legs like Horns like

This warm up can do wonderful things for opening up your students’ imagination and wildness with use of language. Encourage them to create a monster never seen before! Surprise us with your rich, detailed language. Encourage them to be funny, disgusting, and scary all at the same time. Here is a line trade-off Monster Poem, written by a group of teachers:

Hair like a green and purple shag rug Eyes that are yellow and red Nose of flaring smoke and bubbling fire Mouth that is open ready to eat something yummy Barely any neck at all, like a pigeon But perfect shoulders that everyone envies A large stomach protrudes from beneath her shirt Knees that knock together as she walks Feet are swift but smell of rotten cabbage Clown like red shoes that she does a tap dance with Ankle bracelet jingles with every step

Bumper Stickers – (individual, partners)

Akin to fortune cookies, see below, creating bumper stickers are a wonderful exercise in concise and witty writing. Make sure to share several really great bumper stickers to get the juices flowing. See  here  for some great environmental bumper stickers Jack Collom wrote with his students or go online and find images like the one to the right. Like any form of writing, spend a bit of time exploring with your students what makes bumper stickers tick. Listen for your students saying things like – brevity, a twist, humor, sarcasm. It can be good to provide a theme for bumper stickers – the environment, school issues, political issues. It can also be good to provide a word limit, say, no more than 8 words. Finally, encourage your students to write many of them in the time that they are given. The more they write, the better they get. Then, when time is up, have them select their favorite one and then put it up on the board in the form of a bumper sticker. Have the class vote on them. Next step? Choose one or two to actually turn into real bumper stickers! C

Captured Conversation – (individual, but could be partner)

Special thanks to Dan Kirby for this idea. Have your students pick up their writing notebooks and a pen or pencil. Then, tell them that you are going to give them five or ten minutes (you decide) to walk through the school and capture what they hear down on paper. Encourage them not to worry about getting things down verbatim. Instead, capture voices in snippets, samples, having each thing that they hear be a line on the paper. Tell them to keep moving slowly through the space so that they can capture as many voices as possible in the time that they have.  Challenge them to try to fill a page. Could be a tall order, but always a good thing to say as you launch your students off to write. The more material, the better!

When they come back from their mission, you could just have them sit with a partner and read aloud what they captured to hear the wonderful raw poetry of it. Or, if you had a bit more time, you could give them five minutes to go back through what they captured and craft it a bit, focusing on how the piece flows (e.g. tenses, plurals, etc.). Tell them not to lose the wonderful wildness of the piece because the wildness is a true account of the moment – all of these different voices swimming around in space at the same time. That is the beauty of this experiment. In a way, you are having your students capture a moment in time through sound. You could also have students trade their pieces and let the partners tinker around with the material to see what they come up with. This warm-up coaches students to listen carefully and to strategize how to get what they hear down on paper – two important skills for a good writer.

Extension!: A cool way to utilize this warm-up during class is to appoint one or two or three students to wander around the room, capturing what they hear on paper as the rest of the class is having a conversation. The conversation could be about a book, about a math problem, about a project that they are engaged in. Then, at the end of the conversation, have the one, two, or three students read back to the larger group what they heard as a way of echoing and deepening the learning. You could have the students type these up and post them in your room as a record of that learning moment.

Cento – (individual)

A very cool experiment to do once your students have written or read a lot in a particular form. The Cento is a form of found poetry where the writer takes words, phrases, lines, sentences from other texts and combines them into a completely new form. See here for more explanation and a few examples. Think sampling, mashing-up, or remixing.  There are many many ways to do this. One is to have your students go through a collection of their own work and poach different pieces from each to create a new text. Another way to do it is to have students share their writing with each other so that the writer is building a new text out of the pieces of his or her peers. The example below is from a high school class. I’ll let the teacher describe what they did:

So I’ve been noodling around with catalog verse as a warm up… that’s not that interesting… but after students do the normal thing, read share etc… I ask for a volunteer to collect everyone’s paper and ask them to use the students work to make a class compilation… to start out, many students would make a representative list picking one or two from each student… sort of an all-star list poem… they have now sort of evolved into something a little more unique… this one is really tremendous… the student using the other students work, came up with something quite interesting and doesn’t have a Frankenstein feel at all… check it out… Things That Drive Us Crazy When people think they’re above me People Feeling inferior When someone takes a joke personally Being excluded My family My friends Love Bitches, man High School College talk Deadlines Pressure My stupid mistakes When I can’t solve a math problem, or a problem of any kind The uncertainty of my future My anxiety Schizophrenia When they just don’t shut up Ignorance Arrogance and opinionating Failure A bad loss in anything Having to be an adult about it Irresponsibility Ambiguous directions Double Standards Foggy Brain Thinking I drive myself crazy

One of the qualities of the Cento that makes this a must do warm up or writing experiment is the opportunity it provides for students to revisit writing, to look at it with new eyes, to experience how they can manipulate it, and to realize that writing begets other writing. Students must think strategically for Centos to work. Plus, it privileges surprises through juxtaposition – a move that energizes writing.

Definitions – (partners, small groups, large groups)

The challenge is to collaboratively write definitions for common words. Begin by showing students a few definitions from a dictionary: what are some common moves that are made in definitions (parts of speech, multiple definitions, examples of use, synonyms, antonyms)? Then, ask the students to suggest a few common words that would be interesting to define (e.g. desk, smile, run, lettuce, crime). Write ’em up on the board. Partner the students up or organize them in small or large groups and have them each get out a piece of paper. Have them choose a word from the list or one they have in their head and put it at the top of the paper. Next, have them collaboratively build definitions for the chosen words in a three or four word trade off. Coach the students to use the moves that are commonly made in dictionary definitions, but surprise us with new and surprising definitions, uses, synonyms, and antonyms for the words (e.g. Lettuce: Common contraction of the two words “let” and “us.” “Hey, lettuce  entertain you!”. 

Dice – (partners, small groups, large groups)

Throw a dice and write as many words as show on the dice for that line. Good, strategic fun!

Dueling Voices – (individual)

Great warm up for flexibility and for cultivating what Burroughs called the “Third Mind.” To start, choose two seemingly unrelated texts: A compendium of film reviews and a field guide to North American birds, or Great Expectations and a computer users guide. Choose one of your students who is a good reader or have a parent, student teacher, or colleague be your partner. Have your students get out a piece of paper and a pencil. Then, challenge them to write down exactly what they hear as you read the two texts aloud at the same time. When the students are ready, have your partner and you read the two texts aloud simultaneously so that the words from the two texts blend in the air. Read slowly, clearly, with emotion. As you read together, you will begin to hear when to emphasize and when not. Have fun with this. Meanwhile, your students will be channeling what they hear down on the paper. At first, they might try to only get down what they hear from one text, but that will soon fall apart, and instead, they will start to let the blur of language flow on the page. That is what you are aiming for. Read aloud for five minutes or so. You’ll know when to stop. Then, have the students read what they wrote to themselves. Suggest that they can add punctuation to help with flow. Next, have them read the piece to someone else so that they can hear the real possibility in the writing. What should happen is this otherworldly, often times quite funny, mash-up of the two texts. Like many of the experiments on this list, the more you do this, the better you get at it. While on the surface it seems like a pretty simple experiment, the work that is happening is quite deep and sophisticated. It is not easy for students to open up and allow a cacophony of language to spill out on the page. Here is a cool example. This dueling voice piece comes from a colleague reading David Crystal’s Dictionary of Language and me reading from the Philadelphia Film Festival film descriptions.   This particular piece was written by a 10th grader.

The Dying Surviving Talking Head The peas in the 18 th century was construed by dollops of language, nasal liquids, large frittatas connected inside, drenched in abstract tactile experiences.  Stability and founder of snare of avant-garde  present active teacher, Lilly, comprised recognition for the row of his dying surviving talking heads.  Tone muscle movement stage deadpan techniques.  Eroticism bowels vowels body parts fricative arousal blade waitress in the palette.  Bully of bicuspids soap opera.  Production of vocal Australians dangling behind that minimal cinema mirror.  Religious cults in one such case dispossession of thought. Where did the pursuit of cross Aldon Brown occur?  I left carry of cats and Canadian wars and the thinking cap of the lustful bluebell daughter, a wit rose.  Sydney stringing satirical. Sydney spending too much time focusing on us. You shouldn’t even focus on pen.  Glory performance, touch knockdown but David is at odds with Humpty-Dumpty and this confrontation between sickness and honor could lead to so many deserving dispossession and conclusions. Nick Dekker

Erasure – (individual)

No not the New Wave group. Instead, it is a chance to have your students interact with a published poem or excerpt from a short story or novel. The idea comes from Ronald Johnson’s RADI OS poems where he took poems from Milton’s Paradise Lost and blacked out certain words, phrases or whole lines to create entirely new poems. The title “RADI OS” is extracted from Pa radi se L os t. You can check out some of Johnson’s RADI OS poems here . And here is an excellent article on the art of erasure from Jacket magazine with numerous examples. This is an excellent warm up to have your students read a section of text, or a poem, deeply. Basically, what you do is handout a published poem or an excerpt from a story or novel. Every student needs to have their own copy, and they need to be able to write on it. Once you have handed out photocopied excerpts or whole poems, challenge your students to black out sections of the text to make a completely new text. Sharpies are helpful here, but you can always use pencils or ball point pens. This is a visual as well as textual experiment because the way they black out single words, phrases, and lines creates an interesting image on the page. The crafting of a new text out of the old develops fertile ground for deeper understandings and new interpretations of the original piece. Could be a great thing to do with student writing as well. Give it a shot!

Exquisite Corpse – (partners, small group, large group)

Ah, the granddaddy of collaborative writing! Everyone starts with a piece of paper. Coach each student to write a line, and then fold the paper over the line to conceal it. Then pass. The next person writes the next line, not being able to see the line(s) before, and so on, until the paper is all folded up. Then, have each student grab a finished one and read it for her or himself first, to get the inner logic of the piece. Then have them read them aloud in small groups or pairs, depending on time. It is best for you to read one aloud first so that they can hear what it can really sound like to read an exquisite corpse with meaning. Important tip: what gives exquisite corpses their energy is to not write in complete sentences. Instead, coach your students to write in phrases and single words. Encourage them to leave their line hanging, right in the middle of a thought. See what happens.

