Emulation as Inspiration: A Student's Poetic Response to My Poem

     On my other blog, "Writing Memorable Words," I published a poem titled "View from Another Bench," which I recently used as a writing prompt with one of my previously featured middle-school students, eleven-year-old Aashi. I was greatly impressed with her apt emulation of my theme about how the assumptions we make about others often lead to our misguided actions, which, in turn, lead to our embarrassment. I proudly present to you here Aashi's poem, born of her response to mine: "Tied." Feel free to leave your comments for her below (and if you want to read my poem, the prompt, just click on its title, above, and the link will take you there).

Tied

by Aashi M.

The little girl bends down                          

to tie her shoes,

with a pout on her face.

My mother would tie my shoes for me

when I was her age.

But her parents are busy.

So instead, I walk over to her,

untying my own shoes,

to show her how to tie them.

"First, make bunny ears," I tell her,

making two loops with my own laces.

"Then--"

"I know how to tie them," she cuts me off.

I stare at her, shocked, 

as she finishes tying her shoes with perfect loops.

Making me look like a fool,

tying my own purposely untied shoes,

as she breezes past me.

     Emulation exercises provide an excellent launching pad for creative writing; having an actual poem or prose piece to model as a prompt can spark ideas much faster, in my experience, than a conceptual prompt. For instance, if I had given as a prompt only the description of my poem (written above), merely telling her the theme of "View from Another Bench," I guarantee that my student would have not experienced her "aha moment" before my delighted eyes. If a writing teacher provides vague or purely conceptual guidelines, young writers end up toying with possible ideas and false starts for a while before venturing, tentatively, to create a first draft. I have found that by offering my students a first line to launch their original works (and then they can modify that given line later in the final revision), or by presenting them with another poem or piece of fiction to emulate, their inspirations arrive quickly and the resulting written works generally have depth and clarity. Furthermore, the young authors have more confidence that they have fulfilled the goal of the writing prompt.

Exploring Tone Through Poetry

  Tone can show itself in a single word or phrase, evoking different contexts and implications. One of my creative eighth-grade students, prompted by my own poem, "Aah" (which explores the various ways that one can hear and interpret the exclamation "aah!"), wrote this thought-provoking poem:

by Enan A.

OHHH!

The sound of an epiphany or…

A scream of someone who stepped on a spider

Ohh…

The sound of disappointment or...

The end of that awkward conversation

OH?

The sound of someone who wants to know more or…

The sarcasm of someone who is not falling for the other person’s tricks

Enan's poem allows us to hear the exclamation in different ways, and to view different contexts--positive and negative--for each context. This is a poem that begs to be read aloud and enacted. I will certainly share it with future students!

How To Add Fun to Writing Short Essay Responses to Literature: Have Them Write About Each Other's Works!

THE PROMPT: Write a paragraph about a theme in the following poem, using Susan L. Lipson's mnemonic device, E-IEI-O (Establish topic; Illustrate with quotation; Explain illustration and its context; Interpret implications of deeper meanings; Overall conclusions about how those implications relate to the theme).

The Defiant Man

by Rupin M.

The rain batters a person continuously,

While the man wallows in pain

And the people in their houses laugh.

The rain batters him harder and harder.

The fear of sickness reaches his brain.

The man decides he will not let the rain make him sick.

He defiantly puts up an umbrella

So the rain stops,

And the people are silent.

That poem, written by one of my 12-year-old students, in response to a poem from my book Writing Success Through Poetry, clearly impressed one of my other students, Aashi, age 11, so I decided to turn that poem into a response-to-literature exercise for her. I instructed her to refer to the poet formally, as if he were a famous poet. Please note that the poet is actually HER BROTHER! (:

Here is her E-IEI-O response to "The Defiant Man." I consider both the poem and the short essay exceptional. These writings appear here as written by the students, without editing from me except for the addition and subtraction of a few commas. 

The theme of the poem “The Defiant Man,” by Mr. Rupin Mittal, is that often what it takes for people to gain confidence to defend themselves is the very need to defend themselves. However, when people get rid of insecurities and gain enough confidence to put up defenses against the enemy, they can defend themselves. The lines “While the man wallows in pain/ And the people in their houses laugh” show how not everyone will sympathize with people about their problems. Some will simply laugh at the lack of assertiveness. Sometimes this laughter and criticism can help people build up the will to defend themselves. Mr. Mittal writes, “He defiantly puts up an umbrella/ So the rain stops/ and the people are silent.” This shows that the bullies and bystanders may laugh at people who are defenseless, but once they gather the courage to defend themselves, those bullies may no longer be able to put them down. [written by Aashi M.]

