A few ideas to help you get started with injecting some creativity into your learning space and as ways to release students’ imaginative responses.

Try some immediate poetry writing in your classroom:

Getting Started

Single strip: give each student a strip of paper (use recycled to save paper), and ask them to think of a phrase or sentence to describe your theme eg. being stuck out alone at sea (this might complement the study of books currently on the curriculum such as ‘Life of Pi’ or ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’). You could use a stimulus, such as the sound of waves, birds or an image on the board to help them focus their ideas. Challenge them to use a metaphor, simile, expanded noun phrase, onomatopoeia etc. Working in groups, they put the strips together to make their own stanzas. Allow them time to swap and change the strips around to see what makes the best ‘flow’ or even a good juxtaposition. Then bring the whole class together with their stanzas to create a whole class poem.