Family Circus one liners – (individual)

Go online and find a few Family Circus comics. Once you have found a few that you like, print them out and make copies of them without the caption. Then, the morning of the warm up, hand out these caption-less Family Circus comics and have the students come up with as many crazy and surprising captions as possible. Another way to do it is to show one on your smartboard without the caption and have all the students come up with captions for the same one. Share!

Fill the void – (individual, partners)

This is a great warm up or writing experiment to push strategic thinking, and deep, close reading. Take a poem, short story, or excerpt from a novel, essay or play and remove a section of it (see below for an example). If it is a poem, remove a stanza. A short story, remove a small paragraph. You get the idea. Share the poem, story, novel, essay, or play with the section missing with your students, telling them that you have removed a section. Make sure that they can see the void that is left. The visual aspect of this is important. Read the piece aloud. Once you have read it with the gap, challenge your students to fill that void. Prompt them with the question “What is missing?” Give them ten or so minutes to fill the void. If there is a short section that you have removed, push your students to write several different versions. Then,  give them a chance to share what they created with a partner so that they can hear it aloud. If they have written several versions, have them chose the one that they think is the strongest to share. Once your students have shared their ideas aloud, reveal to them the piece as it was originally written. Read it aloud.

Here is an example, using Franz Kafka’s A Little Fable:

Franz Kafka A Little Fable “Alas,” said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.”

I have removed the ending to Kafka’s fable. It is a separate paragraph, one sentence long. What would you write for the ending? What’s missing?

An added challenge: Kafka’s original ending to this fable is 14 words long. Can you write a 14 word ending?

Did you give it a shot? Ok, here is the piece with Kafka’s original ending:

Franz Kafka A Little Fable “Alas,” said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.” “You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.

What you will find with this experiment is your students working really hard to imitate Kaka’s style, thinking deeply about what a good ending would sound like, and reading the piece over and over and over again to really understand it. The writerly conversation once they see the original ending is fantastic too. Have your students share their thoughts about the original ending. Is it what you expected? Why? Why not? Do you like your or your partner’s ending better? How did you decide to write your ending?

Fortune cookies – (partners, small group, large group)

Not sure where I got this idea. Share a few fortunes from fortune cookies first. Talk about what makes them tic. Then, have your students come up with their own – word for word, trade off style.

Four word trade-offs – (partners, small groups, large groups)

Same as three word trade-offs but with four words. See three word trade-offs.

Gibberish – (partners, small group, large group)

Special thanks to the improv game Gibberish (see  here ). The goal and fun here is to write something that makes absolutely no sense. Do so in three or four word trade-offs. This is a great warm up for keeping students on their toes the whole time, working hard to not make any surface sense. Added bonus: pass the gibberish to another partner team, small group, or large group, and have that group translate the gibberish in three or four word trade-offs.

Gleaning – (individual, pairs, small groups)

Gleaning: extracting information from various sources; collecting gradually and bit by bit. The term gleaning is traditionally used in relation to the collecting of left-over grain or fruit or vegetables after the harvest. Farm workers and others comb the plowed field or plucked orchard for the left-over wheat or fruit. For more on this, check out the fantastic film – The Gleaners and I (Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse). You can watch it here in its entirety. We can apply this practice in writing as well. For this warm up, first collect odd scraps of text – bits of newspaper, flyers, junk mail, pages from old books, old letters salvaged at garage sales. You can collect these or you can have your students collect them and bring them in. Make sure that there is enough collected that every individual, or pair, or small group has a good collection from which to work. The day of the warm-up, put the gleaned writing in a pile in the middle of the room. Have your individual students, pairs, or small groups go to the pile and select a random assortment. Once this is done, challenge your students to create a new text out of the gleaned scraps in ten minutes: a word here, a phrase there, a sentence or two from another source. Don’t give too much direction more than that. Let your students figure out what to do.  Of course, have them share their results.

Amp it up!: Provide scissors and glue so that your students can cut out the words, phrases, and sentences that they want to use and then have them paste them on a large sheet of paper to create a work of art.

Glen Baxter riffs – (individual)

A particular favorite with middle and high school students. First, Go to Glen Baxter’s   site   and take a look at all of his great paintings. Notice how surprising the non-sequitur captions are. Then, pick one that is appropriately zany for your students. The morning of the warm-up, show them the painting with the caption. Have them talk a bit about it. Ask them what they see. Have them be specific. This will help with the writing. Then, challenge them to write the story of the painting, and the story must end with Glen Baxter’s caption. Give ‘em 10 minutes to do it. The added constraint of the time ups the creativity and surprise.

Alternative: Have your students write down something that they heard at some point in the day before coming to class. Push them to make it as close to verbatim as possible. They don’t need to be serious, or funny, or profound. They just need to be real and genuine. Once they have written down a quote, have them fold it up and then pass it to the person next to them. The challenge is to write a story in five minutes that ends with the quote that has been handed to them.

Ice cubes – (partners, small group, large group)

A la Kit Robinson, a wonderful poet. These are four line stanzas with one word per line. Have students try these in pairs. The “cubes” can stand on their own or link together to form fantastical stories or thoughts. See   here   for some examples.

Ingredients – (partners)

Special thanks to John Ashbury and Kenneth Koch. Have your students come up with five ingredients. For example, a piece of furniture, a sense, the word “fabricate,” a famous animal, and a condiment. Then, challenge them to write a poem or story where each line or sentence needs to contain the five ingredients. Trade off line for line or sentence for sentence.

Initials – (individual, partners, small group, large group)

Cool form of acrostic poem. Do it with everyone’s initials! Great in partners, small groups, or whole classes. Trade line for line.  Here is an example. The initials are LCG:

          onLy If you Can              Gargle the Magna Carta

I Know/ I don’t know – (partners)

Line trade off. First person writes a line starting with “I know…” and completes it, then passes. The second person writes the next line starting with “I don’t know…” and completes it. Coach the students to be wild, unpredictable, funny, serious, specific and concrete.

I remember/I don’t remember – (partners)

A tip of the hat to Joe Brainard. Same as above, only using “I remember and don’t remember” instead.

I used to/ but now I… – (partners)

You are probably getting the idea now! A form of catalogue verse. First person writes a line starting with “I used to….” and completes it. The paper gets passed. The next person writes the line “But now I…” and completes. it. Remind your students to stay on their toes. The two lines do not have to relate! Surprise us!

Illot Mollo – (small or large group)

Thanks to Jack Collom. This is an individual game, but it is played in a group. To set up, have everyone take out a piece of paper. Explain that when you say go, you want everyone to start writing. It can be a letter to a friend. Directions to a secret location. A rant about the lack of choice at lunch. Then, after about 10 seconds, one person is going to shout out a word. Determine who is going to start this ahead of time. When that word is shouted out, everyone in that moment must incorporate that word into what they are writing. Then, after 10 more seconds (about the equivalent of writing two lines on a page), the next person shouts out a word. It cannot be a word that they just wrote. It must be from another place in the person’s brain! And so on until everyone in the circle has shouted out a word. In the set up of this, coach the students on a few things. First, shout out your word loudly and clearly. Second, do not ask the person to repeat their word. It messes with the flow. Instead, write what you think you heard. Third, do not get in a rut. For example, the first person says “sand.” The next person says “sun.” The third person says “beach.” This is a deadly pattern. The words should come from the deep recesses of the brain. They should not be connected to what was said before. Four, you keep tabs on the pace. If the words are coming too quickly, slow the group down. Too slow, up the tempo a bit. Oh, and let ‘em read these aloud. They can be incredibly inventive and funny!

Love Poem, the Worst – (individual, partners, small groups, large group)

Challenge your class to write the worst love poem in the world. You can look at an example or two of love poems to prime the pump, but it isn’t necessary (see here for some models). There is something inherently understood about what makes for a bad love poem so not a lot of set-up is necessary. What is wonderfully surprising about this warm-up is that you will find that the poems that you and your students write aren’t bad at all. In fact, they will probably be pretty darn good because of the surprising language used, the funny images created, and the light touch that the students will apply. In fact, often what happens is that the students come to realize that they have actually written a pretty darn good love poem. But don’t reveal that surprise ahead of time. Just whet their appetite with the idea of writing a really bad love poem and see what they produce. Other ideas: worst poem in general, worst jokes, worst one-liners, worst excuses, worst menu items. This can be done collaboratively as well, trading line for line, for example.

One word trade-offs poetry-style alphabet – (partners, small group, large group)

Everyone starts with their own paper. Each line is one word and follows the order of the alphabet. Swap line for line and see what happens.

One word trade-offs prose-style -(partners)

First person writes the first word. Second person writes the second word right after it in narrative form, and so on. Coach them to stay on their toes and to accept the offer and build on it. This results in a wonderful, stream of collective-conscious story.

One word trade-offs prose-style alphabet – (partners, small group, large group)

Quite a challenge, particularly if you make it a practice in your class. Everyone starts with their own paper. First person writes the first word starting with A and passes. Second person writes the second word starting with the letter B right after the A word in narrative form, and so on, following the order of the alphabet. Challenge your students to work to make the narrative “make sense” and to not take the easy way out with letters like Q, X, and Z. The more they do this form, the more they will realize all of the choices they have for words. This experiment also opens up an opportunity for the class to collect words beginning with certain letters. Here’s an example:

“Avast!” Bruce cantered delicately entering France, gesticulating heretically, “Infadel!” Just knowing, let Monsieur Nunchucks open posthumous queries regarding succession. Tyranny usually voluntarily wanes xylyls, yawned zealots.

Punctuation is always fair game.

