spring arrived, or: stephen is an interesting guy
Today my friend Stephen sidled up to me and asked me two write two lines of poetry, each one beginning with "Spring arrived, as quiet as..."
He's an odd chap, half-friend and half-random talky person I met in class, but he's pretty awesome. I quickly scrawled down without much inspiration:
Spring arrived, as quiet as cherry blossoms falling.
Spring arrived, as quiet as mid-April rain.
"Pretty bog-standard," he said, because Stephen is one of those people who can insult people not exactly on purpose, just because he doesn't put much thought into things that aren't in his immediate intellectual zone. He continued: "Lately they've started a new way of teaching primary school kids to write called the 'Process Approach'. They give kids a prompt and tell them they can fill it in with whatever they like. Over the last couple of decades, teaching methods haven't done much for the creativity of kids and it shows: literacy in Britain is appalling."
"OK," I said, wondering where he was going with this.
"My mum teaches a Year Two class. Six- and seven-year-olds. They got the 'spring arrived' prompt and this is what they did with it."
And then he gave me some genuine extracts from a class of local kids writing poetry with every line beginning the same way. HOLY CRAP.
First poem:
Spring arrived, as quiet as a balloon floating into the sky.
Spring arrived, as quiet as a sun flower opening.
Spring arrived, as quiet as a fish swimming in a pond.
Second poem:
Spring arrived, as quiet as a lighthouse flashing its light.
Spring arrived, as quiet as a book opening.
Spring arrived, as quiet as people sleeping in bed.
My personal favourite:
Spring arrived, as quiet as an octopus sneezing underwater.
And there were more. Lots more. And they were all brilliant, better than mine. And written by six-year-olds! Fantastic. I just felt like sharing.
By the way... most of Stephen's conversation was paraphrased for effect. XD Everyone should have a friend like Stephen, honestly!
He's an odd chap, half-friend and half-random talky person I met in class, but he's pretty awesome. I quickly scrawled down without much inspiration:
Spring arrived, as quiet as cherry blossoms falling.
Spring arrived, as quiet as mid-April rain.
"Pretty bog-standard," he said, because Stephen is one of those people who can insult people not exactly on purpose, just because he doesn't put much thought into things that aren't in his immediate intellectual zone. He continued: "Lately they've started a new way of teaching primary school kids to write called the 'Process Approach'. They give kids a prompt and tell them they can fill it in with whatever they like. Over the last couple of decades, teaching methods haven't done much for the creativity of kids and it shows: literacy in Britain is appalling."
"OK," I said, wondering where he was going with this.
"My mum teaches a Year Two class. Six- and seven-year-olds. They got the 'spring arrived' prompt and this is what they did with it."
And then he gave me some genuine extracts from a class of local kids writing poetry with every line beginning the same way. HOLY CRAP.
First poem:
Spring arrived, as quiet as a balloon floating into the sky.
Spring arrived, as quiet as a sun flower opening.
Spring arrived, as quiet as a fish swimming in a pond.
Second poem:
Spring arrived, as quiet as a lighthouse flashing its light.
Spring arrived, as quiet as a book opening.
Spring arrived, as quiet as people sleeping in bed.
My personal favourite:
Spring arrived, as quiet as an octopus sneezing underwater.
And there were more. Lots more. And they were all brilliant, better than mine. And written by six-year-olds! Fantastic. I just felt like sharing.
By the way... most of Stephen's conversation was paraphrased for effect. XD Everyone should have a friend like Stephen, honestly!