10-minute learning activities are effective strategies for creating connection, inviting meaningful disruption, and generating energy in any creative writing classroom.
Baggage Switch
The instructions for this are simple: in a piece of pre-generated piece of writing, have students circle all the verbs (or nouns, or both!) and write them out on a separate scrap of paper. Then, ask them to pass their list to the person beside them. Students re-write the piece of writing replacing their verbs with those they received from their neighbour.
I adapted this exercise from Noah Eli Gordon. A quote from his essay:
“What I stress here is the deliberate avoidance of those verbs which would simply replicate the poem’s original statement. If your line reads, “I climbed up the mountain,” then replacing climbed with walked isn’t doing enough work. Try shuddered or sank or roped…”
A brief reflection, depending on the level of your group, could include what it feels like to work with someone else’s language, other ways of expanding their vocabulary, or what figurative potential emerged through this exercise.