First session writing exercises: ‘5 Senses’ and ‘list’ poems

Warm-up
Listening game – ‘Sound Maps’

Everyone lies down in a circle with their heads facing in and their eyes closed. They are encouraged to replicate the sounds they hear simultaneously: echoing the noises around you. Pupils can be asked to replicate the sounds all together or to call out what they can hear one at a time, going round the circle, still with their eyes closed.

Once their focus is honed, group is asked to name what they hear rather than replicate it: and in as descriptive a way as possible. E.g. instead of ‘car’ or ‘lorry’, ‘big, smelly, fume-expelling lorry’. If you like, write these down on a poetry wall or on the board and they can form the basis of a class poem about the surrounding sounds.

(If you want to make this an extended exercise as a basis for writing a poem: Teacher writes down the sounds on the board (or walls); a sound map of the surroundings is built up in this way. Collected sounds, names, and onomatopoeias can be worked on to give added effect. These can then be used to write group or individual poems).
Poem One: working on the five senses
These exercises free up the imagination and get children describing things in new and unusual ways.

Listen to the door…
Ask them to ‘listen’ to the inanimate objects in the classroom and get them talking:
What does an open door say?
e.g. ‘Come in!’ ‘Welcome’ ‘Look inside!’ ‘Pleased to meet you.’
What does a closed door say?
e.g. ‘Go away!’ ‘Danger!’ ‘I don’t want to see you.’ ‘I’ve got a secret.’ ‘Wait outside!’

5 senses game
This is to get children to describe things using all their senses. Ask the class for example what:

thinking sounds like? (the click clicking of keys on a bright blue keyboard at 3 in the morning in a quiet room at the top of a tall house)

sadness tastes like? (the bitter bite of an unripe sloe in a hedgerow in a dark lane with rubbish dumped in the ditches and smog spoiling the leaves.)

anger smells like? (burnt out cars by the roadside still smouldering from tyres and seats and peeling red paint even in the rain)

old age feels like? (the saltiest salty crisps drying up your tongue and making your eyes water when you eat them in the back of a crowded bus)

time looks like? (an enormous oak tree wisened and grey with age stooped on the brow of a dark hill in a forgotten country)

Then: take an abstract concept – loneliness, love, war, poverty – and get them to describe it with all the sensations in turn – in a longer session this can be their individual poem after the group poems above:

Love smells like… love feels like… love looks like… love sounds like… love tastes like…

To expand this exercise, get them revising their poems: ask them to add colour, action, size, location, fine detail – and even connectives – to their descriptions (e.g. ‘burnt out cars’ becomes ‘burnt out cars by the roadside still smouldering from tyres and seats and peeling red paint even in the rain.’

Poem two: list poem inspired by a photograph

Using a photograph as inspiration for a poem
Pass around selected photographs (or paintings) and ask children a series of questions about the images. They should write their answers down rather than give a verbal answer. Think of as many questions as possible – the more unusual the better. After 5 minutes stop them (although as with all writing exercises a 5 minute exercise can easily run for 15, so long as the participants don’t know).
Their answers to questions then become a bank of words and ideas that can form the basis of a poem or story.

At this point, if you’re going to go and use their notes as the basis for more extended writing, you can feedback to board and expand on key vocabulary (finding alternatives, giving definitions and introducing more ambitious words, for example: neglected, starving, malnourished, frightened, exhausted, worried, nervous, ragged, filthy, unhygienic etc). The board record can then act as a second source of words when the children write their poems.

List poem
To talk about the life and experiences of a person or group of people, this is an ‘anatomy’ list poem. Draw on notes taken from photographs (or on other research if you use this exercise in other contexts). Concrete things from the person’s environment or experience are used in imaginative ways to describe body parts, with the form:

my/his/her tongue is a…
his/her mouth is a…
his/her hair is a … etc and ending
…
but when (s)he smiles/laughs/speaks etc (s)he…

You can bring in other list items to give context (the year / season etc)
E.g.

Child Poverty, 1840

I am a poor child
My face is a starving ragged moon
My eyes are two pools of worried broken glass
My home is a malnourished nightmare
My tongue is a dried out rag
My hands are neglected straw scattered on the street
My mind is a nervous city at night in the freezing dark
My feet are exhausted travellers with no home to go to
My season is winter in 1840 and cold rain is falling
But when I speak I say please give me a home.

Another example – refugee poem:

Refugee

His tongue is a wheat ration
His mouth is a red cross well
His hair dried river courses
His skin filthy, bumpy roads
His laugh rainless thunder
His eyes empty pools
His feet countries with unpronounceable names
His hands rebel forces
His ears abandoned shelter
But when he smiles he’s trying to freeload off the state.