By: Luivette Resto
Mid-semester usually creeps in slowly at this time and you can see the pain in our student's faces as the weather gets drearier and work piles on for them. I do this fun exercise to show them that writing can be fun. (What a concept, huh?!)
Anyway, the exercise is a small derivative of the telephone game. I start by writing half of sentence on the board "This morning the phone rang and....". Everyone takes out a sheet of paper writes their name on top and begins a story with this line. They can continue it however they wish. The only trick is that after 2 minutes of writing, I yell stop and they have to pass it to the person on their right. As the stories are rotated, each person is in charge of continuing the story however they wish. I rotate them 3 times. The fourth time around everyone is responsible of writing an ending to this story. The stories are then returned to the original author. I usually have some good results with this exercise. Students chuckle at the direction their has taken and believe me they go off into some kooky directions. So, in case you need a break from drafts, peer reviews, and process letters, try this exercise and see what creativity your class has mid-semester.
