Words and Music Workshop

Altdorf 10.4.2010

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The Songs

All the songs can be downloaded as a PDF and as an editable Word file.

To Start With

Some basic considerations

Many of you will not have done much of this before. For this reason it may a good idea to work with a few basic concepts:

1. If you want to write for yourself, keep a notebook or a box for interesting words and phrases. I call this the “Bits Box”. Then, when you have time, you can “doodle”, i.e. play around with the Bits and perhaps use them with some of the ideas below. There is no reason why your pupils should not keep a “Bits Box” or perhaps simply a “Words Box”.
2. Generally I don’t encourage students and learners to work with rhyme, because it can make a text sound silly, corny or just strange – and unpoetic. However, if you use creative writing techniques with songs, you may need rhymes. For this I would hang up a large sheet of paper, the “Rhyme Poster”, which learners can write rhyming words on when they come across them, for example in music they listen to. (How much you want to insist on “clean” rhymes is up to you; I feel, personally, they are quite important…).
3. Creative Writing is very much like Art, and in many school buildings you hang up the drawings and paintings that the children have made. You can do this with the written work of the pupils too, in a “Writing Gallery”, which is why it is important to make what the pupils write look interesting with coloured pens, various types, colours and sizes paper, etc. You can, of course also stick them all on a roll of brown paper. This has the advantage that the students can see, literally, how far they can get.
4. Creative Writing is not a free-for-all, where anything goes. In fact you can practice grammar and vocabulary quite successfully, if you work with the students on what they have done. They should realise that what they write can always be improved; there is no such thing as the definitive flash of genius. So: work with them on their language and encourage them from time to time, to look up words in the dictionary.
5. Much of what we do in writing needs to sound (not just to look) good too. Encourage the children to read their own work aloud and to make it a good presentation with lively delivery and good clear pronunciation. This will be good for their presentation skills in general.
6. Very often working on your own can be frustrating because you may not have very much language, and/or because you feel very insecure about your imagination and creativity. Working in pairs or in small groups is a good idea as this allows you to pool your ideas and share the glory (as well as, let’s face it, blame other group members when things don’t work out).
7. Rules for certain forms of writing and for what to write and how are not hewn in stone. Better a good poem with a bit of licence in the composition than a weak text resulting from instructions followed slavishly.

A few important CWRs (Creative Writing Rules)

1. It doesn’t have to be true
2. It doesn’t have to be clever
3. It doesn’t have to have a Message
4. It doesn’t have to rhyme

Activities

Names and meanings

Aim:

• to get to know one another.
• making up things

1. Fold the card in half parallel to the long side
2. On one side write your name (as for a name card)
3. Think of a story connected with your name or give it a meaning; the meaning/story should be fanciful and/or invented (Creative Writing Rules a) and b))
4. Briefly tell the group about your name and the made-up facts connected with it
5. Put up the card in front of you

Acrostic

Aim:

• to get to know one another
• vocabulary development

1. Write your name vertically on a piece of paper.
2. Use a dictionary to find words that start with the letters you’ve written vertically spelling out your name. (Ideally make it about yourself)
3. Now pick the name card of another member of the group and write an acrostic about that person.
4. Write it out next to the acrostic your partner has written about her/himself.

Alternatives:

Telestic:      the last letters of the line spell the name

Mesostic:    the middle letter (this can be handled very loosely depending on the level of the learners) spell the name (a little like a crossword)

Painting pictures with words

Wordshapes

This can be done by beginners.

1. Brainstorm a number of concrete objects, e.g. from the vocabulary of a language textbook.
2. Find a way in which the word can be made to represent the object. This can be done by

• writing the word repeatedly in the outline of the object
• writing the word once in the shape of the object
• writing the word repeatedly along the outline of the object.

Possible objects:

apple, bicycle, bottle, car, chair, cloud, glasses, hat, key, shoe, etc.

Concrete poems

Concrete poems represent a concept. They can use the same basic techniques as Wordshapes but you may go a bit further here. They usually work quite well with abstract concepts.

       L O       V E

L O V E   L O V E

   L O V E Y O U L O V E

     L O V E L O V E L

       L O V E L O V

         L O V E L

           L O V

             L

Possible concepts

cold, hate, love, noise, pain, patience, silence, speed, etc.

Altar poems

They are called because they were often prayers poems printed in the shape of an altar. In that way they are like Wordshapes but the shape is not formed by the word itself but by statements about the object. (The example is “Wings of Eros”)

1. Decide on an object that is easy to draw.
2. Write a number of statements about the object; it can even be a story.
3. Write the statements or the story down in the way you did when we did the Wordshapes.

Calligrams

They represent the object or experience the poem is about. Two good, but rather complex examples are “40-Love” by Roger McGough and Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Il pleut”.