One word trade-offs, single letter-style (individual, partners, small group, large group)

A great way to raise the stakes with one word trade-offs. Introduce this experiment like the other versions of one word trade-offs, but this time, challenge your students to only use one letter (e.g. B). This means that every word in the piece must begin with the letter B. This is a fantastic way to push your students to dig deep into their vocabulary reserves as well as to see all of the different ways that a word can be used in context. Here is a great example:

Bert Battles Barry Behind boundaries of Bert’s bar, Barry bellowed behind Bert’s barmaid. Barry bombastically bequeathed berries. “Boy,” Bert began before being berated by Barry, “Berries before bed become bastardly.” “Bah!” Bert belted before basking by Barry, “Berries… Barf!” Barry’s battle by Bert beleaguered Bert’s bartender badly. “Banish Barry, Bert!” Bert’s bartender back-talked. Bemused, Barry befell Bert beneath Bert’s bar, beating Bert by barraging back-punches before backstabbing Bert with Bert’s beaten boards. Barry buried Bert beneath Bert’s barn. Being bereaved, Barry blubbered by Bert’s body before becoming born-again. Barry’s bulls bent Bert’s bones. Nick Dekker

One word trade-offs, slo-mo (individual, partners, small group, large group)

Really slow the process down here. This is an experiment to do over the course of a year. Each day, have the students get out their one word trade-off, and add one new word to it, building the text over months. Slowing the experiment down in this way really gives students the chance to focus on how the story is developing, word by word. The choice of the word each day becomes paramount. Not for the faint of heart. This form of the collaborative exercise reminds me of what some piano instructors will do with their students. They will have them play a song extra slow in order to truly understand it. In this case, instead of notes, we are playing words and in the process really coming to an understanding of how the writing of a story evolves over time. Added bonus: students appreciate time in a new way – 180 words equals a school year. Pretty cool!

Only in the room (individual, partners, small group, large group)

Grabbed on to this idea after learning a bit about the Neo-Futurist Theater group out of New York City. One of the games that they play when writing plays is to place the constraint of only being able to write about what is in the room at the time. The people, the space, the things, the sounds. Only what is in the room. Give this a shot with your students as a writing warm up. Ask them to get out a piece of paper or fire up their laptops. Open by setting the stage with “We’re going to write a story for this warm up, and the story can only happen in this room. Nothing outside of this room can enter the story.” Like usual, coach them to follow the ink. Don’t spend a lot of time in your head. Don’t cross things out. The tendency here will probably be for a lot of questions: “What about…” “Can we…” “Is it ok if I…” Don’t spend time answering those questions. Instead, encourage your students to try to stick to the constraint the way that they understand it. Set a timer if you want for 5 minutes, and let ’em go! You write with them, of course. This seemingly very restrictive constraint tends to open writers up to be expansive, imaginative, and surprising. Give them a chance to read what they get down to a partner so that they can hear the possibility. This exercise can be done individually or collaboratively. In small or large groups. Also a great way to get a quick draft down of a story idea. Something that students can return to at a later date and elaborate and craft. 

Piece it together (individual)

Bring in a box of assorted found objects: buttons, string, old lightbulbs, ceramic shards, business cards. The more the merrier. Put the box in the center of your room. Have your students come up and pick three or so objects from the box. You can have each of your students do this for themselves, or you could have one student pick three objects for the class as a whole. Then, have your students put them in an order on their desk or in front of the class (e.g. button first, business card second, torn glove third). Next, challenge them to write a story where they uncover how the first object led to the second which led to the third. To put this in the form of a question: “How did we get from a button to a torn glove?” Don’t spend a lot of time explaining it. Give them 5 to ten minutes to write, and then have them share.

Postcards (of apology, giving directions, providing clarification, of frustration) – (partners, small group, large group)

Begin by asking your students if they even know what a postcard is! Then, ask them what the qualities of a postcard are: pithy comments, highlighting a particular moment, “wish you were here.” Then tell them that they are going to warp the postcard form. Challenge them to write a postcard as a three word trade off. Make it even more challenging by telling them that the postcard is in the form of an apology. Have each student get out a piece of paper. Turn it horizontal. Draw a line down the middle. Draw three lines for the imaginary address on the right, maybe put a square in the upper righthand corner for a stamp. Then, have each student begin the postcard by writing the salutation to a person or thing: Dear epiglotis or Dear anxiety or Dear my ninth grade teacher, Ms. Maunbraut or Dear Lone Ranger. Once they have done that, have them write the first three words of the postcard, keeping in mind that it is an apology, and then have them pass to the next person. When the time is almost up, challenge them further by having the last person come up with a great sign-off and a three word PS! Make sure to read aloud! This experiment should be done prose-style, meaning that the next three words should come directly after the three words before on the page to read more like a narrative than a poem. Encourage them to play with punctuation!

Predictions – (individual, partners, small groups)

Beginnings of schools years, right before breaks, and end of school years are perfect times to warm up with Predictions. Challenge your students to make as many predictions as they can in 5 or ten minutes. You can do it in the form of a list poem, starting with “I predict…” or “that…” Or you can let your students find their own form for this idea. As always, it can be good to prime the pump by cranking out a few of them on the board as a whole group. Then, at a later date, you can return to them and see if any of their predictions have come true! These can be done individually or in groups, trading off line for line. Push your students to make wild, serious, funny, poignant, and predictable prognostications. The back and forth creates surprise and humor.

Extension: Have your students swap their predictions. Then, have them choose a prediction that they are particularly intrigued by and have them write the story/explanation of what, how, and why it happened.

Questions without answers – (partners)

Swap questions, line for line. Can you grow smaller? What if we had 800 teeth? Do birds ever get sore throats? Coach your students to play with tone: some serious, some playful, some funny, some sad, etc.

Radio Poems – (individual)

This is a fun one! Bring in a portable radio to school one day. Ask your students to take out a sheet of paper and a pen or pencil. Challenge them to write what they hear, capturing snippets down on paper. Each snippet can be its own line. Then, turn on the radio, and flip the dial, landing on a station for only a few seconds at a time so that the students and you can only hear a fleeting moment. The goal isn’t to write down everything you hear, just tidbits. This will create a wonderful pastiche of a poem that will make surprising sense. Do this trip around the dial for 5 or so minutes. Then, have your students read what they have aloud to a partner so that they can hear the possibilities. This is an excellent experiment to build careful listening  skills and to grow flexibility in writing. The quest for perfection stifles good writing. In this experiment, it is impossible to write down all that one hears so students must be flexible, giving themselves the freedom to only capture snippets and then allowing themselves to move on to the next soundbite. This can be quite liberating and can influence the way they approach the page in other writing projects.

Story Machine – (individual)

A fantastic writing game to keep students on their toes and to help generate great story ideas. This will take longer than 15 minutes, but it is well worth it! Consider it a lesson that builds on convergent and divergent thinking/writing. Follow these simple steps to have your students scrambling to put pencil to paper!

Everyone gets 10 index cards. On five of them write down an occupation or character label (e.g. cat lady, circus clown, computer repair woman) On the other five, write down an interesting, mildly unusual behavior or action. For the action, avoid the commonplace (reading a book, shopping) and the outrageous (curing cancer, murder). Examples might include, punches people in the nose, steals small things from people’s houses, breaks light bulbs, hordes rubber balls, reads other people’s mail).

Once the students are finished making their two piles of five, have them switch their piles with a partner. Each person should get five cards from the two piles – five character cards, and five behavior cards. Have the students flip over one of each type of card, one at a time, looking at the pair. Encourage them to imagine the possible story behind it. Why did the Mall Santa punch someone in the nose? Have your students continue flipping pairs of cards until they find a combination that really sparks their imaginations. Once they’ve found the combination they like, have them write story behind the combination. Ask your students: What brought your character to this moment? What are the consequences of this action? Have fun!

This can be an excellent game to begin the process of writing a story that is a project in and of itself. It can also be a good game to play to add a new dimension to a story that students are already writing. For example, students in fourth grade write stories about the Gilded Age. In the middle of the process of writing their stories, Debbie used Story Machine to challenge her students to introduce a new character into the story. This instantly added a new energy to the stories, making them more immediate and interesting to read.

For younger students, consider playing this game as a group. Have the group come up with the two piles and then choose a pair that seems intriguing. Tell an oral story as a group based on the pairing. Have the students draw the picture behind the pairing. You could even have them act out the story behind the pairing! All kinds of possibilities!

Take One, Take Two, Take 3  – (partners, small group, large group)

Each writer writes a line on a page. Pass the paper. The next writer approaches the same line from a different angle, a different take, similarly to taking a picture from a different perspective. Pass the paper. A different take. Pass the paper. Another take. See how many different takes, different perspectives, can be made on any given line. Great for opening up and practicing the skill of perspective and empathy in writing.

Ten Thousand Years (individual, partners)

I got this idea from a great episode of 99% Invisible . I highly recommend that you listen to it. Here’s how to set it up. Tell your students that they have been contracted to create a simple sign warning people to stay away from the radioactive waste buried in the ground. The catch is that it needs to be able to be read and understood 10,000 years from now.  Tell them you will give them 10 minutes to come up with the design…maybe 15. After they draw their ideas and share them, I would highly recommend listening to the 99% Invisible episode about this exact project. It will take the whole period, but it will be worth it. Oh, and send me some of their designs. I would love to see them!

The Gift – (partners, small group, large group)

Hopefully you have been having your students collect the warm ups that they have been doing in your class. This game is an excellent way to have them dig back into that writing, remind themselves of what they have done, do a bit of close reading, and pass along a nugget to a classmate. For this game, have your students take out some or all of that wonderful warm writing that you have been doing, and give them a few minutes to just peruse it as a way of refreshing their memories of the writing that they have done. Then, ask them to root through the writing and find a phrase or a sentence that sticks out to them for some reason. Don’t take too long for this. Maybe a minute or two. Ask them to write the phrase or sentence down on a piece of paper or at the top of a Google doc that they are going to share. Next, depending on how you have organized the game, have them share their phrase or sentence with someone else in the class. This could be done in partners. If in small groups, you could have them pass their gift to the person to the right. You get the drift. Finally, challenge your students to start a piece with whatever phrase or sentence gift that they have received. Form is up to the writer. Encourage them to go for it. As always, give your students the freedom to not worry about spelling or crossing things out. Spend all of the time finding what that phrase or sentence has to offer. Give them 5 minutes to write. At the end of five minutes, allow them to share in whatever format makes sense in terms of the time you have (i.e. in partners, in small groups, handed in to you for you to pick a few to share). 

