Some of the ideas that can be implemented in the classroom to be successful in terms of enriching the quality of your students' compositions and their interest and enthusiasm for writing itself.
You have taught the children composition. You have taught them the ground rules, all about organising ideas, developing a paragraph, working with a given outline and so on. You also find that (despite your efforts) in a class of forty, there are may be only 2 or 3 children who turn in beautiful, well thought out, rich-blooded compositions and you wonder at the other children and even begin to have doubts about your own prowess in the classroom. There is nothing “wrong” or unusual with the situation – the children are quite simply “stuck” for content. For example, you give the topic ‘Our Class Picnic’ and after a few desultory lines on where and when they went, a list of the things they ate, the games they played, they give the composition up (literally and metaphorically). They do not go into details of description which are the life of a piece of writing. The content is poor or lacking.
By ‘content’ I mean the details which explain, prove ,illustrate, expand, elaborate, and enlarge upon ideas, thoughts, opinions and/or facts the children may have on a given topic.
The most readily available sources for content are our senses. If you wake the children up to this fact, you will find a qualitative difference in their compositions and you will no longer hear plaintive cries of “Ma’am please give us another topic”, "Ma’am, composition is so-o-o boring”, or “I hate compositions because I never know what to write”. Make the children conscious of the fact that through the day we are seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. And through the night too, we feel (the warmth of the blanket, the cool breeze from the window, the hot air the fan circulates on summer nights, the sting of mosquitoes, and so much else.)
Most of us (and the children are no exception) take our sense impressions for granted and, more often than not, to such an extent that we are immune to the sense-details of sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and feelings. Given below are a few ideas /exercises which will help the children develop:
- An increased interest in the world around them
- A keener perception in terms of sense-details
- And increase in their descriptive vocabulary
- A storehouse rich in ideas and details from which to draw, depending upon the topics given.
- A completeness in compositions/creative writing work (in that there is no sketchiness/scantiness)
- A fresh and vigorous writing style
- An ability to put down matter pertinent to the given topic (most children get stuck for content and so tend to “pad” compositions with repetition and/or irrelevant matter)
- Readability in the writing (i.e. the composition becomes reader-oriented rather than “get it over and done with")
- An effectiveness in the writing in terms of the choice of words, 'punch’ and/or getting across thoughts, ideas, personal experiences without frustration.
- A confidence in their own abilities.
The first thing to do is to make collages – either five separate ones (one for each of the senses) or one very large one combining all the senses. Use these collages as a teaching aid to your introduction of these sense-detail exercises. If you don’t have the time to make these, divide your class into five groups and get each group to make one collage. You can, of course, always make your own AND ask these groups of children to make theirs.
Your introduction must give the children a well defined key to our sense organs. Even older children tend to “forget” so you have to “remind” them that:
- the EYES acquaint us with colour, dimension, size, shape/form, motion/movement, state/condition e.g. brightness, dullness, etc.
- the EARS distinguish for us one sound from another. We hear (if we care to listen) differences in volume, pitch, and tonal quality.
- the NOSE detects for us the various smells that are around us – ranging from soft delicate smells to dense, pungent odours; from the pleasant to the very unpleasant or even nauseating ones.
- the TONGUE differentiates for us textures and temperatures and of course, tastes from toothpaste to brackish water, from cough syrups to the wood and paint on the pencils we chew; from food to the plastic wrapper we sometimes tear off with our teeth.
- the SKIN distinguishes and help us identify whatever we can touch and feel. Through our skin we can appreciate and/or respond to temperatures, textures, solidity, and liquidity.
Your collages should have pictures showing the wide range of jobs that our senses do.
Exercise 1
Show the children pictures that have discernible “texture” and atmosphere. Your choice of pictures must be wise in that they should give the children a chance to think about the not so obvious answers. For example, a picture of the sea: color and therefore, sight is the most obvious, but there are the sounds of the sea, the “feels”, the smells and indeed, the taste! Get oral sense detail responses to the first three or four pictures and then get them to record their individual responses in their notebooks. They can read out their answers to each other later. If you like, you can make the children work in groups to begin with and then move on to individual work.
Exercise 2
Show the children three or four pictures of “places”. These pictures should range from the proverbial scenery (of mountains and forests, sunsets and beaches, etc) to pictures of market places, railway stations; from roads to rooms (kitchens, bathroom offices, hospitals, etc). Do give them variety so that they can choose. Do remember that not everyone responds to scenic beauty. Tell the children to jot down fifteen sense impressions (each) that they identify with or relate to the picture of their choice from the ones shown to them. You can mount and put the pictures up if they are large enough to be seen by the last row – otherwise pass the picture around. Do the exercise again and ask them for 20 or 25 words each this time. You know the level of your class, so work accordingly (fifteen is a good number to begin with). Let them read out their answers and take down words/phrases they hadn’t thought of that some other child has. Encourage them to spread the sense impressions among sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. They can make columns under these headings on one page per picture if they find it easier to work this way.
Exercise 3
This can be given as homework or as follow-up in class after the above exercise (It is ideal if you have a double period for creative writing/composition). Ask the children to write a descriptive paragraph about the place they wrote their sense impressions of. Tell them that their personal impressions (and the ones shared with and learnt from the rest) are to be used as detailers for the content. You will find the children working quickly and excitedly since they already "have the answer".
Exercise 4
Tell the children that they are going to play a memory game. You will utter a sentence and they have to listen. They then, have to think of only sounds relating to the situation in your sentence. They will record the sounds in sentences till you say “stop writing please”. Who ever has the most noises is the winner.
Your sentence can be – “It is evening and I am sitting and studying for the test tomorrow."
The sentences they write down, based on the possible sounds can be:
The television is blaring ..
My younger brother is playing with his new toy truck – ‘zhoom’.
Mummy has dropped a spoon in the kitchen.
The newspaper Daddy is reading is rustling.
The phone is ringing.
The fan is whirring.
The answers you get will depend on the reach of their vocabulary.Give them examples as guidelines.
Exercise 5
Play snatches of music for them (no songs please). Ask them to imagine a sense or setting to “go” with the music. Tell them to build a story around the music they hear. If you like, you can play the recording while they write in order to inspire them .
Exercise 6
Ask the children to keep their eyes closed (If you feel they might ‘cheat’ ask them to use their hankies to blindfold each other with). Place an object (just pick up things from your handbag etc.) in front of each child that they have to touch and feel. Give them five minutes to do so.They then have to identify the object and write about what they perceived through touch. For example, “I touched something. It was light and I could hold it with just my thumb and forefinger. It made a soft sound when I dropped it on the desk."
Exercise 7
This is good exercise to give the children after they have awakened their senses a bit. They have to write the following sentences on the top of three pages (one sentence per page) –
“If I couldn’t see, I would miss looking at and seeing...”
“If I couldn’t hear, I would miss listening to and hearing ...”
“If I couldn’t smell, I would miss the smells of ....”
Then they would have to proceed to fill up the rest of the pages with things dear to them personally.
Well, these are just some of the ideas that I can be tried and be successful in terms of enriching the quality of the students' compositions and their interest and enthusiasm for writing itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment