Resources for teachers

This part of the blog contains summaries of the writing exercises and games we used in the four, two-hour sessions with class 14.

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.

Session two exercise: ‘Story Mountain’ stories

‘Story Mountain’ stories about Victorian children at work
Theme of the session: re-telling stories in my own words; creating an extended story using a model structure

Warm-up
Circle-time storytelling – ‘pass the story’. Participants stand in a circle and each person contributes one word of a story, going round the circle – making it up as they go along. This can also be a lead-in to paired writing exercises where pupils take turns to write a sentence or line of a poem or story.

Researching a story – taking notes
Notes are taken from reading a text stuck on the wall of the classroom. To adapt this exercise you could take notes by describing a place, or a part of the room, or by listening to a recording or watching a film.

This note taking exercise is done in groups.
Each group is given a text to find and asked to take a few one-word notes to remind themselves later. They can take notes onto the back of the index cards they will use for their stories. They are not given the source texts on their tables – this means that they have to rely on their notes when they devise their stories.

Devising a story – mime
Following the story mountain model, each group is first asked to devise a mime depicting an incident in the life of the child they are researching. For example, a chimney sweep. They use their notes as reminders for content and details, and use their imaginations to create a full story. The mimes are narrated by one child while the others act out the story. These can be performed to the whole class when they’re ready.

The reason for this exercise before writing the stories is to get children used to expanding their notes into a full narrative before being confronted with an unwritten story.

The story mountain
Story ‘a day in my life’ by a working child

First, draw a mountain with one main peak and several smaller ones on the board.
The story mountain builds up to its peak with a series of sentences describing context and events. The first and last phrases are given to ‘top and tail’ the story. Connectives are used to expand details. Model first draft (phrases underlined are given as frame):

1. This morning, I got up very early and went to the factory.

2. When I arrived it was very noisy and dirty because of all the machines.

3. I began to tie threads together where they had broken.

4. I tied threads together all day until my eyes hurt and my fingers were bleeding.

5. And that’s why I’m so exhausted.

Extension: second draft
The first draft can be extended by working with a thesaurus and/or dictionary and by adding extra detail. You can also take out the numbers and make it one continuous piece of prose:

Draft 2:
1. This morning, I got up very early and went to a big factory called a cotton mill.

2. When I arrived it was very noisy and polluted because of all the machines.

3. I began to tie threads together where they had broken, reaching in between the machines as they clattered up and down.

4. I tied threads together all day until my eyes hurt and my fingers were bleeding from the rough cotton and the fast-moving machines.

5. And that’s why I’m so exhausted.

Final story:
This morning, I got up very early and went to the big factory called a cotton mill. When I arrived it was very noisy and polluted because of all the machines. I began to tie threads together where they had broken, reaching in between the machines as they clattered up and down. I tied threads together all day until my eyes hurt and my fingers were bleeding from the rough cotton and the fast-moving machines. And that’s why I’m so exhausted.

Session three exercise: self-portrait as object

Self-Portrait as Object

This session is about using an object to imagine what it was like to go to school in Victorian times. Because it’s a self-portrait we’re writing it will be very personal and draw on our own experience of being a child and going to school.

We’ll begin by looking at some photos and a timetable of a school day to get an idea of what it was like going to school in Victorian times. Short class discussion.

Then, each child chooses / is given an object from the Victorian box. Circle time discussion to make sure we know what the objects are, initial detective work about their function etc.

Each child then mind maps ideas about their object, with questions to prompt them:

Points to mindmap or generate ideas:

Words to describe Object?
Colour? Material? Size?
Where it comes from?
Why it’s special?

Check back that everyone has a mind map of ideas and description.

Write a description of the object, where it came from etc.

Now: imagine that you are at school in the time the object was being used.

Underline the words in your description that you think could also describe you.

Write about yourself using these words. For example:

Self-Portrait As Slate and pencil

( * UNDERLINE = the words that I think could also describe me)

Where it comes from: a Victorian school room

Description: dark, grey, cold, heavy, hard, brittle.

Why special: It was used by children learning to write. They weren’t allowed paper so this was all they had to write on. You can write anything you think of with the pencil and rub it out afterwards with a damp cloth.

Self-portrait as slate and pencil
I was born in London, UK in 1830 and I was given my slate and pencil in 1837 — when I was 7 years old.

The slate was made of heavy, flat stone that is dark grey. It is brittle: it would break if you dropped it. I am delicate too because I am young and because my clothes are very thin. My family is quite poor and I don’t have a coat to protect me in winter.

The slate is clever because it can say anything at all – whatever you write on it. I am clever too: I have learnt to write and I love to write stories and poems on my slate. It is dark and cold, and I hate the dark, cold winter nights when there is only candlelight and gas lamps to light the houses and the streets. The slate is hard and I am hard too: I am tough to survive all the diseases, the hunger and cold that people live with in my family. Like my slate, sometimes I am filled with beautiful words and ideas, and sometimes I am sad and empty and I can’t learn anything because I’m so hungry. When I am naughty and the schoolmaster beats me, then I feel as dark and cold as the slate. When I am happy and daydreaming then I am as full of ideas as my slate pencil.

Fourth session plan and exercises

First session: summing up the project and preparing for assembly

The warm-up will include games to warm up the voice and think about being a performer – and being a good audience. Then:

1. Introduce the book and blog.

2. Children make name labels on luggage tags for the book – in which they have ‘travelled through time’.

3. Children decide on poems, stories and self-portraits to be read aloud in assembly. And on a mime to be performed: they can vote for these using the voting buttons if appropriate.

4. Practise in groups: each group makes a short presentation of one of the following:

a.an overall intro to the project, and introducing the book and the blog.
b. an intro to what it was like to be a poor child in 1840, a poverty poem and a ‘poor child’ poem
c. a bit of information about children at work and a mime
d. a bit of information about children at work and a story mountain story
e. a bit of information about Victorian schools and a self-portrait

5. Practise performances to the class. The class gives feedback on performances and readings – could be in the form of voting and/or suggestions for improvement.

6. If time left before assembly: work on decorating their name labels and front cover / title page / section headings of book.

**Assembly**

Second session (after assembly): class poem
My idea is that this session can include any of the exercises we have used before that you would like to, and that we put the results together into a class poem. A rough idea could be (the two parts could be in either order – whatever you prefer):

1. (30 minutes) Each child shows an object that they have brought in from home (or chosen from around the classroom) that they feel says something about them (or their school). They then follow the self-portrait model:
1. mind-map of description of the object
2. underline words that could also describe you
3. self-portrait using those words, and beginning with ‘My name is….’
These are ‘miniature’ self-portraits. Each child is given a line-limit of say four lines so that all their self-portraits can fit together into a long poem. We could do this by asking them to write on small slips of paper or cards.

2. (10 – 15 minutes) Whole class poem. based on the ‘what do the objects say’ model. Class mindmaps ideas for what different parts of the classroom say, e.g.

Our classroom door says ‘please come in, I’m lonely’, or ‘go away, we’re busy’, or ‘amazing things happen on the other side of me’. Class then votes on their favourite line and goes on to the next:
The floor of our classroom says …
The windows say …
The whiteboard says… / The desks / The chairs / The ceiling
?The teaching assistants! / ? The teacher!

ending ‘And class 14 says… ‘

3. The whole class poem can then be put together with all the individual self-portrait poems to make a detailed and personal self-portrait of the class and all its pupils.

4. I’d like to end with a discussion of the project, what everyone thought of it: what was hardest, what they are most proud of or enjoyed most etc. and ideas for what to do next.

Teachers

This category contains plans and examples of the exercises we used to write the work on this site.