Using excellent creative writing pieces by other students as prompts has definitely inspired awe and awesome writing. Kids find essay writing about another writer's work more meaningful when they know that their written response is actually being heard by the author. And the authors feel successful at having clearly communicated their visions or messages, knowing they have left memorable words in their readers' minds.

Writing by Emulation: Using Student Writings as Prompts for Other Students

     "Without _____" was the prompt for a poem in which the poet imagines a life without a certain possession, condition, luxury item, ingredient, or anything we might take for granted. As example poems, I shared three "Without..." poems, written by my students over the years: one about life without sugar (with lines such as, "Sweet Tarts would only be tart"); one about life without the color green ("the name we use to remember the colors of the rainbow would be missing his middle initial: ROY BIV"), and one (by me) about life without adjectives ("a thesaurus would not only sound like a dinosaur, but also be extinct, like one").

      Ethan, a nine year old, found this prompt very inspiring: he wrote these two final drafts in his notebook. I have retyped them below. Note that the odd spacing in one of the verses in the first poem was written in the shape of a smartphone; and that one blank page interrupted the second poem, on purpose.

Without Smartphones
by Ethan 

Without smartphones, people would
need to walk to talk
to their friends!

Without smartphones, you would
need to write letters
instead of e-mailing!

Without smartphones, people would
need to go outside
to play instead of
playing games
on their phones!

Without smartphones, people would
need to draw instead of
taking pictures 
with their phones!

Without smartphones, you couldn't
talk to your friend or
cousin in Singapore!

Without smartphones, people would
need to check on the calendar
to know what day it was!

Without smartphones, people would
go outside more,
and play more board games.

Without smartphones, people would

need                                                   to
    
go                                                      out-
 
si-                                                       de

to                                                       che-

ck                                                       the

wea-                                                   th-

e                                                           r

and wouldn't know where they were
without Google maps!



       And now, here's the other "Without..." poem by Ethan:

Without Writing

by Ethan

Without writing
the world would be
disastrous.

Without writing
people would not
read books.

Without writing
you would walk into
a store and say,
“Can I have
that candy
in the red
package that
has a rainbow on it?”

Without writing
Books would
be pages with
pictures and
nobody
would
understand.

Without writing
this poem would
be this:

                                               [HE LEFT A BLANK PAGE HERE]






A world without writing
Would be a disaster.

Kids Prompting Kids with Healthy Competition Through Emulation

          Young writing students find a special kind of inspiration and motivation in high-quality works written by their peers. They also learn a lot about critiquing and editing from reading words by other kids. That is why I especially like to teach pairs or small groups of students, and facilitate their shared feedback and collaboration. And that is also why I like to use works by young authors as writing prompts. Whether I'm sharing a poignant piece written by another of my students, or a published work by a kid author featured in a children's magazine, I find that my students react with a healthy sense of competition to such prompts, driven to write words as memorable as the ones written by someone close to their age. "If a kid my age can write something that good, so can I," they tell themselves.

          Using a short memoir by another young author, "My Gygy," by Joseph Sicurezza, published in Creative Kids (Fall 2007), I asked 9-year-old Nakita to write a similar piece--full of vivid, multi-sensory imagery--about a treasured possession from her early childhood.  I explained the meaning of retrospective narration, "looking back at the past, from the present, like a storyteller does, and then reflecting on that object from the past." Her first draft offered what sounded like an outline for this final version; it lacked details and relied on "telling" not "showing" kinds of words. I read the piece aloud to her, and then asked pointed questions about what it felt LIKE  to wear those slippers, and what she used to do while wearing them. Her answers resulted in more vivid imagery, as well as some figurative descriptions, which ended up in this final draft of "My Slippers."

My Slippers

by Nakita, age 9

    I received my pair of bunny slippers when I was about 6 months old. When I was younger, I played and played and played with my bunny slippers. I remember when I wore my favorite slippers, and they glided me across the wooden floor like ice skates. My feet dug into my soft and cozy slippers when I crawled on the carpet . My slippers still smell like sweet mango from the juice dripping on them from snack time. Shh! went my slippers when I went across the wooden floor.

