A room with a view

About 40, tie, expensive coat, shoulder bag, reading freebee newspaper...

I liked this idea, which came from DevelopingTeachers.com's March newsletter, in which Hall Houston describes some of the ideas in his new book The Creative Classroom (Lynx Publishing).

Take your students to the window of your classroom. Tell the class to choose a person outside and describe him or her briefly (you probably don't want them to stare). Now, everyone sits down and writes a paragraph about the topic from the person's perspective.

You might suggest a few ideas to them to get them going -- what is the person's name, age, etc; where are they going, what are they thinking etc.

Possibly you might use a digital camera to take pictures and use these and the paragraphs to decorate the classroom walls.

And of course if you had a blog you could publish them there (see also "comments"...)

The newsletter is well worth subscribing to.