Creative writing in the classroom

Writing is a "must" in any language lesson. Writing helps you think, organize your ideas, evaluate what you've thought and how you've said it. Nevertheless, writing is usually the most neglected skill in our curriculum. At best, we model sentences and then ask our students to write similar ones, exchanging a noun/verb/adjective here and there. Especially now - with the advent of  21st century skills and their emphasis on creative and critical thinking, we need to begin "Creative Writing" in our classes.
Writing poetry is an "easy" way to begin writing creatively -be it haikus, diamond poetry or other forms of  preset structures. Poetry stems from our emotions; does not necessitate strict  grammatical structure and employs  numerous adjectives.
Please go to Ian's blog: http://esldog.blogspot.com/
Read his suggestions for beginning writing poetry in the EFL classroom. It's marvelous and can be done from fifth grade up, for sure.
In addition,  I strongly suggest reading his Dear Aunty letters - they are hysterical!
I am indebted to the Britih Council for introducing me to Ian's blog.