    Then I remember the day when I lost one of my bunny slippers. I cried so hard that my face turned red. I saw the remaining slipper by me, and I saw the tiny stuffed bear I always lost when I slept with it. I GOT AN IDEA! I quickly grabbed my slipper and my bear. I put the bear into the hollow area of the slipper where my foot went. My slipper was now a placeholder for my bear!

    From that day, I have kept my bunny slipper on my nightstand. Whenever I come into my room, I remember the memories of the slipper and how it made a wonderful home for my tiny, stuffed bear.

TIPS FOR WRITING A PERSONAL STATEMENT (PERSONAL NARRATIVE ESSAY)

          So many students have come to me to work on personal statements (a.k.a. personal narrative essays) for university admissions, scholarships, and school assignments that I decide to create a tip sheet to assist them in creating a first draft on their own. The tip sheet (copied below) will empower them with independence during the initial writing stage, as well as the first editing stage--substantive editing (which covers issues of substance, over style and grammar, etc.).  By carefully using the tip sheet to create second drafts, students can expedite the entire essay-writing process by reducing the level of my involvement to the final "polishing" or proofreading stage. Here are my tips:

1.  Be sure that the essay is actually PERSONAL—a vivid story specifically about you, which only you can share/show via recounting your memories. Avoid generic statements about your skills, talents, traits, or passions; SHOW those qualities--don’t merely tell about them.
2.  Use a retrospective narrative style: a) start in the present, to briefly introduce the theme; b) then bring the reader back in time, into a vividly recalled memory; and c) conclude with an introspective reflection, looking into yourself and what you have learned/gained.
3.  Use fiction techniques, such as Susan L. Lipson’s “D.A.D. Technique” (Description, Action, Dialogue), to share a story that illustrates your specific traits and/or accomplishments via an event.
4. You can borrow some other writer’s wise words (a quotation) as your opening, but be sure to build upon those quoted words as you begin your first sentence. Don’t just use a quotation as an opener without directly referring to its wisdom as it relates to your personal story.
5. Read your essay aloud and delete repetitive words (even entire sentences that only restate what you have already said before, just in different words).
6. Delete also any words that veer off the topic.
7. Listen to someone else read your essay aloud, slowly, and make notes about any lines which cause the reader to halt, stammer, seem confused, or sound bored or repetitive. Based on your notes, find ways to clarify or enhance the power of your word choices (see the next item, below).
8. Replace all vague words with specific details that create mental movies in the minds of readers. For example: instead of merely telling readers, “I was disappointed that I spent most of the baseball season on the bench;” show them your perspective, how you watched through the fence as your teammates played instead of you.
9. Delete passive verbs (such as am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been, go, goes, went, do, does, did) and replace them with active, precise verbs that create images in the reader’s mind. DON’T RELY ON WEAK VERBS ENHANCED BY ADVERBS (ending in -ly). TOO MANY ADVERBS MIGHT MEAN THAT YOU HAVEN’T FOUND PRECISE ENOUGH VERBS. For example, replace "walked softly" with "tiptoed."
10. Replace all clichés with original expressions; don’t rely on words so commonly used that they feel predictable.
11. Finally, ask yourself, will my reader know me better after reading my essay?

MINIMAL WORDS FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT

Conveying Concepts Clearly & Concisely:

An Exercise To Focus on Using Only Necessary Words

Can a story plot/mood/genre show itself in just six words? Read the six-word “stories” below, in the left column. Match each mini-story with the conceptual that best describes the plot.

Story:                                                                                     Title:

A) She died. “I cried,” he lied.                    1) DISILLUSIONED

B) She lied, “I tried.” He cried.                   2) GULLIBLE

C) She sighed, “He lied.” I cried.                3) NO LOSS

Write your own mini-stories in 6-10 words, not including titles. You need not rhyme as I have.

This exercise will force you to use only necessary words to convey the plot. Some conceptual title suggestions follow, or you may create your own.

·       CATASTROPHE

·      NEW BEGINNING

·      UNEXPECTED LOVE

·      SERENDIPITY

·      VENGEANCE

·      BETRAYAL

·      REJECTION

·      EPIPHANY