5月10日～14日，是常青藤小学1～4年级的创意写作周。创意写作聚焦情节、角色、主题和故事背景，在学生的英文书写训练基础之上，着重于想象力和创新性的培养。常青藤小学各年级学生分别就“动物”、“冒险故事”、“改变世界的发明”和“史前时代”四大主题勾画轮廓、草拟细节、书写故事，并于周五进行了汇报展示。以下为常青藤小学部英语组组长Mr. Damen对本次创意写作周的详细叙述——

What is Creative Writing?

什么是创意写作？

What is creative writing? This is the question students pondered over the last week at Shanghai Ivy. Creative writing is a style of writing that focuses heavily on imagination and out-of-the-box way of looking at the world. This style of writing is very important for young writers to learn as it lets them show off their own individual way of seeing the world. 

The most important parts of creative writing are：

· the plot (what happens in the story)

· characters (who are in the story)

· theme (what is the story about) 

· setting (where does the story happen)

The Themes of Writing

各年级写作主题

Over the last week, students learned about all of these important parts so that they could create their own piece of creative writing to show the Shanghai Ivy community. The students were then set to the task of writing their own story based off of the prompt given to each year.  

Year 1：Animal stories

Year 2：An adventure to a different place

Year 3：An invention to change the world

Year 4 ：Living in prehistoric times

These themes were selected based off of the material from their normal English classes, so that the students could show what they had learned and understood from their lessons.

Creative writing isn’t just the parts of the story however, and students had to learn how to create a story from the ground up. Students learned how to make an outline of a story, add details to make a first draft, self-correct for errors, and use all of this to create a final draft. Learning this organization helps students create stories not only for creative writing, but in other styles of writing as well.

The Creative Writing

Exhibition

创意写作展示

The final point of Creative Writing Week was showing off the students’ hard work in the Creative Writing Exhibition. Presenting and displaying the stories around the gym, students were able to feel the accomplishment of seeing a story created from idea to fruition. Students can use this experience to continue their writing journey for the rest of their life.