Activity

1. Give students five sticky notes each.
2. Students have three minutes to hunt around the playground or classroom for everyday objects to describe, ideally using similes and metaphors.
3. They then write their description on the sticky note and stick it to the object.
4. E.g. ‘the tree is a tall skyscraper touching the sky’, ‘the sink is an empty swimming pool’.
5. After all the sticky notes have been placed, students move around the space reading all the descriptions and collecting five notes each (but not their own!).
6. Students then turn their collected descriptions into a five-sentence poem about the space, and share it with a partner.

Reflection

• How did you feel using someone else’s ideas?

Go Further

Hold a class poetry slam where students perform their poems. You could also expand this to other types of figurative language, linking to what the class is learning in literacy – e.g. personification, hyperbole, alliteration etc.

Persistent: Daring to be Different

This activity encourages students to experience and use ideas that are not their own, building self-confidence to take risks in their creativity.