Hello Fearless Ideas community!
Students returned virtually last Tuesday for the second week of our Zoom-In summer series program. We were so excited to see all their faces again!
Students started off with a creative exercise to come up with their internal "weather checks" for the day and describe their feelings in terms of weather. Some of the kids' responses included "a very sickly-foggy, misty afternoon with the clouds on the ground creating a stunning scenery" and "sunny with a chance of fog". A couple students also drew pictures to visually show their internal weather! It was wonderful to see the different ways that students chose to creatively express their weather checks.
We then moved onto the poetry-themed portion of our workshop: making book spin poems! Students were sent off on a scavenger hunt to find around 5-7 books with interesting titles to use for their poems. By stacking and rearranging our books, each student came up with their own unique, original book-spine poem. Everyone's end result was so creative when we shared around the group! Some of the poems included:
"Introduction to mysterious secrets of when worlds were very young"
"The story of evolution in 25 discoveries. Speak, Okinawa, this is the voice of the unsung losers at the center of the galaxy. Restart."
"Grand Canyon: the bad beginning, would you rather? Cinnamon moon, the slippery slope, the end."
In the middle school workshop, students additionally created a "word ladder" poem by listing five random words from one of the books they collected, and composing a poem with those words. This writing prompt was inspired by award-winning poet and writer Aracelis Girmay - you can find the original prompt here! We loved seeing all the innovative pieces students came up with:
"Inside death is life, and inside life is love"
"Inside joy is summer night and inside online learning is chaos and confusion"
"Inside a ripple is a song, inside the song is a bird, inside the bird is harmonic breathing, inside harmonic breathing is water, inside water is a swimmer, inside the swimmer is a symphony, inside the symphony is a heart, inside the heart is an odyssey, inside the odyssey is a coda, inside the coda is a rusted end, inside the end is a beginning, inside a beginning is a ripple"
It was amazing to see everyone's imaginations and writing style manifest in unique ways through this ladder writing prompt!
We ended our workshop for the day by going around the group, each sharing a line from our book-spine poems to construct a collective poem that represented all the students.
We are so excited to welcome students back for next week's theme! See you soon!
Created, Edited and Posted by Michelle, Fearless Ideas Summer Intern
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