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Creative Writing to Summarize, Review and Test

Alternative Ways to Ensure that Students are Learning

Aug 6, 2009 Lucille Lever

Test taking can be a learning process instead of a nerve-wracking experience for students. Multiple choice tests and cramming for exams are unnecessary.

After a mad rush to get the material completed, both the teacher and student have to face the testing stage of the learning process.

Checking the Progress of Learners

When teachers have completed a section of work and want to ensure that their students have understood the material, they inevitably give some kind of summarizing activity, quiz or test, either orally or in written form. The test serves not only to ascertain if the students have grasped the work, but also ensures that the teachers, themselves, have taught the subject adequately.

An alternative, kinder, and more effective way of testing is getting the students to undertake a project of creative writing to show that they have learned the material. This alternative kind of testing, shown in examples below, enables students to really absorb and study the texts so that they can present what they have learned to others.

Creative Writing Tasks Have Positive EffectsTeachers can give the students a creative task that will:

test their comprehension and new knowledge
reduce test anxiety
enable them to show true understanding of concepts
make the material become meaningful
help them internalize the information they have learned

Ideas for Creative Writing

Here are some ideas teachers can use to structure a test. Different activities can be chosen to suit any given topic in most fields of study. There are a variety of tasks to select from here, and teachers can add their myriad of ideas too. Students can choose from the options.

Write a diary entry through the eyes of one of the characters of a story (literature); historical character (history); a traveler to a particular part of the world (geography); a tiny person traveling through the body (biology).
Write a story for children. High-level students must simplify information and write a story about the subject, for young children. Younger students can write and illustrate their stories.
Write dialogs or a play. The students have to use the information they have learned about in a dialog or play setting.
Make a crossword puzzle and create clues using the material.
Write an article for a newspaper as if the person is still alive (a historical character, literary character) or a news event as if it is still current (testing history as if the event has just occurred).
Write a poem about the material. For example, write a poem about how the heart works, the limbs move, etc.
Create a comic strip format that will enable students to write about the material being tested in a cartoon format.

Teachers can brainstorm with their classes while giving some suggestions, and have the students come up with ideas too. Many minds are more creative than one – even if teachers have a large number of highly creative ideas of their own. And successful ideas from students can be added to teachers’ repertoire of questions for future tests and quizzes.

Tests like these can be fun and useful! Students can really learn through a process of creative presentations.

The copyright of the article Creative Writing to Summarize, Review and Test in Teacher Tips/Training is owned by Lucille Lever. Permission to republish Creative Writing to Summarize, Review and Test in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Creative Writing