Creative writing with flowers

Say it with flowers...

Here's a creative writing exercise I liked, by Mario Rinvolucri, which I found in the latest issue of Humanising Language Teaching, online at hltmag.co.uk.

Suggested procedure:

• Bring a vase and 5 flowers into class
• Ask for a student volunteer to arrange the flowers in the vase
• Then say: "These flowers are a family. Please write three paragraphs about the family".

Unless you have a super creative class, used to such exercises, you might want to have a pre-writing stage in which, either whole class or in pairs/threes, you get the students to talk about the family first. If they bounce ideas off each other, the writing will be easier.

Don't forget to take a photo of the flowers, as they won't last as long as your text!

Summer camp flowers
The flowers in the photo, above, were cut out from egg cartons and painted. If you were on a summer camp, you could get your learners to each make their own flower, and start from there...

Blogging flowers
If you have a class blog, I'd suggest that this is the sort of activity you want to post on it. It's fun, it's creative, and it's more motivating knowing that the work is going to be posted somewhere, and kept...