Building Skills and Community in Writing Club
Why are similes and metaphors useful in creative writing?
“You get to share more feeling,” says Jordan, a fifth-grader at Furman L. Templeton Preparatory Academy. “I can express my imagination.”
Jordan is a member of Furman Templeton’s burgeoning writing club which, after launching through distance learning in the 2020-2021 school year, has grown from 10 members to 34. Every week, the club members come together to flex their creative muscles by writing short stories, poems, song lyrics, and acrostics — and engaging in brainstorming exercises that spark their imaginations.
“The students just love it,” says Kathy Benton, the school’s Intervention Coordinator. “They’re constantly asking, ‘When’s our next writing club?’ Writing is a point of difficulty for many of our students, and the club gives them the opportunity to formulate and fully explain their thoughts.”
Furman Templeton is the latest city school to partner with the nonprofit Writers in Baltimore Schools (WBS) to launch a writing club. Founded in 2008, WBS reaches 140 City Schools students annually with in-school, after-school, and summer creative writing experiences.