Things that go away and come back again – (partners, small group, large group)

Again, a good line trade-off, but can be done word for word. This is a form of catalog verse. Have students or partners or groups make a surprising list of things that go away and come back again (e.g. Nose whistles, cravings for kalamata olives, the electric bill, my memory of where I parked the car)

Three word trade-offs – (partners, small group, large group)

This is a classic. Everyone has a piece of paper. Everyone writes the first three word line and then passes for the next person to write the next three word line. Coach the students to write three word lines that are not complete thoughts. Instead, let them hang there so that the next person has something to play off of.

Tzara’s Hat – (individual, small group, large group)

Unplanned Collaboration – (large groups)

This idea comes with a tip o’ the writing chapeau to Geoff Hewitt, a fantastic writer-teacher who documents this warm-up in the equally fantastic book Old Faithful . This is a great warm-up for pushing students to ‘start anywhere,’ for creating order out of writing chaos, for seeing the possibilities in words and phrases, and for acting strategically as a writer. Once your students have settled into their seats, have them take out a piece of paper and something to write with and ask them to write down the first phrase that comes to them from something that happened to them that morning or day. Might be helpful to show them an example from you: ‘strawberry jam and peanut butter on toast’ or ‘hit snooze twice’ or ‘sunlight through blinds.’ Coach your students to capture something that happened to them that day in the form of a phrase, not a complete sentence. Don’t spend too much time on this. Like always, you want to keep it light. Then, have them write the first phrase that comes to their mind. Once they have done that, choose students to read their phrases aloud. Write them down on the board, one phrase for each line.  Stop once you have 14, same number of lines as a sonnet. Now the fun starts. Have your students write down the 14 lines that you put up on the board on their pieces of paper. Then, challenge them to make those 14 seemingly disparate, unconnected lines, into a poem in about 10 minutes. Important rules: students can remove words, alter words in terms of tense, part of speech, or number, switch lines, and add grammatical choices. They must use all 14 lines in some way. In other words, they cannot remove one or more of the 14 lines completely. The key here is to design a challenge for your students to make sense out of text that has been given to them. After ten minutes is up, have them share with a partner what they have created. Of course, if you have more time – which you should make because this experiment is so great! – have your students share the strategies that they employed to make poetic meaning out of what they were given. This step deepens the learning significantly. Final thought: like with all of these experiments, the more you and your students do them, the better they will get and the deeper the impact will be on their overall writing.

Writing On Other Things (individual, pairs, small groups, large groups)

This warm up is powerful for many reasons. Often, writing on something other than traditional paper can unfreeze a student.  Writing on objects opens up other possibilities for expressing oneself in writing. There is a tactile quality to it that isn’t found when writing on paper – the student can hold the object, turn it, write all over it, feel the texture, etc. Objects can be “anthropomorphosized” more readily than paper which encourages students to talk to them or from them – all good stuff when it comes to coaching students to be flexible, fluent, and precise in their writing.  Finally, this experiment can be done collaboratively as word trade-offs, or done individually, or maybe both. Remember, the more you do this kind of stuff, the better the writing gets. Also, at the end of this experiment, you can then have the students set up their objects in a gallery and have them walk around and look at them. Other Warm-Up Ideas

5 Minute Quickies

Have your students write for five minutes at the beginning of class. Coach them to find the flow and to not correct spelling or cross anything out. The idea is to follow the ink. You can provide them with a prompt or not. I recommend that you provide a prompt for the first few weeks or months and then the students may be ready to write for five minutes without a prompt. Prompts can connect to the work you will be doing later in class (e.g. if you had one chance to write a letter to the main character in this novel, what would you write?) or they may be completely random (e.g. an alien is about to eat you. Convince it not to).

Other prompts that are connected to the work of the class

• What colors does this story make you think of? Why?
• Make a list of ways that you are like the main character
• Convince your friend why you should read this book
• Draw a picture of the main character. What does he/she look like?
• Make a list of sounds that this book makes you hear
• What questions does this book make you ask?

Other prompts

• Why does 2 plus 2 equal four?
• What would it feel like to be born inside a tree?
• What color is rain?
• Write a letter to your pencil
• Speak in a completely made up language
• Draw the inside of your mouth
• Write as many questions as you can
• Make a list of people you would never want to meet
• Make a list of names you wish you could be called (Coach your students to think realistically and unrealistically here. It gives them a chance to put down actual names they wish they had as well as fantastical and ridiculous ones. Potential next step: Choose one of these names and write a short  short story about him or her)
• Challenge your students to write one-side of a phone conversation. It’s trickier than you would think! What you leave out is just as important as what you leave in. Before jumping into this, you might want to transcribe a short and interesting phone conversation and show it in dialogue form and then show one side of the conversation to reveal the interesting moves that can be made in representing one side of a conversation. Lots of room to explore tension, mystery, and intrigue.

Another idea

List poems are fantastic warm up exercises. You can do them collaboratively or individually. The idea here is to allow your students to be wild, fantastical, and surprising. It’s good to read a model or two before sending them off to do list poems. Here are a few ideas:

• Lists of words you know
• Lists of books never heard of
• Lists of newly discovered body parts
• Lists of apologies I’ve made
• Lists of never before seen colors
• Lists of things I’m afraid of
• Fifty things I like a great deal
• Things that give an unclean feeling (a la Sei Shonagon)
• Things that give a clean feeling (a la Sei Shonagon)
• Monster poems
• List of clouds I have seen
• List of movie titles never heard of before
• List of names you wish you were called (push them to be literal and also fantastical)
• List of names you would never want to be called (same here)
• Things I’ve lost and others will find

Great resources for warm-up ideas

• Poetry Everywhere – Jack Collom
• The List Poem – Larry Fagin
• The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms – Ron Padgett
• Your crazy thoughts that happen usually right before you fall asleep

Special Note for our youngest of writers: For our really young writers, I have used the first part of the day as ‘writing time.’ Each student has their own box (I have used cigar boxes that the kids decorate). In these boxes are paper, pens, pencils and other things that the kids collect over time. The idea here is to provide the students with 15 or so minutes of uninterrupted writing time. I may provide a prompt (e.g. one of the ideas provided above) or not. I coach them to keep the pen, pencil, or crayon moving. They can draw, write, draw/write. At the end of the time, I have them share what they have created with a partner. I make sure to do this with them, modeling the kind of writing behavior that I want to see.

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15 comments on “ limbering up in the ela classroom: the serious fun of writing warm-ups ”.

Noelle McNesby

September 20, 2013 at 4:24 pm

Excellent! I’ve successfully used many of these creative warm-ups in my classroom. This compilation is essential for all teachers!

Deborah Kim

September 20, 2013 at 6:51 pm

Warm ups are necessary to anyone constantly exercising a skill/art and wanting to get better. Writers need to warm up in fun and meaningful ways, and these are GREAT ideas to do it!

September 24, 2013 at 8:01 pm

It’s also important that the teacher is warming up with the students. We all need to get warmed up for the writing, reading, thinking that we are going to do in the class. Plus, we should get to have fun as well!

Martha Crowell

September 20, 2013 at 6:54 pm

Great fun to read this. I loved your comment, “I want them to surprise themselves on the page.” I look forward to trying more of these.

Mary Ann Domanska

September 24, 2013 at 7:53 pm

It’s great to have these warm-ups in one place as a reminder for all that can be done… it’s so easy to get overwhelmed at the beginning of the year so having step-by-step activities like these are much appreciated!

September 24, 2013 at 8:02 pm

Glad to hear it! Do you have a warm up that you love to do with your students? If so, send it my way, and I will make sure to add it to the list with your name attached.

Peter Appelbaum

October 4, 2013 at 4:46 pm

I like the idea of the experiential “exclamation mark” that Sharon Friesen and Pat Clifford write about in their article, “Hard Fun.” http://pan.intrasun.tcnj.edu/ELEM690/HardFun.pdf

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July 23, 2015 at 11:18 pm

Thank you for all the great ideas! I’m a librarian in California and am going to try my hand at a FLASH fiction writing workshop. I was looking for warm up ideas before we dig in and this REALLY helped me! I’m thinking of using your comic idea and possibly doing book covers and having them write a quick description of the book! Thank you for all of these wonderful ideas!!

July 23, 2015 at 11:23 pm

Glad you found me, Loryn! Check out my post on writing author’s notes as well: http://www.writingbasedcurriculum.com/?s=warping+the+author%27s+note . You might get some good ideas there too. Also, I can connect you with other great teachers who have done and are doing flash fiction units. Just let me know if you are interested!

Amanda Paez

April 6, 2016 at 9:54 pm

Thank you for this wonderful post! I am the ELL/ Resource Teacher at my school and work with individuals and small groups all day. This week, I started using “one word trade-offs prose-style” and my students–even young ones and those who despise writing– are loving it! I love it too, because I get to work collaboratively with them and give them a little extra encouragement. I have found it really challenges them to use precise language and since they can only use one word, they really think about making it count.

I can’t wait to try more of your wonderful ideas!

June 12, 2018 at 12:00 am

Sorry for not seeing this when you originally posted it! Great to hear that you find these experiments helpful and that you are writing with your students!

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18 Warm-Up Activities to Engage Students Before They Read Nonfiction Texts

Here is a collection of our favorite “bell ringers,” “do nows” and “hooks” to grab students’ attention, along with examples from dozens of our daily lessons.

By The Learning Network

How can you get your students interested in reading informational texts, whether the topic is Syria or sneakers , space exploration or statistics , surfing , superheroes or “ the souls of Black girls ”? How can you help them make connections between unfamiliar topics and their own lives? How can you scaffold complex ideas to make them accessible for a wide variety of learners?

