Grades 5-12, with parental supervision
This website offers a free, unique, and engaging tool to inspire creative writing and poetry.
The idea here is to:
- Select a background picture from an array of beautiful, striking, and surprising images. (Parents, as always, should preview to determine suitability.)
- Drag-and-drop word tiles displayed below the background picture to create a short story or poem inspired by the image in the photograph.
- Edit the story or poem to create a satisfying literary work of any length.
This gadget is modeled after the magnetic word tiles that many people have on their refrigerators. As explained on the website, “The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.”
When you get to the site you’ll see a picture with word tiles below it. You can dive right in – or, if you would prefer some instruction on how to use this tool effectively, click on “Lesson Plans” on the horizontal menu bar at the top of the page, then click on the tutorial. Also, check out the lesson plans:
- Types of PIC-LITs – Get some basic tips along with ideas on how to use the word tiles to write a simple caption, a compound sentence, and a paragraph.
- Parts of Speech – Nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, and more with links to YouTube videos on how to use PIC-LITs for each.
- Poetry – Explore a series of “advanced” lesson plans on how to write poems – including the use of figurative languages such as metaphors, similes, allusion, personification, irony, imagery, and more.
You can post the finished work in the public gallery, save them in your own free account file, e-mail the results, or link to them on Facebook – a clever way to inspire the young writers at your house!
