10-minute learning activities are effective strategies for creating connection, inviting meaningful disruption, and generating energy in any creative writing classroom.
The Story of My Name
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- Ask students to pair up and take turns sharing the stories of their names
- When taking the role of listener, the student’s job is to record as many details of the story they’re being told as possible.
For my Introduction to Poetry class, once we have these gathered materials, I ask students to create a collaborative list poem. Each line begins with the phrase:
My name is…
I prompt them to complete the line with the following information:
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- a detail from the story you’ve just been told
- something you noticed on the way to class today
- an object that is meaningful to you
- overheard lyric or expression stuck in your head
- another memorable detail about a name
- something you made as a child that you liked
Here’s what a poem might look like once the exercise is through:
My name is passed down from my mother’s mother’s mother.
My name is the sound of a truck backing up.
My name is a hand-painted rock.
My name is don’t text me tell me straight to my face.
My name is not the one I was born with.
My name is a pink papier-mâché heron balancing on a spindly leg.
This is an endlessly-adaptable exercise with materials that could be drawn up into any kind of writing: a character sketch, a flash fiction, a monologue, etc.
It’s important to stress to students that they don’t overthink the prompts or the process, even when confusion arises. Once they are assured that what they’re doing is okay, they make really unexpected leaps.