We’ve had lots of practice answering these questions. Our editorial staff — all of us former teachers — comes up with a fresh before-reading activity, or “warm-up,” for every Lesson of the Day we publish. We now have over 700 of them, all based on Times articles chosen from across sections of the paper, and all free to students around the world.

Here we’ve combed through the collection, organized the strategies that we use most frequently and provided examples so that you can see how they work. Each is intended to be a brief activity — an appetizer before the main course. You can find them all listed here in this downloadable poster (PDF).

But we also hope to hear from you. Let us know in the comments section or by emailing us at [email protected] if you have other warm-up suggestions you think we should try. We’d love to lengthen this list!

1. Make it personal.

When have you faced a difficult journey or challenge? What role do video games play in your life? What do you know about your family history and ancestry? Do you read or write poetry? Have you ever believed in magic?

We all work hard to help students make connections between school content and their real lives, and sometimes all it takes is a simple question.

For instance, to introduce an article about Henry David Thoreau and his experience at Walden Pond , we ask students if they liked to spend time alone, and what the benefits and drawbacks of solitude have been for them. For a piece about the science of dog behavior , we ask about their experiences with dogs and their observations about the special bond these animals have with humans. And to ease them into an article about redefining the quinceañera , we invite students to write and think about their own experiences with coming-of-age rituals of all kinds.

Students can explore these personal connections through writing in a journal, using sentence starters , talking with a partner, taking a temperature check , or sketching a concept or identity map .

2. Start with an image …

Look at the picture above and answer these three questions about it, in as much detail as you can: What is going on in this picture? What do you see that makes you say that? What more can you find?

That’s how a lesson on an article about wild animals and the pandemic begins. We borrowed the three questions from our weekly “ What’s Going On in This Picture? ” protocol, because we know it invites students not only to speculate, but to provide evidence for their ideas — all of which help lead them seamlessly into the article.

In another example, we invite students to discuss the thoughts and feelings that come up when they view this illustration before reading an article about self-harm :

Sometimes we provide students with a group of images to explore, as we do in this lesson based on the multimedia feature “How Black Lives Matter Reached Every Corner of America ,” or in this lesson about Caribbean Carnival . In a physical classroom, these photos can be used in a gallery walk activity .

3. … or a video.

We begin many of our Lessons of the Day with short videos — some from the article itself, some from related pieces in The Times and some from a reliable outside source, like National Geographic or the BBC.

Can street dance be a fine art? Before reading about Lil Buck and his belief that Memphis jookin can be no less rigorous than classical ballet, students watch the four-minute video above, “Nobody Knows,” that showcases his breathtaking artistry and discipline.

We also use video to engage students emotionally with a news story that might feel distant or complicated. In our lesson plan about China’s detention of Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, for instance, students watch a Times Opinion video featuring the voices and stories of young people whose parents have been imprisoned in the camps.

We often ask students to process what they view through journaling or in discussion with a partner, using prompts drawn from our Film Club feature : What moments in this film stood out for you? Was there anything that challenged what you know — or thought you knew? What messages, emotions or ideas will you take away from this film? What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience?

4. Analyze a graph or map.

Thanks to the excellent graphs and maps The Times produces on subjects as varied as nutrition choices and music fandom , we often use this kind of multimedia to invite students to make observations and ask questions about a topic before they immerse themselves in it.

For example, before reading about how LeBron James is leading a generation of athletes into ownership , students look at the graph of racial disparities between players of color and head coaches of color in sports.

For a warm-up to introduce a Times article on past vaccine drives , including smallpox and polio, students look at maps of Covid-19 vaccination rates across the United States and in their own community.

And before learning about the connection between the decline in Chinese restaurants across America and the economic mobility of the second generation, students analyze a graph that uses data from the restaurant reviewing website Yelp.

What does the sun look like? You have probably drawn a picture of the sun at some point in your life: a simple yellow circle with lines or triangles surrounding it. Do you think it really looks like that? Based on what you know about the sun — its structure and makeup — what do you think its surface actually looks like? Is it perfectly round? Smooth? Rough? Uniform or varied? Is it the color of the yellow in a box of crayons? Or something more complex? Take a few minutes and make a sketch of the surface of the sun.

We recognize that most warm-ups take only a few minutes at the start of class, so there usually isn’t time to have students create an artistic masterpiece. But, as you can see in the activity above, used at the start of a lesson plan about newly released photos of the sun’s surface , sometimes it does make sense to have students make a quick sketch. By inviting students to draw, we’re really asking them to think — perhaps about something they’ve never thought about before.

Drawing can also be a fun way to get students to share their own unique perspectives. Before reading an article on sexist double standards facing women who run for political office , we prompt students to draw what they think an effective president looks like, adding words that describe the appearance, qualities and behaviors of a leader. A warm-up for an article on machine design asks students to sketch what they think of when they hear the word “robot.” For an article discussing possible life on Venus , we prompt students to draw what they imagine extraterrestrial life in the universe to look like.

Drawing a “mind map” also counts. In this lesson about a school for basketball careers , we invite students to visually brainstorm every job they can think of that is related to their favorite sport: management of players and teams, training, marketing, merchandising, keeping statistics and more.

The goal isn’t to test students’ illustration skills, of course, but to allow them to express their creativity and imagination, as well as to see the range of visual ideas in a single classroom.

6. Ask for predictions.

Is it possible to bounce a water balloon off a bed of nails? Do you think your N.F.L. team will make the playoffs this year? If I touched the moon, what would it feel like? Sometimes asking students to anticipate what they’re about to read by making guesses or advancing theories about the topic can give them a stake in finding answers. The three questions above, we hope, do just that.

Take the second question in the list above: Before exploring the math behind any N.F.L. team’s playoff chances , we invite students to make their own predictions and then compare them with The Times’s computer simulator.

Here’s another example: We ask students to make predictions before reading an article about how distracted walkers can affect pedestrian flow : What do you think would happen if several people were walking while looking at their phones in a crowded school hallway or on a busy sidewalk? How might these distracted walkers affect the way the crowd moved, if at all? After students make those predictions, they are more prepared to understand the results of a recent study — and to do our “going further” activities that take those results and use them for real purposes in their own communities.

Making predictions in advance of reading a text can help to give students a purpose for reading, providing a “need to know” as they look for answers to their conjectures. For example, in this lesson, about teenagers and their social ties during the pandemic, we invite students to begin by making a list of all the roles their friends play in their lives. Then, before reading what experts on adolescent development and mental health have to say in the article, they compare their lists and try to predict some of the reasons the experts would give for why pandemic isolation has been particularly hard on teenagers.

7. Take a stand on an issue.

How do you feel about the following claims? With which do you agree, or strongly agree? With which do you disagree, or even strongly disagree? Why?

Participating in sports builds valuable skills for young people. The risk of long-term brain damage for professional football players is very high. The risk of long-term brain damage for youth football is very low. If I were a parent, I would not let my 13-year-old play tackle football.

This is how we introduce students to an article exploring how a small Texas city is struggling over the question of whether to allow 13-year-olds to play tackle football .

Beginning a class with this kind of “ Four Corners ” debate, which prompts students to show their position on a specific statement (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree) by standing in a particular corner of the room, is a great way to get students out of the seats and to take a stand — literally and figuratively. Another version? The “ Human Barometer ,” which asks students to line up along a continuum based on their position on an issue. We often use one of these two protocols when tackling a nonfiction text exploring a topic with disagreement or controversy surrounding it.

In a warm-up to an article on state cuts to food stamp programs , we ask students to take a stand on the statement: “The government has a responsibility to make sure no Americans go hungry.” And to introduce an article on the lucrative opportunities enjoyed by some college “cheerlebrities, ” we ask students to decide where they stand on the statement: “College cheerleaders should be able to make money through things like endorsement deals, brand partnerships and sponsored social media posts.”

The idea is not that there is one correct viewpoint or perspective, but to begin to understand the contours of a public debate and start to unpack the arguments in favor of contending stances.

After reading the featured article, students can return to the Barometer or Four Corners warm-up activities and revisit their stances to see if — and how — they and their classmates have revised their opinions.

8. Invite student-to-student discussion.

The think-pair-share . The turn-and-talk . Most teachers are familiar with these quick activities that invite students to talk with a partner — as tools to make sure every student in the class is involved. And when students use them to discuss ideas, reactions and experiences during a warm-up, they become active learners right from the start.

We generally ask students to do a little writing and thinking before conversing with a classmate so they’re ready to enter the discussion with something to say. For example, to introduce a lesson about the history of Black American Sign Language , we invite students to first quick-write and then turn and talk about how they use language in different settings.

Before reading an article on how to argue more productively , we first invite students to engage in some “joyful disagreements,” debating such thorny questions as “Does pineapple belong on pizza?” and “How does the roll of toilet paper go on the holder?”

Sometimes we employ slightly more structured or elaborate discussion strategies, like the “ speed dating ” exercise in this lesson plan about art appreciation . In a face-to-face setting, students pair up to answer a question or to discuss a topic for three to five minutes and then quickly form new pairings to discuss a different question or topic — and continue that way for several rounds.

9. Make something — or do something.

Warm-up activities don’t always have to focus on reading, writing or discussion. Often we try to make them literally hands-on.

In a lesson plan about the art of origami , for instance, it just makes sense to invite students to experiment with origami before they begin reading. Afterward, we ask them to reflect on the process and describe what was challenging, what was fun and what techniques they used.

Sometimes a warm-up is less hands-on than lips-, teeth-, tongue-, jaw- and throat-on, as in this lesson plan about beatboxers , which invites students to experiment with making different types of sounds and beats with their mouth and voice alone.

And for a lesson on the complexities of language’s origins , we ask them to choose one of the 26 letters in the alphabet and imagine they have to explain how to make the sound of that letter to a young child or someone who has never heard or spoken it before. To do so, they first have to experiment with saying the letter in different ways — at different speeds, for example, or by exaggerating the movement of their mouths and lips — while paying close attention to what their bodies are doing as they make the sound.

