A three-day summer workshop was held for the children in Chimbel. When Terence asked me to do something for the seniors, I was quite hesitant. But he said he believed I could do it, and hence I took it up. I’ve always loved writing, and I decided to do a simple creative writing workshop with them. After planning and re-planning, after being helped by Terence and others at the library, I decided to do poetry and story writing with the children.
The poetry session held on day 1 went on smoothly! There were 8 children present, all of whom were very energetic and excited. Although I was slightly nervous at the beginning, I felt quite prepared. We began the session by discussing ‘what is poetry’. Many answered; Meher said “a poem is shorter than a story”, and Mazhar said “we can put a tune to a poem, it’s like a song”. We then talked about rhymes and rhyming words. They were given poetry books and were asked to identify and write rhyming words from the poems I had marked. After the completion of the activity, I read out the poem ‘The Elephant’ and explained it briefly. Innayat and Muskan said they liked the poem. Then I showed them examples of Acrostic poems. We read them in unison. The children loved them. I also told them about the 5 senses and explained to them how a poem can be written using those. Then read out another poem ‘The Butterfly’ which was written in free-verse.
They were then asked to write a poem using any one type of poetry they liked. I’d placed a seashell, a leaf and a pebble in the middle for them to write poems on these using the 5 senses. I was really happy to see them write so excitedly. Many wrote not just one, but two! Most wrote acrostic poems, and their second favourite was writing a poem using the 5 senses.
All the children participated enthusiastically and at the end of the session I collected eight papers that had more than eight poems!
The next day, we played ‘The jellybean’ game which got them ready for the session. We began the session with 9 seniors sitting in a semicircle, all eager to listen to the poem I was going to read to them. I read out the poem ‘Snail’ and asked them to name the characters and to identify the setting of the poem. Then I read a story based on the poem. We discussed characters, setting, and plot (often, problem and its solution) and why they are important in a story. The children easily identified these in the story I had read. Mehek and Muskan explained the differences they spotted between the story and the poem. Then they were given the poem ‘Roosters’, which we read aloud together. I asked them questions based on the poem. Most of the children answered correctly, the others listened. Then I asked them to write a story using the characters from the poem. Many were hesitant at first, they said they preferred writing poetry. But once they started, they were engrossed in thinking and writing. Five of them worked individually and the other four worked in pairs. Most children wrote their stories with minimal help from me, asking me only to translate a word or two. The others required help with translation and sentence construction. They were able to come up with a plot on their own.
At the end, they were all very pleased with their work!
On day 3, there were 9 seniors present. I read and explained the story ‘Two Ducks and the Fox’ which was followed by a story web activity based on the story. It went on smoothly. Then I continued the story web activity, but this time they had to make the story. They had to name the characters, choose a setting, and construct the plot (problem and solution). We did two rounds of that, and everyone had understood how to build a story. They enjoyed the activity thoroughly. They were then asked to write a story with at least two characters. Most of them wrote by themselves without much help from me. Asifa required help with translation and sentence formation. And there were two others, Sania Mirza and Tasmiya, who started writing but later found it difficult to write in English; Tasmiya wrote quite a bit in Hindi. However, during the story web activities, they’d both given their inputs and helped in building the story.
They were participative and attentive throughout the session, which was reflected in their work: most of the stories were quite well written!