Tired of the same old Halloween-themed TV shows, I've opted for a more engaging approach to infuse rigour and creativity in my ESL classes during the Halloween season. In this blog post, discover two creative writing activities that not only captivate students' imaginations but also provide a unique twist to traditional fairy tales. Whether it's the spooky season or any time of the year, these activities will spark creativity and enrich the learning experience in your ESL classes.
Fairy tales with a dark twist – creative writing idea around Halloween
In order to carry out this creative writing activity, learners will form teams of two or three students. Each team will choose a classic fairy tale from the following options: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs and Snow White. Do not worry if two or three teams are working on the same story as it is even more interesting to see the way different teams turn the same story into a dark fairy tale.
Students will complete the following steps:
They will read the classic fairy tale.
They will take note of the setting, initial situation (exposition), the characters’ personality and physical traits, and their actions. They will also create a timeline of the important events. Then, they will record the conflict situations and their resolution. They will also need to take note of the ending of the story.
Once they finished recording important plot elements, students will decide what aspects of the story they want to change in order to turn it into a dark fairy tale. For example, they can change the characters’ upbringing, their personality or physical traits. The innocent girl/victim/damsel in distress could become an evil and calculated persona who wants to marry the prince for his money. In the story of Cinderella, students may choose to turn the ball into a real nightmare where ghosts or evil spirits kidnap Cinderella, so the prince will descend into Hell to complete several trials to get her back. The students working on the story of the Three Little Pigs may turn the little pigs into ferocious animals, and the wolf could be the brave and intelligent father or mother who does everything to protect his/her family from the pigs. Of course, students can create a gloomy atmosphere by replacing the setting with a haunted castle, dark cellar or attic. In addition, they could show decay and create a gloomy, terrifying atmosphere by using imagery: hauling wolves at night, screams coming from the attic, floors screeching at night, withered flowers in the garden, heavy rain, bone-chilling cold and thick fog hovering over the castle/forest, so on and so forth.
Once learners have agreed on which elements they would like to alter in the original story, they can start writing their rough draft.
You can offer feedback on their first copy, or you can have the teams swap their work and offer constructive feedback on another team’s story. After the peer-review session, students should integrate the comments they received from others, revise, and edit their text to write the final version of their story.
Students publish their work. You may have each teams read their text to the class.
Fairy tales with a modern twist – creative writing idea during the year
Students will carry out this creative project the same way as the previous activity. However, instead of turning a classic fairy tale into a dark story, learners will need to adapt it and turn it into a modern fairy tale. After reading the story and taking notes of the important elements of the text, students may choose to replace the characters with teenagers who are struggling with different social issues. For instance, the ball room in the story of Cinderella could become a prom night or homecoming night, the prince or princess could be the rich spoiled teen who needs an important life lesson to learn, the three little pigs could become three brothers who are trying to successfully get through their senior year while fighting to stay away from bad influence represented by the wolf, which could be the symbol of drug use, toxic friendship or bad habits these teenagers are fighting to break. The possibilities are endless.
I hope these creative writing project ideas will help you to put a twist on your writing lessons around Halloween and all year round.
If you wish to incorporate these projects into your creative writing workshop, check out these time-saving resources that are available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store:
Happy teaching!
Kynga C.