10. Try a mini-experiment.

Spinning water droplets that seemingly defy physics, chinese researchers have discovered a new way to make water droplets spin, creating a potential new kind of hydropower..

I bet you’ve never seen water do this: twist and turn like a dancer in flight. It happens when a droplet lands on a water-repellent surface with a special pattern. These acrobatic leaps were recorded by Chinese scientists investigating new ways to manipulate water. To understand what they did, let’s step back and see what Isaac Newton had to say about bouncing objects. According to Newton, when an object hits a solid surface, some of the energy of the impact is translated into a rebound. Think of a ball hitting concrete. If the ball travels straight down with no spin, it should bounce straight up again. And it’s the same with a water droplet on a water-repellent surface. Theoretically, the droplet should bounce straight up — no fancy stuff. But the researchers created a pattern of adhesive material on the surface that water sticks to. The water in contact with the sticky patches recoils more slowly than the water touching the repellent surface, and that makes the droplets spin. Change the pattern of the adhesive, and you change the shape of the dancing droplet. The researchers made swirls and half-moons and dotted circles, each of which caused the water to behave differently, sometimes even bouncing sideways. Scientists also showed how the energy of the droplets could be harvested. They set up a magnetically suspended surface. As the droplet landed on the surface and rebounded, it pushed down the plate and caused it to spin. It’s a new kind of hydropower. And at their peak, those droplets are spinning at a whopping 7,300 revolutions per minute. So apart from creating a water droplet ballet, scientists have also found a new way to harvest energy. And their work might help in designing self-cleaning airplane wings. For now, it’s enough to have the pleasure of watching the leaps and pirouettes of those dancing drops.

Try out a mini-experiment testing the way water reacts to different types of surfaces. First, gather a few surfaces with varying textures — rough, smooth, grainy, oily, soft, hard or bumpy. You might use a desktop, a sheet of textured paper, an aluminum can or pavement. Then, using a dropper, Pasteur pipette or straw, drip water on the different surfaces. Record your observations.

This is how we begin our lesson about dancing water droplets that reveals the startling ways water seems to dance. Students then watch the short video above and compare their observations with those of scientists.

For science-related nonfiction texts, you might try a mini-experiment that doesn’t require a lot of materials and is quick and easy to do. For example, before reading an article about how scientists use paper as a model to study other crumpling challenges — such as how DNA packs into a cell, or how best to cram a giant solar sail into a small satellite — we ask students to ball up pieces of paper and take notes about patterns they notice.

Some experiments might be too long for a “hook” activity, but a short hands-on activity can be a great, interactive way to get early buy-in from students.

11. Try a thought experiment.

Imagine a situation where all cars and public transportation suddenly disappeared — and all you had for travel was a bicycle: How would it affect you and your family?

Sometimes prompting students to imagine alternate realities can open their minds to a new way of seeing a problem or issue. For instance, the prompt above begins a lesson plan about the most bike-friendly city in the world , Copenhagen.

For a lesson about a library’s exhibition on 5,000 years of writing , we ask students to imagine if humans had never invented a written language. How would the world be different?

And before reading about why monkeys have tails while apes and humans don’t , we prompt students to imagine their lives if they had this curious appendage — whether short, long, bushy or striped. What are at least five cool things they could do with it?

12. Observe nature — or the human environment.

Take five minutes and simply look at the clouds in the sky.

This simple instruction begins our lesson on the Cloud Appreciation Society .

Sometimes the best way to engage students can be the easiest and mostly readily at hand: Look around you, pay close attention to something, watch and observe.

To introduce the complicated topic of the disrupted global supply chain , we ask students to look at the labels on their clothing, sneakers, electronics or anything else they own and find out where they’re made. What trends do they notice as they share their data across the class or in small groups?

In a warm-up to an article on a scientific experiment studying the blinking of birds , we ask students to take several minutes to study and observe their own blinking: Does the quality and the quantity of blinking change in different settings or lighting? When sitting versus standing? When looking at something nearby or far in the distance? When is your blinking voluntary and when is it involuntary?

Students can use their simple observations to form questions or a hypothesis, helping both to build engagement and to frame the reading.

13. Activate prior knowledge.

Students approach any new topic with varying degrees of prior knowledge, so inviting them to consider what they may have already read, heard or watched on that topic can serve multiple purposes.

For starters, it can help classmates share ideas and information at the start of a lesson. It can also help to surface any misinformation that students might have. And it can give students an opportunity to ask questions before they dive into the reading.

Many teachers are familiar with the classic K/W/L chart — a graphic organizer that organizes what students “ k now,” “ w ant to know,” and “have l earned” in three columns — and we use them often, too, in lesson plans on topics like the Harlem Renaissance , women’s suffrage movement and presidential election process .

Sometimes we simply ask students to share in their journals or in pairs: “What do you know — or think you know — about a particular subject?” Our lesson about the ways in which the British spy agency M15 promotes itself on social media asks this to help students brainstorm what they might already know on the broad topic of spies and spying — but also, we hope, to get them excited to learn some surprising things about how espionage agencies operate today.

And sometimes we just want to show students they know more than they think they know. For example, in a lesson about applying to college during a pandemic , we suggest that students brainstorm a list of all the steps, big and small, a high school student traditionally takes as part of the college application process. Then we ask them to go back through that list and put an X through each step that was somehow disrupted by the pandemic. This not only helps them see that they are coming to the Times article with a great deal of background knowledge already, but also helps them anticipate the issues they will be reading about.

14. Respond to a quote.

Consider the following statement: “History is never neutral.” What do you think that means? Do you agree with its premise? Why or why not? Can you think of any examples that support or contradict this statement?

A particularly provocative or juicy quote or statement can often be an effective way to get students thinking deeply about a subject even before they read an article. The example above introduces our lesson plan about state history textbooks .

Sometimes the most powerful warm-up quote comes right from the article. We begin a lesson about a California homeless camp with the following quote from Markaya Spikes, a woman who was living in the camp at the time:

Homeless people are treated worse than stray animals. When someone finds a stray animal they take it home and feed it. When someone sees a homeless person they call the police. Where is the compassion?

We ask students, What is your immediate reaction to reading the quotation? What words stand out to you? Does the quotation bring up an emotional response? Do you have any desire to respond to Ms. Spikes? What might you say to her?

Or quotes can come from famous adages, mottos or sayings. For a lesson profiling people who pursued deferred dreams later in their lives , we ask students to consider two sayings: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” and “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” Then, they reflect on which they find more accurate and true to life.

15. Take a quiz.

OK … pop quiz!

1. How many bacteria can fit on the head of a pin? a) 1,000 b) 1 million c) 1 billion d) 1 trillion 2. How many Earths could you fit inside our sun? a) 10 b) 100 c) 1,000 d) 1 million

This is how we start a lesson on the popularity of videos demonstrating relative size on YouTube. We don’t expect students to know the answers beforehand, but it is a quick way to introduce them to mind-boggling magnitudes in the universe.

Another example: For a lesson about race and biology , we start with a short true-or-false quiz. True or false? “Race is determined solely by biology.” In addition to piquing students’ curiosity, a quiz like this can surface common misconceptions quickly.

We also use premade quizzes from The Learning Network, The Times or other reliable sources. If a lesson plan features a specific country, like Myanmar or Cuba , we often start with a Country of the Week quiz . And we occasionally send students to a Times science or news quiz, like we did for this lesson about the danger of added sugars in our diets or this lesson on climate change solutions .

These quizzes are always intended as learning “hooks,” though, and never as graded assessments. We want them to get students thinking and to evoke their curiosity, not intimidate them.

16. Pro/con, cause/effect, problem/solution: Make a list.

Whether it’s generating pros and cons, causes and effects, arguments for and against, or problems and solutions, brainstorming a list can be an effective warm-up to get students’ minds active. They can make a list individually or with a partner, and they can share examples with the class before jumping into the text. Then, as they read the related piece, they will often find their own ideas reflected.

For example, in a lesson about Marvel’s first Asian superhero film, Shang-Chi , we ask students to take a few minutes to make a list of common superhero stereotypes they have read in comic books or seen in movies.

Before reading the article, “ Here Comes the Bride. And the Bride. And the Bride. Mass Weddings Boom in Lebanon ,” we invite students to make a list of the pros and cons for a young couple thinking about participating in a wedding ceremony that might include as many as dozens, hundreds or even thousands of couples.

To introduce an article on the discovery that bird populations in the United States and Canada had fallen by 29 percent since 1970, a loss of nearly three billion birds, we ask students to make two lists, one for possible causes of this loss and another for the possible effects. And for a lesson on theater programs in prison , we challenge students to consider the purpose of prison: punishment, rehabilitation and deterrence, making a list of arguments for each.

17. Preview a text.

Sometimes an effective warm-up activity can simply be to give students a taste of the article they’re about the read. If the opening lines or top images are engaging enough, then the article can serve as its own preview.

To preview an article on the popular video game Among Us, we ask students to respond to a quote from a teenager:

“A few weeks ago I went from not hearing anything about it to hearing everything about it everywhere,” said Judah Rice, 16, a high school student in Texas. “People are texting about it, I know people who are on dedicated Discord servers and Among Us group chats. I have friends who get together all the time and play it.”

Then we invite them to pretend they are a Times reporter who has been assigned to write an article for a mostly adult audience about the popularity of this game among teenagers. What are all of the things they would want and need to include? Why?

Previewing can also be done by having students read and react to a provocative first paragraph, like this one from a piece on the spread of misinformation :

There’s a decent chance you’ve had at least one of these rumors, all false, relayed to you as fact recently: that President Biden plans to force Americans to eat less meat ; that Virginia is eliminating advanced math in schools to advance racial equality; and that border officials are mass-purchasing copies of Vice President Kamala Harris’s book to hand out to refugee children.

Or it can mean inviting students to scroll through the images and text, enough to get them to notice and wonder about the article, and make predictions for what the rest of the article will be about. That’s how we start our lesson about the Tulsa Race Riots . It’s also what we do with a Twitter account “written” by Katharine the great white shark , who has a lot of teach about shark behavior.

