Last Day of Residency Creativity Burst

No poems for today, but we're going to have some imaginative fun in the classroom. Today I'm going to have the kids work in groups. Each group will get an object and each person will take on a role:

The Historian
The Scientist
The Advertising Executive

Their instructions:

Name the object. Decide where it came from, or how it was invented. Describe specifically how it works and what it does. Will it improve lives? If so, how? Write a 30 second commercial for your object. This ad will air on TV. Create a jingle, a rhyme or a one line slogan that will feature in your ad.

When all three have contributed to the project, they will come up to the stage area and explain their findings as if being interviewed at a press conference. The class will have a couple of minutes to ask questions like the press. When that's over, the group can perform their commercial.

I think this is a multi-level idea here. The ad, the press conference. A letter could be written from the point of view of one of the customers or users of the object. Drawings could be made of how it's parts are made and what it takes to put it together. If the object is something from the past, newly dug up and discovered, drawings of the site, bios of the "Archeologists," findings could be recorded. Ads could be performed and videotaped. A website for the new discoveries, or a book of all their writing and drawing could be created. Fun, fun, fun. This was the sort of stuff I really loved as a kid. It's great to relive it.

Hungry for ideas? Go to the Idea Factory.