1. Choose a word or concept that is associated with a particular experience.
2. Try to draw how this would work for a reader.
3. Fit the word or words into this shape.

For instance a sentence like “The water runs down the plughole” could be written in a spiral to represent the water running down the plughole, or “I am losing my memory” could be written in ever lighter grey colour to represent the weakening of the memory.

Dialogue writing

Aim:

• write an oral exchange together with a partner (written conversation practice).
• We work in pairs

1. Start by writing a single word at the top of the page. This is the opening of a dialogue.
2. Swap your piece of paper with your partner and write a response to the opening word. The response is in two words.
3. Swap back and write a response to the two words in three words
4. Continue until you and your partner have both reached seven words. You can stop here if time is short.
5. Otherwise continue writing responses consisting of one word less than the previous line until you finish the conversation with one word.

Working in pairs/groups with strips of paper

Pantoum

Aim:

write a poem with a partner

We work first in groups of four and then in pairs

1. First find a topic that you would obsess about (something that goes around in your head time and time again); the pupils should come up with these by themselves.
2. In groups of four brainstorm 8 to 12 sentences or thoughts, which each participant writes down on her/his piece of paper in a way that the individual strips can be cut apart afterwards.
3. Now two partners order their strips into pantoum form (see below) and stick the strips down on a larger piece of (coloured) paper.
4. Afterwards compare the two versions (using the same statements!) and see in what way they create a different impression by being in different sequence.

Themes we used:

getting ready for a holiday (packing)

in-laws coming to visit

missing your keys

new class about to start

people smoking in a restaurant while you are eating

teacher-parents conference

waiting for someone

Themes the pupils might use:

being late for something

things to tell your parents why you are late

waiting for a phonecall from a possible girl(boyfriend)

watching a football team lose or win

For the Pantoum form click here

City Poem

This poem is based on a poem by Lois Lenske, but simplified to make it accessible to language learners. The lines can also be made into a song with the students coming up with a tune, or a rap with students providing the beats.

Aim:

• guided composition of poems,
• perhaps working with rhymes

The attached text can be shortened, reordered, cut into smaller pieces, have the rhymes taken out, etc

1. Hand out the poem, either already in strips or for the pupils to cup up.
2. Ask them to find ways in which they can order the strips, e.g. thematically, how the lines start, by rhymes
3. Remind them of different rhyming patterns (aa bb or ab ab or ab ba)

Short poems

Haikus and Tankas

These are short unrhymed poems, originally from Japan. They depend on syllable counting.

Haiku:        3 lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables

Tanka:        5 lines : 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables, (like Haiku), 7 syllables, 7 syllables

Haikus traditionally have a reference to time and one to a plant, and insect or to children. This could be done by providing two columns, one with time references and one with words about plants, insects and children. The pupils then write the haiku with one word from the two columns.

time references	insect, plant, child references
April autumn day days of the week June March May month morning night noon spring summer week winter etc	ant bee boy/s bush child/children daisy fly girl/s grass pupil/s rose spider tree tulip wasp etc

Cinquain “Consequences”

Cinquains are short poems invented by American poet Adelaide Crapsey in the 1920s. The work with a syllable count too:

5 lines: 2 syllables, 4 syllables, 6 syllables, 8 syllables, 2 syllables

You need a piece of paper per student:

1. The first person writes down a reference to a person or a name in 2 syllables, folds the paper, then passes it on. 
2. the second writes adjectives about a person (4 syllables) folds the paper, then passes it on.  
3. the third writes where something is happening/the person does something (6 syllables),  folds the paper, then passes it on. 
4. the fourth writes what the person in line 1 is doing/does/did, folds the paper, then passes it on.   
5. the fifth writes a mini-comment in two syllables. (variant: the fourth writer can use the last two lines to say what happened/was done) The paper is passed on once more
6. The last person unfolds the paper and writes a title.

Story telling

She Sat under the Lilacs

This song can be used as a jigsaw reading (the lines cut up and the pupils reorder them to tell the story.

The rhymes can all be left out and the pupils try to fill them in from the Rhyme Poster.

The pupils make up the story all by themselves

1. She sat under the lilacs and played her guitar, …

                   Chorus:       Um ching-a ching-a, um ching-a ching-a, um ching, ching, ching.

2. He sat down beside her and smoked his cigar.
3. He said that he loved her but oh, how he lied. 
4. She said she believed him but oh, how she sighed. 
5. They were to be married but she up and died. 
6. He went to her funeral but just for the ride. 
7. He sat on her tombstone and laughed till he cried.
8. The tombstone fell on him and squish-squash he died
9. She went to heaven and flip-flip she flied. 
10. He went the other way and frizzled and fried. 
11. The moral of this story is: don’t tell a lie.   

How Doondari Made the World

Use the cues from the Fulani Creation Myth.

The pupils try to complete the story in writing

Then they read it out loud. The text should sound “good”.