Sometimes it might make sense for the teacher to read the article’s opening lines aloud and for students to react. Often it works best when students do this preview activity individually or in pairs.

18. Define key terms.

Students will often run into unfamiliar words and terms when reading nonfiction texts, perhaps words like decolonize, divestment or gender-nonconforming .

A warm-up activity can introduce students to this key vocabulary in advance, so they can better understand the text they’re about to read. One vocabulary-building strategy we sometimes use is a Frayer model , a graphic organizer that guides students to note the definition, characteristics, examples and nonexamples of the term.

For example, we invite students to define the word “decolonize” before reading the article “ Decolonizing the Hunt for Dinosaurs and Other Fossils ” and “divestment” before reading an article about fossil fuel divestment .

And in a lesson plan about remembering the lives of influential Latinos , we provide students with a list of 10 words from the article they may not know, such as ventriloquism and embargo, and encourage them to use this list of words and their definitions to learn what each means and to practice using the words.

We hope this collection helps to expand your teaching toolbox of warm-ups, bell ringers, “do nows” and hooks when you approach any informational text — from The Times or any other source.

But, we know, of course, that there are many more ways to introduce nonfiction texts. Let us know in the comments section or by emailing us at LNFeedback.com if you have other warm-up suggestions you think we should try. We’d love to expand our list!

10 Writing Warm-Ups to Engage Your Students in the Middle School ELA or High School English Classroom

In the public education setting, timed-writes are a required part of many standardized tests. Rather than try to cloak that reality, embrace it! One great way to do this is with fun and engaging writing warm-ups! Show your students that timed writing can be a fun challenge, and develop their expository and analytical prowess by beginning every class with a writing warm-up. These warm-ups should take only five to ten minutes, and you can easily implement them into your daily bell-ringer routine.

Here are 10 writing warm-ups  to build your students’ writing confidence:

1 minute story.

Get your students in the habit of writing from the word “go.” Set the time for 60 seconds and task them with writing a complete short story with a beginning, middle, and end in that time. The first time, many of them will probably find themselves caught up in the pressure or struggle over what to write. That’s okay! The more they practice, the better they will become at thinking quickly and excluding any unnecessary information. By the end of the school year, an essay in forty-five minutes will seem like a piece of cake! It’s best not to score these short stories. Instead, work on progress. If a student has trouble with this, encourage them to keep adding to their story with the one-minute you give them in class.

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

Put an image up on the board, and have your students write a short paragraph about it. You can have them pen a short story, a long-form poem, or an explanation of what a student perceives the situation depicted to be. This exercise will encourage creative and critical thinking skills, both of which are essential in rhetorical analysis.

Note: the image should have as much or as little visual information as is appropriate for the type of response you are seeking. For example, for a poem, a picture of an apple would suffice; whereas, a stock photo of a couple might better suit a short story or analysis.

Teaching Resource: Descriptive Writing .

Musical Manuscripts

Using instrumental music is a great way to activate your students’ creativity and ability to write intuitively. Play the piece once in its entirety, and allow your students to make notes along the way. Then have them determine the mood of the song in a single word, and write a paragraph about why the song is “sad”, “happy”, “romantic”, etc. Because most of your students probably won’t yet have written a master’s thesis in music theory, this activity will force them to think analytically to get their point across. Plus they’ll get to listen to music in class!

Everyone’s A Critic

Have your students write a short review of a book, television show, or movie they recently read or watched! Reviews have a clear, if highly subjective, prompt: Was it good or bad? This warm-up is a wonderful practice for plot analysis, critical thinking, and supporting claims with evidence from the source. Plus, you may be able to avoid a bad film or two yourself. Kids are notoriously harsh critics, after all.

Alphabetical Order

This activity will make your students groan, but it will undoubtedly get them focused. This exercise will require your students to write a 26 line account of their day so far, each line beginning with the corresponding letter of the alphabet. For example: “ A bird flew by my window this morning. B irds are nice. “ C aw,” the bird said…” Students may experience frustration, but the structure will help them become used to producing fantastic work while working with strict guidelines. Furthermore, this activity will get them thinking about the process of writing.

Reverse! Reverse!

If you enjoy nonsensical fun, look no further! In this exercise, you will select any word out of the English language and present it to your students. Then reverse all the letters, creating an entirely new word. Each of your students will decide the meaning of this new word, and provide a dictionary entry for it, complete with a definition and an example sentence. This is a fun little exercise that gets the creative juices flowing and lets students feel more in control of language.

Tip: To make the activity more challenging, place specific guidelines on how the word fits into the English language, i.e., “this word is a verb,” etc.

Dear New Me,

Letters are a great, low-stress activity that still helps your students practice communicating their thoughts effectively in writing. In this exercise, students will write a short message to their future selves, detailing personal goals or worries about the near future. I recommend doing this at the beginning of a new unit or even before an extended assignment/project so that students can go into the next learning experience with a more focused mindset. Self check-ins are necessary and important!

Dear Old Me,

Here’s a fun mirror of the above warm-up, in which your students will write to their past selves! This can work in a broader sense, such as writing a letter full of things they’d wish they had known when they were six. They can also use this as a reflection upon the ending of a unit or project. It can even pair with the “Dear New Me” project, resulting in a constant stream of conversation that marks each student’s progress. It’s a great way to remind students that we are all learning and growing every day.

Dear Alter Ego,

Yet another twist on letter writing: This activity is one students can engage with every day and one that allows them a snippet of fantasy to liven up the classroom. Ask your students to create an alter ego for themselves. Then set aside a few minutes at the beginning of each class for your students to write to their alter egos. Not only is this an exercise in writing, but it’s also an exercise in self-esteem. Often alter egos are who we imagine ourselves as, but fear we are too plain or weak to be. The more acquainted your students become with their alter egos, the more they will realize that they are exalting themselves and their own potential.

Everything comes out better when love is added to the mix. When you ask someone about a subject they love, it seems as if they could talk for hours. Ask your students to write down a list of things they are passionate about: This can be anything from food to a sport to a stuffed animal they always keep on their bed. Have them choose one, set the timer, and let them write! They’ll surprise themselves with how much they have to say. Some more specific questions you can use to prompt them are: Why is ___ special to you personally? When did you first become interested in ___? What are 3 facts you know about ___?

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A meeting place for a world of reflective writers.

Ways to Warm Up for Writing (At All Ages and Stages)

Athletes warm up before practice, musicians warm up before a rehearsal–so why wouldn’t writers warm up before writing?

Warming up for writing means getting your mind ready to write. For some writers, that means recalling your most recent word solving or spelling strategies so that they are fresh on your mind when you need them. For other writers, that might mean doing something to generate ideas for content, and for others it might mean doing something to refresh your memory on where you left off.

Here are a few quick and easy warm up routines that some of your students might find helpful.

Reading the Word Wall or a Ring of High Frequency Words

In many K-2 classrooms, teachers introduce a handful of high frequency words each week, adding them a few at a time to a “word wall” displayed in the classroom for easy reference. Other variations include adding to a smaller personalized word wall or ring of index cards. If this a tool that exists in your classroom, kids can warm up for writing by reviewing the word wall words – then those words will be fresh on their mind as they write. They might simply read the words to themselves, or they might write them on a dry-erase board in different sizes, or they might do a word hunt, searching through their previous writing for word wall words. Anything that gets them reading and/or writing the words they’ve been studying will give them extra practice with the words and set them up for success with spelling those words when they encounter them in their work.

A Spelling or Conventions Checklist Warm Up

For some kids, there are a few particular conventions that they seem to have trouble with day in and day out. With things like writing in lower case (instead of a mix of upper and lower case), common spelling errors, or fogetting punctuation, daily reminders and routines can be very helpful. After all, most conventions are habits, and habits really aren’t developed in one single sitting, or in just one minilesson. Instead, repetition is what forms a habit.

A short checklist highlighting just a few priorities for the indivdual student can help them self-monitor their own habits. Reviewing the checklist as a warm up to writing will put those conventions at the front of the writer’s mind as they begin to write, helping them incorporate the items on the checklist into their writing during writing, instead of always waiting until after writing to go back and check for mistakes.

Doodling or Drawing

For some writers, doodling or drawing helps them get ideas for what to write. It can also serve as a nice transition from an unrelated activity (recess, a math game, a science project…) into writing workshop. Ambient music or white noise often goes along nicely with doodling, and can have a calming effect, in addition to helping kids get ready to do their best work.

Talking or Rehearsing Aloud

Another way that writers often warm up for writing is by talking… talking A LOT. This might take the form of talking into a device to record all their great thinking, or talking to another person to brainstorm ideas, or rehearse a story idea to see how it sounds out loud. Talking might involve a lot of drama and expression, perhaps even role-playing different parts, or taking on different voices–or it might be done quietly and individually, whispering to oneself and sketching out a few ideas for what to write.

Re-reading What You’ve Already Written

Adults might do this without even thinking twice about it, but to novice writers it may not occur to them to reread what they’ve already written before they get started on new work. You can reread with many different lenses – reading your own work out loud helps you hear how it sounds and may help you discover parts to add on to, or shorten up. Rereading for spelling or punctuation from previous days work is helpful because you have fresh eyes for finding your own mistakes when you’ve taken a break from it. And rereading old finished work can help you generate new ideas for your next piece of writing.

Taking a Look at Some Mentor Texts

As a student, I would often get so carried away with a project or a piece of writing that I would lose sight of what the actual assignment was supposed to be. Now, I’ve developed a routine of looking at examples nearly every time I write. Sometimes I look to published, professional authors, but often I look to student writing, or writing created by friends or colleauges. This not only helps me stay focused on what I’m “supposed ” to be doing, I find it helps me generate new ideas, and gets my mind ready to write. Sometimes I look at a mentor text and I think, “Oh! I could use the same strategy in my work!” Other times I think, “Oooh. I would not do it that way. I think I’ll do it this way instead.” Either way, revisiting an example (or mentor text) is a helpful for routine for a lot of writers — especially those of us who benefit from clear expectations and focus on the task at hand.

