“Increasing creativity is now a priority – a driving force in the 21st century […] this requires us to have the necessary skills and imagination to envision the new” (Stadil & Tanggaard 2012/2014). As just quoted, in this century it is crucial to develop imagination as a starting point for being creative. For this reason, in the following post you will read about how Gianni Rodari’s creative writing exercises can help teachers strengthen their students’ imagination.
WHO IS GIANNI RODARI?
Gianni Rodari is an Italian writer of the 20th century famous for his children’s books. Rodari spent his entire career stressing the importance of fostering children’s imagination by actively involving them during the reading.
In one of his most famous books called The Grammar of Fantasy, the author presents some exercises that support imagination through creative writing.
CREATIVE WRITING: THE FANTASTIC BINOMIAL
One example of these exercises is called The Fantastic Binomial. This activity is really flexible so it can be easily adapted to any contexts, age levels and subjects/themes. As many other Rodari’s activities, it focuses on imagination and fun. In addition, according to how the teacher structures it, the task can be considered both as the starting/finishing point of a teaching unit and as a quicker brain break.
WHAT TO DO
Below you can find an example of how to develop Rodari’s activity in a class context. However, the following guidelines are really generic because it is important to adapt the activity to the needs of a specific class and context.
Guidelines: 1. Give each student two pieces of paper.
2. Ask the students to write on one of the pieces a word related to a theme chosen by the teacher (e.g. innovation). Collect all the words in a bag.
3. Ask the students to write on the other piece a word related to another theme chosen by the teacher (e.g. school). Collect all the words in another bag.
4. Each student picks one word from the first bag and one word from the second bag.
5. Each student has now to write a short/long story including the two words. At this point it is important to help students “play” with those two words letting them following their own imagination (If you are working with young writers, it would be helpful to give them some guidelines on how to build a story. However, it is important not to interfere on the creation of the content of the story).
6. All the stories are anonymous and once finished, they are collected by the teacher.
7. The teacher distributes the stories at random (one for each child) and ask the students to read and illustrate the story that they have picked.
8. Now all the new books are ready to be collected and stored in a class library where every student can easily and freely have access to them.
WHO IS GIANNI RODARI?
Gianni Rodari is an Italian writer of the 20th century famous for his children’s books. Rodari spent his entire career stressing the importance of fostering children’s imagination by actively involving them during the reading.
In one of his most famous books called The Grammar of Fantasy, the author presents some exercises that support imagination through creative writing.
CREATIVE WRITING: THE FANTASTIC BINOMIAL
One example of these exercises is called The Fantastic Binomial. This activity is really flexible so it can be easily adapted to any contexts, age levels and subjects/themes. As many other Rodari’s activities, it focuses on imagination and fun. In addition, according to how the teacher structures it, the task can be considered both as the starting/finishing point of a teaching unit and as a quicker brain break.
WHAT TO DO
Below you can find an example of how to develop Rodari’s activity in a class context. However, the following guidelines are really generic because it is important to adapt the activity to the needs of a specific class and context.
Guidelines: 1. Give each student two pieces of paper.
2. Ask the students to write on one of the pieces a word related to a theme chosen by the teacher (e.g. innovation). Collect all the words in a bag.
3. Ask the students to write on the other piece a word related to another theme chosen by the teacher (e.g. school). Collect all the words in another bag.
4. Each student picks one word from the first bag and one word from the second bag.
5. Each student has now to write a short/long story including the two words. At this point it is important to help students “play” with those two words letting them following their own imagination (If you are working with young writers, it would be helpful to give them some guidelines on how to build a story. However, it is important not to interfere on the creation of the content of the story).
6. All the stories are anonymous and once finished, they are collected by the teacher.
7. The teacher distributes the stories at random (one for each child) and ask the students to read and illustrate the story that they have picked.
8. Now all the new books are ready to be collected and stored in a class library where every student can easily and freely have access to them.