Creative Writing
Upper Merion Area High School
Course Objectives:
Students will practice the art of creative writing through a comprehensive investigation of
techniques, revision, and masters of the craft. Students will engage in the full writing
process from vision to revision and engage in critical dialogue with peers about their own
writing.
Course Activities:
Each unit will feature a concept and model stories or poems with follow-up tasks designed
to reinforce concepts and engage the learners. Also, each week the class will “workshop”
one student’s story, offering critical feedback in both written and verbal formats.
Curriculum Overview:
Concept Module One: The Elements of Fiction
Concept Module Two: The “Write” Style: From Direct to Effusive
Concept Module Three: The Art of the Re-Write: Revision is RE-Vision
Concept Module Four: Conflict and Resolution
Concept Module Five: The Importance of Place: Setting the Scene
Concept Module Six: Tonality and Diction: Finding the Word
Concept Module Seven: Character and Perspective
Concept Module Eight: Structure and Dialogue
Concept Module Nine: The Importance of Place: Setting the Scene
Concept Module Ten: Introduction to Poetry
Concept Module Eleven: Breaking the Line: Structure and Sound
Concept Module Twelve: Image Conscious: Creating Sense
The course will “spiral” around these concept modules. They will be introduced in a
reasonable sequence and then re-visited throughout the course. Students will engage with
these unit concepts as they write their own stories and poems and as they offer critical
feedback to peers’ stories (and those of the professional writers that we study).
Literary Models
“A Very Short Story” by Ernest Hemingway
“The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe
Excerpts from The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
“Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird” by Toni Cade Bambara
“Araby” by James Joyce
“The Lady or the Tiger” by Frank Stockton
“The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell
“Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor
“A&P” by John Updike
“The Interlopers” by Saki
“The Cop and the Anthem” by O. Henry
“The Hair” by Joyce Carol Oates
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber
“Quitters, Inc.” or “The Jaunt” by Stephen King
--other stories as appropriate to concept reinforcement
Selected poems by: Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens, Maya Angelou, Robert
Frost, Robert Burns, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, e. e. cummings, William Carlos
Williams, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, and others as appropriate to concept reinforcement
Relevant Tasks:
Workshop Stories: Students will write their own stories based on relevant understandings
of short fiction and poetry. They will have had the opportunity to analyze models before
crafting their own stories. Students will receive feedback from peers and teacher and then
revise their stories. W.11-12.3, W.11-12.4, W.11-12.5
Blogs and Journals: Students will respond in blogs to prompts designed to reinforce
relevant concepts. Blogs are a safe forum where students can take risks with writing that
are available for peer review. Students will keep journals where they can write in a variety
of modes to sharpen and hone techniques. W.11-12.6
Reading Model Tasks: Students will engage in discussion of model readings. Students will
respond in writing to questions relevant to concepts presented in model readings. Students
will investigate vocabulary in context and keep a vocabulary journal. RL.11-12.2, RL.11-12.3,
RL.11-12.4, RL.11-12.5, RL.11-12.6
Common Core Standards-Aligned Curriculum
This elective course extends and refines students’ writing abilities across and within
Common Core Standards introduced in English classes. While the enrichment is largely
focused on creative writing applications, the course emphasizes writing for PURPOSE with
awareness of AUDIENCE. Students also write and read across diverse models of writing
types and styles, including but not limited to:
 Narrative
 Epistolary
 Memoir
 Historical
 Persuasive
 Analytical
Common Core Writing Standards
Text Types and Purposes
W.11-12.3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, wellchosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
◦
Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation and its
significance, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or
characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events.
◦
Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines,
to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
◦
Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a
coherent whole and build toward a particular tone and outcome (e.g., a sense of mystery,
suspense, growth, or resolution).
◦
Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of
the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.
◦
Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on what is experienced, observed, or resolved
over the course of the narrative.
Production and Distribution of Writing
W.11-12.4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are
appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in
standards 1–3 above.)
W.11-12.5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new
approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.
W.11-12.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared
writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.
Common Core Reading Standards
Key Ideas and Details
RL.11-12.2. Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the
course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account;
provide an objective summary of the text.
RL.11-12.3. Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a
story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and
developed).
Craft and Structure
RL.11-12.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and
connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words
with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as
well as other authors.)
RL.11-12.5. Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the
choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its
overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
RL.11-12.6. Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in
a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement).