Even though fantasy is a genre that students love to write in, they rarely get the opportunity to write fantasy stories in school. It’s time to disrupt the status quo in writing instruction and raise fantasy writing to the status of a “must write” genre for children in elementary and middle schools.
Writing Fantasy Helps Children Develop Their Creativity and Imagination
In the United States, children in Grades K–12 are experiencing a decades-long “creativity crisis” (Bronson & Merryman, 2010; Kim, 2016). What accounts for this crisis? Since the 1990s, school curricula have become more and more standardized, a change driven to a large degree by the pressures caused by testing. And as curricula have become more standardized, there is less and less time for play-centered activities in schools. This is a problem because play is “one of the driving engines of child development” and “encourages flexible, imaginative, out-of-the-box thinking” (Strauss, 2019).
More and more, the successful futures we want for children depend on their having imaginative and creative skills.
That students are less creative has profound implications for their lives and for the world. More and more, the successful futures we want for children depend on their having imaginative and creative skills.
How should schools respond to the creativity crisis? They must engage children in activities that give them the opportunity to exercise their creativity and imagination—such as writing fantasy. When they write fantasy stories, students create what psychologists call paracosms, or detailed imaginary worlds. Another term used when someone creates a paracosm is worldplay (emphasis added). Research has shown links between childhood worldplay and adult artistic achievement, as well as creative success in the sciences and social sciences (Gopnik, 2018; Root-Bernstein, 2009).
Fantasy is a Highly Engaging Genre to Write
It’s not a secret. When you give students the opportunity to choose their own genre to write in, many of them will write fantasy stories because:
- Many children enjoy reading fantasy, as well as watching it on television and in the movies, and want to write it themselves.
- Since play is such an important way that children learn and experience the world, they’re excited by types of writing that feel playful.
- Writing fantasy gives students a safe space—and the tools they need—to explore ideas and themes that are important to them.
- Since children are incredibly imaginative, they are naturally drawn to writing fantasy.
- Writing fantasy is fun!
When students are highly engaged in a learning activity, it’s much more likely they’ll retain what they learn (Keene, 2018). Because students are so engaged when they write fantasy, it’s more likely they will learn the following writing and creativity skills and reapply them in the future:
- Students learn about the qualities of good writing: focus, structure, detail, voice, and conventions.
- Students learn strategies for navigating each stage of the writing process, such as how to choose topics wisely, plan a piece of writing, revise and edit, and more.
- As they engage in worldplay, students exercise and develop their creativity skills.
Fantasy Writing Helps Students With Social-Emotional Learning
Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been an important element of students’ education for some time. Studies have shown that students who participate in SEL programs have better attitudes towards themselves and others, better classroom behavior, and increased academic performance (CASEL, 2022).
When students write fantasy, they gain skill with one of SEL’s most important goals: developing empathy for others. How? When students write fantasy stories, they create characters different than themselves. These characters may be human— or other kind of beings or creatures—and they live in different circumstances than the student who creates them. To write their stories, students have to “get inside” their characters and figure out how they experience their world, how they feel about it, and what makes them tick. This work is, by definition, practice with empathy—the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, to walk in another’s shoes.
Fantasy Writing Helps Students Meet Writing Standards
You live in the real world (no pun intended), a world in which your job is to help your students meet the writing standards. Can teaching fantasy writing help you do this?
Of course it can! If there’s a set of state standards in the United States (or in another country) that doesn’t say students should learn how to write narratives, I haven’t seen it. You can meet the narrative standards by studying any genre of narrative— including fantasy.
For example, consider New York State’s Next Generation ELA Standards and the narrative writing standards they contain (New York State Education Department et al., 2017). For first graders, the narrative writing standard (1W3) includes “writing narratives which recount real or imagined experiences or events or a short sequence of events,” and for sixth graders, Standard 6W3 is to “write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective techniques, descriptive details and sequencing.”
First, let’s give kudos to New York State for including imagined narratives in their standards! And then let’s note what students are expected to learn about writing narratives in these standards; for example, first graders are expected to learn to “recount” an event or a “short sequence of events” and that sixth graders are expected to learn how to use “descriptive details and sequencing.” At the very minimum, students can—and will—learn to do these things when they write fantasy stories.
Fantasy Writing is a Joy to Teach
While most of the reasons for teaching writing are about why it’s important for students, there’s a lot in it for you, too. Mainly this: when students are highly engaged in meaningful learning, it’s so much more enjoyable to teach them. I promise you that when you launch a study of fantasy writing with your students, you’ll not only be thrilled to see them develop their creativity and writing skills—you’ll have fun, too!
Read about how to teach fantasy writing in my book, Teaching Fantasy Writing K-6: Lessons that Inspire Student Engagement and Creativity. The book contains fantasy writing units for Grades K–1, 2–3 and 4–6, each of which contain craft and process lessons that will help students write fantasy stories.
References:
Bronson, P., & Merryman, A. (2010). The creativity crisis. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/creativity-crisis-74665
CASEL [Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning]. (2022). What does the research say? https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-does-the-research-say/
Gopnik, A. (2018). Imaginary worlds of childhood. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/imaginary-worlds-of-childhood-1537454347
Keene, E. (2018). Engaging children: Igniting a drive for deeper learning K–8. Heinemann.
Kim, K. H. (2016). The creativity challenge: How we can recapture American innovation. Prometheus Books.
New York State Education Department [NYSED], Association Center for Best Practices, and Council of Chief State School Officers. (2017). New York State Next Generation English Language Arts Standards. http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/new-york-state- next-generation-english-language-arts-learning-standards
Root-Bernstein, M. (2009). Imaginary worldplay as an indicator of creative giftedness. In Shavinina, L. (Ed.), International Handbook on Giftedness (pp. 599–616). Springer.
