Poems from the English Class 1998

We did this creative writing activity in our team-teaching class. We usually use the ACTIVITIES pages of the textbook, Windmill ENGLISH COURSE II, for our Team Teaching.

For Lesson 7, the activity was to write poems. But it's really hard to write poems without any clues. So, we tried some different ways to start writing poems.

First, we showed a picture( TERRASSE A SAINT-ADRESSE; Monet ), and asked questions like, " What color can you see in the picture?" or, "What sound can you hear in the picture?" Students had to write one word on a slip of paper each time and write a poem with the words, using pattern sentences. Then we did pronounciation games and listened to music to review the pronounciation. At last, they started writing their poems. The teachers made poems to show the students examples and then told them to begin by choosing rhyming words. Of course most students took a lot of time to finish their poems but they made poems all by themselves!! The teachers just walked around the class, encouraging them.

We also thought it was useless to only write poems and hand them in. Poems should be read out. Students should have a chance to listen to the others' poems, not just read them. At first we were afraid. Because we had never asked the students to read out the poems in front of others. And they didn't seem to want to read out their poems. So, we divided them into four groups and told them to read their poems only in each group. Each student had an evaluation card, so they had to listen carefully. Besides that, they had other groups in the same room, so they needed to read louder and pay more attention to listen. We were surprised. They did an excellent job. In one of the groups, they clapped after each performance, even though we didn't tell them to do so. Usually, boys were reluctant to do anything. But in the activity, we could hear the boys using loud voice. We, teachers, were just sitting in the middle of the classroom, watching them. We felt it was successful.

We decided to make a book of poems by the students and to put them on our school page. Unfortunately, our students didn't appreciate what they did, or how well they did in this creative writing class. We hope you can enjoy the students' poems and encourage them. We would like to hear other opinions or impressions on these poems. Send your e-mail to our students!!