Writing Olympics

Most children innately love telling and writing stories, but sadly somewhere along the way writing becomes a chore and all the fun disappears. It doesn’t have to be that way; a great writing lesson should be collaborative, exciting, noisy, thought-provoking … the list goes on.

One way to inject some fun back into writing and engage even the most reluctant students is to turn writing into a game. Children love a bit of healthy competition and the excitement this breeds can produce some wonderful results.

Try running this Olympic-inspired writing lesson in your classroom.

What you need:

• A score card for each student
• pens
• paper

You could set up each of the seven events as a different station and divide the class into groups, or run each event as a whole class – whatever works best for you and your students.

Event 1

Give students 4 minutes to brainstorm as many ideas as they can for the following topic in groups: Winning.
Give each group 1 minute to decide on their best idea.

Scoring
1 point for each idea
5 bonus points to the student who contributed the best idea

Event 2

Write 10 nouns, 10 verbs and 5 challenging words on the whiteboard.
Ask students to pair up and give them 2 minutes to write a Sizzling Start using as many of the words as possible.

Scoring
1 point for each noun or verb used
5 points for each challenging word used

Event 3

Give students 3 minutes to brainstorm ideas using the Five + 1 Senses for the following topic in groups: Relay race.
Give students 5 minutes to write a tension scene individually.

Scoring
1 point for each sense used
5 bonus points for using 4 or more senses

View the next 4 steps in the Writing Olympics (plus downloadable game cards … perfect for laminating!) in Teacher Hub:   Writing Olympics Game Cards

Once students have completed all the events, share some top-scoring examples from each event with the whole class.

Finally, get students to work out their total scores and have an award ceremony for the bronze, silver and gold medal winners.

Let the games begin!