BLACKOUT POEM

1. Grab a marker or pen, the darker the better.

2. Read the passage and make a small mark identifying each word you want to use in your poem. Remember, you can cross out parts of words as well.

3. Cross out everything else.

4. When you’re done, your message should be a new poem, your own creation.

There was a laurel-hedged walk which curved round the secret garden and ended at a gate which opened into a wood, in the park. She thought she would skip round this walk and look into the wood and see if there were any rabbits hopping about. She enjoyed the skipping very much and when she reached the little gate she opened it and went through because she heard a low, peculiar whistling sound and wanted to find out what it was.

It was a very strange thing indeed. She quite caught her breath as she stopped to look at it. A boy was sitting under a tree, with his back against it, playing on a rough wooden pipe.

-The secret garden



10 words

Please use these words, in this order, in a story of your own construction. For those hardcore writers: use them in order, and then in reverse order as well.

they're

accidentally

definitely

lightning

neighbor

principal

vacuum

whether

occasionally

conscience

Starry Night

Please only view this picture for one second. For the next ten minutes, in incredible detail, please describe what you saw.

titles

Please think of ten creative and inviting titles for this poem. Try to peak the interest of your reader while still maintaining the purpose of the poem in your title.

I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness

Please try to finish this poem as creatively as possible.

The darkness closes in
He hears the floorboards creek
he throws the covers over him
as the shadows start to speak

Please write the story of the following picture:

Please remember back to the first time you can remember getting in real trouble. Try to recount the entire experience in writing, giving specific weight to your internal conflict.

Fighter

Please list ten things that are challenging you in your life right now.

Pick one or two and describe what you are doing to fight against them.

Isolation

What is it like to be isolated, to be alone? Please write a short piece of fiction from the inside of this house.

The Book Of You

Please consider writing your autobiography. You aren't going to do it actually, but I want you to think about it. What I do want you to write for the next ten minutes is the table of contents. Please divide your book into chapters. This should take some real thought. Will you set it chronologically or by importance. Will you simply divide it up by age, or will you devote chapters to important events? Please title each of the chapters of your book something that would sum up that chapter.

Alphabet Prompt:

Please write the entire alphabet down, one letter per line, in your notebook. Make two columns. Write one thing that is true about you for each letter in the first, and one thing that isn't in the other.See if you can make it through the entire alphabet.

Please use the first sentence as your first sentence and the last as your last. You fill in the middle.
1.He started approaching and I could see he was holding something behind his back.

2. Now I can't go to Walmart ever again.

See this man... start writing the story of a normal day in his life.... at five minutes we are going to interrupt his day with something surprising.  option 1 option 2 option 3 option 4 option 5

Sub Plans

You are going to be absent from school tomorrow (applause breaks out in the background). BUT, you have to get a sub to take your place. Please write out the plans in complete detail, describing what the sub will have to do to experience a typical day in your life at school.

Please pair up and complete the following sentences about your partner. Reasons

Who is she?

Please write the story of this picture.

School has just finished. You walk up to your front door and on it is a note saying "Meet me at the bench at 10:00 tonight." You write the rest of this story.

Fall is the season of forgetting

In the fall change is everywhere. What would you like to change about you. Take a few minutes and isolate one aspect of your life that you would like to forget... write about it.