CREATIVE WRITING LESSON PLANS FOR POST-PRIMARY SCHOOLS ...

CREATIVE WRITING LESSON PLANS

FOR POST-PRIMARY SCHOOLS

EXPLORING GLOBAL ISSUES

DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION THROUGH CREATIVE WRITING

LESSON PLAN ? 90 MINUTES

FINDING POETIC VOICES WHILE EXPLORING THEMES AROUND CHILD LABOUR

Nessa O'Mahony

OBJECTIVE

A good way of helping students towards a more profound understanding of development education issues is to find ways to increase their empathy. By exploring individual case studies and creating creative work that gives voice to the people they are reading about, students can begin to imagine themselves in the shoes of their subject matter and thus have a more profound understanding of the issues. This class therefore teaches students how to explore characters and create voices for children caught up in child labour.

OUTCOME

Student poems on the theme of child labour.

Time Preparation

Activity

Resources

Bring in handouts with

Persona poem handout

examples of poems that use

dramatic monologues or

create personae

0-10 minutes

Warm-up: generating word banks ? get the students to list as many words as possible that are unique to their own localities or families. Explain to them that we all have particular words or phrases that we use that are unique to us ? dialect words or regional words or just words we use around the dinner table. Collect the words on a whiteboard/flipchart but ask students to keep their own lists too.

Whiteboard or flipchart to draw cluster

> 1 <

10-20 minutes 20-40 minutes

Introduction to voice and persona: lead discussion about the voice in poetry and how it works. Read some examples of poems where objects or animals are given voices, for example, Jo Shapcott's `The Mad Cow Talks Back'.

Handouts of persona poems

Bring a list of objects/ animals and allocate one to each student ? ask them to imagine what that object/ animal might say if given a voice for the first time.

Lists of objects or animals for distribution

Case study: choose an example of a child labourer and tell their story. Carpet workers in India might offer one good illustration as there is much good information about the lives they live and the working conditions they experience. Cotton pickers in the Congo, rag pickers or children working in coffee plantations in Nicaragua might offer alternatives. If possible, ask the children the week before to find examples for themselves but if not, bring handouts yourself.

World Labour Organisation website, Tr?caire/Concern websites, handouts

> 2 <

40-80 mins

Get the children to divide Students should work with into groups of 2-4 and ask their own class notebooks. them to write a poem in the Make sure that collective voice of the child labourer poems are transcribed into they have been allocated. each individual's notebook. Ask for no more than eight lines of poetry, and divide responsibilities between those who develop the voice of the child labourer, and those who look at other elements of the poem, for example, rhyme, language and imagery.

80-90 minutes Before next session

Round-up: hear some of the poems drafts.

Students should be encouraged to work on drafts and refine them so they become final drafts.

> 3 <

DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION THROUGH CREATIVE WRITING

LESSON PLAN ? 90 MINUTES

LEARNING ABOUT STORY STRUCTURE WHILE EXPLORING THEMES AROUND

FOOD SECURITY

Nessa O'Mahony

OBJECTIVE:

We want students to learn how to tell, shape and structure stories that help them explore development education themes. The objective of this lesson is to learn the three-act structure of story and begin to develop their own stories that explore some aspect of the theme of food security.

OUTCOME:

Student stories on the theme of food security.

Time Preparation

Activity

Bring in handouts with examples of the three-act structure/story square

Resources

> 4 <

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