Putting Warm Up Routines into Practice

In the classroom, each of your students may benefit from warming up for writing in a different way. In your next unit of study, near the beginning of the unit, perhaps you’ll introduce a few of your own favorite warm up routines that students can choose from, and invite them to invent their own routine. Then, each day at at the start of independent writing time, you can remind all your students to warm up, each in their individualized way. You may want to have a set ending time for warming up, signaling to students to stop warming up and start writing — or you may find that students transition into their work on their own and don’t need the signal.

For the writers in your classroom that need a little time to get settled in, a warm up routine might be just the thing that was missing.

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Published by BethMooreSchool

Literacy Coach, Consultant, Author, Graduate Course Instructor, and Mom. Passionate about fostering a love of reading and writing in learners of all ages. View all posts by BethMooreSchool

3 thoughts on “ Ways to Warm Up for Writing (At All Ages and Stages) ”

Such great ideas! Thanks for this awesome post Beth!

I appreciate the way you likened warming up for writing to warming up for a workout. I’d never just jump right into exercise without getting ready. Same should be said/done for writing too!

Love this list! I could see this at all ages for sure!

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Kami Blog > Warm-Up Activities for High School Classes

Inspiration

Warm-up activities for high school classes.

Keeping your high school learners’ attention can feel like a challenge at times. Especially if you’re teaching during the warmer months and your class happens to be straight after lunchtime! If you haven’t already, check out our blog on middle-school warm-up activities for a good place to start. If you’re after something a little more advanced, or just looking to add some tools to your teaching resources, this blog has all the tips and tricks you need to make the first minutes of your class a blast for your high school students. If this is the first time you’re meeting your class, check out our blog about introducing yourself and making a good first impression.

Whether you teach English, ESL, social studies, language arts, or physical education, there are always benefits to introducing a warm-up activity to your lesson plans. You’ll quickly discover that starting a class in one of these fun ways won’t only get your learners excited about a new topic, but it’ll get you in the mood too!

Icebreakers

These are aimed at the more social aspect of the classroom. Your students will learn better if they feel comfortable working together. Most of these are English language focused but will work as a fun way to start any class.

• Chain Story: Learners collaborate to write a story about the first day of school on a single piece of paper. However, as they pass the paper to the next student, fold it so that only the most recent sentence is visible. Then, read the entire story to the class. It’s usually a good piece of amusing nonsense!
• “I have spoken”: This works well as a back-to-school activity after a holiday or long weekend. In a large circle, students get the chance to say as much (or as little) as they want about their vacation (or any topic of their choosing) in 20 seconds. At the end of their time, they say, “I have spoken,” and everyone replies, “Ho!” Then the turn passes to the next student in the circle.
• “I’m going to bring”: Start by saying, “I’m going for a picnic (or on vacation, or to the beach), and I’m going to bring,” and then name an appropriate item that starts with the letter “A.” The next student in the circle says, “I’m going for a picnic and I’m going to bring,” and then they repeat your item and then add an item that starts with B. Continue around the circle, adding an item that starts with the next letter of the alphabet each time. This can work especially well if you’re creative with where you’re “going.”
• Sign of the day: Fun fact, The United States does not in fact have an official language! But, after English and Spanish, American Sign Language is among the most widespread. Just like Spanish, the benefits of knowing a few simple words and phrases in ASL can be huge for social and professional development. It can also be a lot of fun for your students to have another means of communication with other learners. There’s a great Youtube channel here , that can get you and your class started on learning new signs!

High School English

English class in high school is where learners start to learn the deeper mechanics of English language and literature. Your warm-ups can reflect this new depth by asking students to quickly create, analyze or summarize aspects from previous lessons. These formats can be easily tweaked for other school subjects, not just English classes!

• Flash Fiction: Not stories about the world’s fastest superhero. Flash fiction is all about writing very short stories as quickly as possible! Give your students a prompt from a previous lesson and tell them they have one minute to write a response to it. Be sure to establish that short stories require a beginning, middle, and end, even if they’re very small!
• Character Motivations: Write a famous character on the whiteboard. It could be an obscure character from a previous lesson, or someone more generic. Have your students write bullet points on a piece of paper about what motivates them.

ESL warm-up activities

Learning English as a second language can be really tough. There’s a good chance that at least one of your learners will speak English as a second language. Games like these can be a great way to build a strong foundation that can improve their confidence before beginning a new topic. One of the best ways to maximize your native English speakers’ interest is to introduce new topics in fun ways. Try some of these ESL games and see for yourself!

• Fun, Fantastic Friends: This is a great team-building ESL warm-up activity that can be played in pairs or small groups. Divide your learners up into pairs or small groups. If you’re teaching online, this works fine as an individual activity. Assign each group or person a letter (Maybe avoid difficult letters such as X or Q!). They now have to find two adjectives and a noun with that starting letter to describe themselves. When everybody is ready, each group introduces themselves in front of the class. Students usually come up with funny, original ideas that make everybody laugh. You will hear things like, “We are amazing, active animals” and, “We are cool, cheerful classmates.”
• Sentence Scramble: For native English speakers, incorrect syntax can be easy to find, but tricky to explain. For this fun activity, you can divide the students into small groups. Come up with a few sentences before class, and write the sentence’s words on your whiteboard in random order. The first group or individual student to unscramble the words and read the sentence aloud correctly wins that round.When creating sentences, you can use motivating mottos, the target subject of the day, or review a grammar point from a previous lesson. Even though it might sound very easy, you can choose quite complicated phrases, such as quotes, scientific principles, or even a Shakespearean verse or two!

These games are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to great warm-up activities. You and your students can work together to see what works best for your learning environment. These all work well either in person or, with just some minor adjustments, in a blended environment. Hopefully, these activities provide you and your class with some fun ways to start each class!

You may also like

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Warm-Up Activities for Middle School

Get To Know You Games | Fun Icebreaker Games For New Students Of All Ages

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A Classical & Christ-Centered Education

Secondary Curriculum

The secondary school is divided into two stages… grades 7-8 (the Logic Stage) and grades 9-12 (the Rhetoric Stage).

In grades 7-8, the students take the mastered information from the Grammar Stage and bring it into ordered relationships. Students begin to apply logic, assessing the validity of arguments and learning to view information critically with more discerning minds.

In grades 9-12, students learn to articulate eloquently and persuasively, and to use the tools of knowledge and understanding acquired in the earlier stages. This is the point at which the strength of a classical education is made fully visible.

Click here for an overview of the Logos School secondary curriculum.

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The Knight’s Creed and Commitment

Class Schedules

Spring 2024 Finals Schedule    7th-12th grades only.

23-24 Fall Class Schedule     7th-12th grades only.

Senior Course Options: 

By the time students reach their senior year in high school, they have usually developed interests in specific areas. Therefore, they will be given the opportunity to pursue those areas through the following senior course options. These options are designed to allow students the opportunity to learn one or two subjects well. As Dorothy Sayers says, “Whatever is mere apparatus may now be allowed to fall into the background, while the trained mind is gradually prepared for specialization in the “subjects” which, when the Trivium is completed, it should be perfectly well equipped to tackle on its own.” (from The Lost Tools of Learning) These options should aid the transition from the completion of the Trivium to the more specialized study that is a part of a college or university education.

Option 1: College or Online Class

This is a 1 credit option in which a student enrolls in a college or online class. Approved subjects include math, science, theology, humanities, and fine arts. The class must be taken for credit and the student must submit a transcript to receive credit toward Logos graduation. Areas of study that do not qualify are recreational classes and/or self-guided courses with little accountability.

Option 2: Internship

The internship is a 1/2 credit option intended to provide seniors with the opportunity to study a career. Students must work a minimum of 2 hours per week on their internship. A variety of internships have been approved in the past (interning with an elementary or secondary Logos teacher, riding along with police officers, observing at a local vet clinic, etc.). Students are not allowed to be paid for the time they spend as an intern. Parents are responsible to provide oversight and any necessary supervision or screening (background checks, etc.) for this experience.

Procedures for Both Options

1. At least two weeks before the beginning of each semester, students must submit a written proposal to the principal, via email. Late proposals will not be considered. Proposals must describe the following:

a. the main purpose of and goals for the program

b. the work that the student will be doing weekly to achieve these goals (include the website link for online classes)

c. the number of hours per week that the student will be participating in the program

2. Students have two days to resubmit proposals that have been denied.

Guidelines for Both Options

1. Credit will not be granted for work completed before a proposal is approved.

2. Students will receive a grade of E, S, or U at the end of each quarter and semester.

3. Failure to make satisfactory progress in the first semester will disqualify the student from participating in these programs during the second semester.

4. Students may only request approval for one semester at a time.

Dialectic Speech Meet

The following is information for the Dialectic Speech Meet for the 7 th -9 th grade students. Most of the work and grading is done during English class. For the final meet onwards, the students will perform their pieces with students from other classes in the same category. That afternoon during 7 th period there will be an assembly to hear the top performances from each category.

• Mid-December – information goes home
• Mid-January – Selections are due
• Toward the end of January – Piece is presented for a grade
• Beginning of February – Speech Meet

Dialectic Speech Meet Guidelines Dialectic Speech Meet Judge’s Form Dialectic Speech Meet Selection Ideas

Rhetoric Speech Meet

The following is information for the upcoming Rhetoric Speech Meet for the 10 th -12 th grade students. Please note a few differences between the Dialectic Speech Meet of the 7 th -9 th graders and the Rhetoric Speech Meet:

• Poetry must be through the Poetry Out Loud program.
• Readers Theater and the Original Oratory categories are allowed.
• Children’s books and plays are allowed as sources for material.
• There is no memory check. Pieces will be presented once in class for a grade, and once at the meet for a test grade.
• Mid-September – Information goes home.
• Beginning of October – Selections are due.
• Mid-October – The piece is presented for a memory grade.
• Beginning of November– Speech Meet

Guidelines Judging Form Selection Ideas

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