I promised I'd find or create a laugh every class. Not sure if I laughed this morning, but just before class I got an idea: each person goes outside, collects two leaves, preferably leaves caught in mid-fall from the tree. Can't be crunchy ones, I told them. Back they came, with at least two leaves each.
Next: write one word on each leaf, a word not usually associated with leaves. What words are associated with leaves, someone asked. Not "boring" or "stupid activity" or "what is this BS" I said. I asked them to lay out all their leaves in the middle of each table (seven in the room, 38 students).
Now pretend you're a poet, I said, and put the words together somehow. Write the result in your journal. Which they did, a few groups offering their piece to the whole class. (I couldn't persuade the boys down in table 7 to share their piece, though. Should I COMMAND them to read theirs? I asked the class. Yes, command them, was the reply. I wouldn't do that, I said to the boys, their last chance to offer up their piece, which they didn't take.)
Now a journal entry, something about leaves or what we've been doing here or what you saw outside.
No laughs, then. But lots of good spirit and a gorgeous day, leaves ejecting all over the place.
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Compass
- Gerald Hill
- Gerald Hill's 7th poetry collection, Crooked at the Far End, appeared in 2020, from Radiant Press.
Compass
3 comments:
Can't be crunchy...
I used to say that about peanut butter. How things change.
For the leaves, now stored in a small box at the back of the room, change means a slow drying, the word shrinking on each one. The follow-up will be to pull a leaf each and write from its word.
that's a neat exercise.
create a laugh a day. that makes for some excellent days!
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