A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the first series of reflections, written by children from my first batch of the creative writing programme. The idea of a reflective statement is something that I came to appreciate when I was teaching the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. While I was teaching, however, many students hated writing reflections because they had to write them. The checkbox needed to be ticked for the IB. Now, on the other hand, I find that most children enjoy taking this time out to think about how far they have come and how much they have learnt.
It’s a moment I enjoy too. Take a look at some of the work they’ve put together! All this is shared with their permission, of course!
This was a guided writing activity, inspired by a poem I read by Ken Nesbitt. Guided writing of this sort is something I especially enjoy facilitating at workshops because the results are always rewarding!
In Shreya’s poem, I was, first, drawn to the title. Of course the poem isn’t perfect, but there are so many lines I love! My favourites are probably ‘Fences act like keys’ and ‘Abuse isn’t in the dictionary’.
She was one of those who shared a story after Nalini Sorensen’s workshop, and, as Nalini said, I’m sure that someday soon, I’ll read a book with Shreya’s name on it as author!
This is just one of the list poems we wrote during the course because list poetry in its various forms is always fun. Reading and writing go together, so we begin by reading a handful of poems. I use one set of poems with adults and a whole different set with children. Of late, I’ve also been trying to do all the written assignments I set for the children I interact with, and it’s a wonderful experience! I enjoy the structure, the discipline and the sense of achievement I get when I finish what I set out to write.
Before we came to list poetry, we worked with narrative poetry and here’s one that made me chuckle! On the right is a snippet from Tanisha’s reflection. The ‘poetry phase’, as she calls it, is over. I’m waiting to read their stories!
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