Another Potion for Creative Writing!

In this post, I shall introduce another Creative Writing lesson I have conducted with different groups of students. Similar to the previous post, I used a poem as the starting point. However, in this exercise, the students did not write a poem. Instead, I wanted them to write a topic on a visit to a carnival, albeit an unusual one.

Poem and Picture

Firstly, I introduced the poem, "The Painted Jungle" by A Holden, to the students. The poem was published in "Off to School: Poems for the Playground", compiled by Tony Bradman.

Picture from https://www.amazon.com/Off-School-Playground-Picture-Anthology/dp/0750021500

Poem taken from "Off to School: Poems for the Playground", Compiled by Tony Bradman

However, I did so through a listening exercise. A sample of the listening exercise is shown below.

A sample of the Listening Task based on "The Painted Jungle"

After the students had finished their listening task, a copy of the original poem was given to them. They compared their own answers with the original poem and corrected their own mistakes, if any.

The Writing Process

After the Listening Task, I gave them the writing topic:

"Virtual Animal Carnival"

(Notice all the RHYMING ASSONANCE SOUND in the the title?)

Basically it was a description of their family visit to a carnival except that it was a Virtual Animal Safari! So this allowed the students to exercise their imagination while bringing in some animals' movement and the sound they had already learnt in their listening task.

At first, I let the students try it out on their own, to play with the idea and write. However, their attempt fell short of the expectation. As typical students, they started off with how the family got up in the morning, how they got themselves ready for the outing, how long they had to wait in the family cars, how they queue up to buy the entrance tickets. All of that took up two or more paragraphs. Below are some samples of "failed attempts".

Student A's Draft One

Student B's Draft One

Student C's Draft One

Therefore, I collected their works and quickly pressed the re-set button for them.

Once again, I brought their attention to the topic, and stressed that they had to place their focus on the virtual animal carnival, what they would see, hear, experience in the virtual world, NOT HOW THEY GOT TO THE PLACE! After that, the students proceeded with their second drafts.

In their second drafts, I began to focus on their grammatical accuracy (such as pronoun agreement, tenses and verb forms) and corrected their errors.

In their third drafts, I turned my attention to their sentence expression.

Some students took two drafts to arrive at a decent third, while some had to produce five drafts. Below are two samples of completed works.

Student A's Final Draft (3.1)

Student A's Final Draft (3.2)

Student B's Final Draft (5.1)

Student B's Final Draft (5.2)

Student B's Final Draft (5.3)

What I really admire is my students' willingness to work hard, to give their time and effort to improve their writing skills. Mind you, these aren't students from the top classes in their respective schools. They are learners who are humble and discerning enough to know that there is no short-cut to master the art of writing, except through writing itself.

Writing crystallises our thoughts.

To all my students, continue the good work you have already started.

Happy Writing!

#theme #CreativeWriting #Listening