Teaching Creative Writing to Children by Using Storybooks as Learning Materials

 Teaching Creative Writing to Children by Using Storybooks as Learning Materials

Creative writing in children practices broader thinking and will certainly affect communication so that when speaking the selection of words spoken is quite good because it has been trained to write creatively. In terms of creative writing, the most relevant genre to learn is narrative. Because it involves both fiction and nonfiction elements in its structure, creation in stories should be done more often than other works. This is because narrative is one of the literary genres that children at a certain age start to be interested in.

Children begin to recognize narrative texts when listening to stories, tales and jokes from adults. Therefore, the use of fiction reading for children is very significant in terms of creative writing. According to Aktaş (2003) Creative writing is based on the purpose of creating a fictional world. Fiction is an art form that processes materials extracted from certain elements of the fictional world, including events, characters, setting, time, point of view, and narrator. In other words, the most suitable literary genres are stories, novels, and fairy tales. The basic element of a narrative text is events. If facts are taken from a narrative text, then there will be a lot of words.

The factor that contributes to children's low creative writing ability is that children tend to be less able to imagine, express ideas, and then put words into writing, children have not been able to string words into sentences and arrange them into a complete writing. If we help children to write creatively using storybooks by reading to them, their imagination will be wider and the longer they will be able to pour their imagination into creative writing.

The purpose of using fiction media is for children to assimilate visual understanding from shared reading activities so that they can develop ideas, information and ideas when writing together or independently. The way to use fiction media is to tell the story in front of the child. Storytelling when conducted with a very intimate approach will encourage the opening of broad thinking in children. With the storytelling method, children will listen attentively because it is very interesting for children. If creative writing exercises are given, children will be able to because the imagination in their brains is quite broad.

Creative writing learning must indeed be made as attractive as possible so that children are interested and feel happy when learning it, therefore learning media must also be adjusted. From the observations and explanations above, creative writing requires a broad imagination. The use of fictional media such as storybooks, novels, or fairy tales is the best way to learn creative writing in children. With storytelling techniques, children will illustrate the story in their minds and this is quite effective in developing their imagination. This is a simple way for educators to get children to put their imagination into creative writing by stringing words together and making good and correct sentences.

 

References

Kellogg, R. (1994). The psychology of writing. New York: Oxford University Press.

Morley, D. (2007). The Cambridge introduction to creative writing. Cambridge University Press.

 Nurjanah