Writing About Our Favorite Place in Nature

What was tried in the classroom?

I teach for an online school, which means are students are accessing and completing their schoolwork while living anywhere in Washington. I teach Creative Writing for 11 & 12th graders. I was inspired by what I was learning from the modules and from the discussions with my fellow students to generate some writing prompts for my students to get in touch with nature and try to write from different perspectives.

How’d it go?

It went wonderfully! I gave my students writing prompt options and then we wrote silently for ten minutes. Afterwards, I asked for volunteers to share what they wrote–either I read it or they read it. We have a practice of doing this and then having a discussion about the ideas of the writing, as well as a gem of the writing skills themselves. I received many more submissions from these prompts when they later turned in their writing notebooks. Students really took to it. Some included photos of their favorite places or found a picture of an animal they were trying to write a story from.

While this was a small thing, I am planning on adding more content and ideas that I have gathered while enrolled in this course. I want to interweave more content and stories to assist students to examine the world around them, how it is changing, our impact, and what we can do. One of the biggest takeaways was to not lose hope.