B. ED students at UWC attended a one day “talk” where they were given tips to engage with their future learners. This exercise was to show that you can have fun creating stories from anything.
We collected random objects and the students were asked to write a short story using all the objects. This is a fun exercise you can try with your reading group.
Objects: Leaf, R2 coin, sea shell, pen, a classmate as a character.
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Roselyn Fonck
Sitting with my red pen, marking papers, my senses run away with me. My eyes see the leaves falling, meaning winter is near. My ears hear children asking for money from friends because they don’t have lunch to eat. As I take a long sip from my sugar sweet coffee, my heart longs for the beach, for a break. But that’s the life of a teacher. Dreaming while marking.
Today, I receive back my assignment and the pages were literally covered in red ticks, arrows and question marks. I really felt annoyed and needed a space to sit down and just be still. As I was going over the remarks in my assignment, a leaf dropped besides me and it started to drizzle. I quickly pulled myself up and ran for shelter, my first thought was I need some coffee. But I only had R2.00 in my pocket.
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Cindy James
After everything that had happened, Sarah took a stroll down to the big tree and as a leaf dropped. She just realised that autumn had arrived, the summer at the beach and the good times she had were gone now. Oh how she wished she could go back, that late summer night when Dillon used their last R2 coin to grab the teddy from the game machine. She had never felt the excitement of a gift like she did with him. The next morning, as she wrote him her farewell letter, with her special red-love pen, tears fell from her eyes. So, she took the shell she picked up at the beach and left the note under it for Dillon to find.
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The students then randomly shouted words inspired by “what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word ‘morning’?” From there each word inspired the next and there were 10 words on the board. Then student were asked to write a short story using all the words.
This is a fun exercise you can try with your reading group.
Words: Bacon, Eggs, Fried, Flour, Ball, Rugby, Guys, Sexy, Injuries, Hospital
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My friend Thabisa and I had fried some bacon and eggs while discussing the rugby she attended with the sexy Sipho as the main attraction. She could barely breathe…just mentioning his name. They were really aggressive and poor Sipho had some bad injuries that Thabisa was oh so happy to attend to. But instead of ointment, she rushed over to poor Sipho’s rescue and covered his injuries with flour. – Amore Lategan
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This morning, Cara and Govan decided to surprise me with nice fried bacon, eggs, and pancakes with too much flour in them. This hearty breakfast was needed as we were going to a rugby game later, and I needed energy for all those sexy guys tossing balls around. I’m hoping no injuries and trips to the hospital will occur as it will dampen this day.
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