In my LLED summer class we have weekly presentations on the current readings. Last week there was a great presentation that had 4 literacy “workshops” set up around the class. Each workshop was designed to use writing strategies to encourage creativity and imagination. I have posted one of my pieces that came from doing one of these workshops. The strategy works like this: Pick 5 letters from the alphabet and write down as many words that start with those letters as you can (up to 5 words for each letter) then, write a poem useing MOSTLY only those words. Very fun! Here is what I came up with. If I had known that I would have had to think of words with the letters I probably would have used different ones, haha.

E -Egg -Ethereal-Entity-Effervescent -Empathy

K -Keep-Kilogram-Kale-

Q Question-Quail-Quilt-Qualm

X -Xylophone-Xenophobe-

Z -Zebra-

Question: The empathetic effervescent entity known as the quilted quail egg.

Not a xylophone or xenophobe but a zebra.

No ethereal qualms on kilograms only empathy to keep us calm.

I like to eat Kale.

Below is a poem that I wrote in another workshop that used imagery to inspire creative writing. We were shown a picture of a thunderstorm on an ocean with waves, lighting and a small shore. The narrative below is what came from it:

I was born in the center of the ocean. I learned of life as I grew. In the beginning I thought the world was only made from water and salt. I believed I knew what life was. As I grew I began to see something I had never seen before, a dark speck on the horizon. “What is that?” I asked “There comes a time in life when we begin to see where they are going. That dark speck you see in the horizon is your destination.” At first I was afraid to see where my eventual demise would be. As time passed and as I grew older and older, I began to take comfort in my direction of life. The day came that would be my last. As I approached the land, I could see more detail of its beauty and life. New life I had never seen before. There isn’t only water and salt in the world, there are trees and big moving animals and sand. What a glorious sight. I began to feel sad, sad that I could not tell anyone of the beauty of life. I released all regrets as I built myself up and crashed one final time, one final breath, and broke on the sand.

I am loving my LLED class. So many cool literacy strategies out there.