I See, I Notice, It Reminds Me

Focus: Pre-reading Activity for Beginning Creative Writers

Name: I See, I Notice, It Reminds Me

Grade level: 9th or 10th grade

Time: (including instructions and discussion) 15-20 minutes

Materials: None

Rationale: As a way to physically demonstrate how to read and interpret metaphor laden text, this exercise will provide students with a different perspective on how to see and describe otherwise mundane objects. The activity will also help the students begin to think about how authors are able to ascribe the depth that can be achieved to people, places, and things in descriptive writing by attaching personal memory to the physical description of an object they see everyday. Lastly, the students will get to practice reading a peer's interpretation of familiar objects in the room by listening for their partner's descriptive narration.

Procedure: Students will be pared by ones and twos with a partner. The ones will be the first to describe their surroundings, while the twos will listen. The partners should walk around the room shoulder to shoulder, with number one guiding where they walk. Number one is to find an object in the room and say "I see ___, I notice _____, it reminds of ____." For example, "I see a light switch. I notice it has a "hit the lights sticker on it. It reminds me of when at summer camp somebody in a globe costume spoke to us about the environment." Number one will continue walking about the room moving from object to object for 1 minute. Then, the instructor will call switch, and person two will now control the movement and make object observations for one minute. Both students should observe twice. After the four minutes is up, students should return to their seats to discuss. The instructor should ask the students to think of one observation/description their partner made that struck them. Then, the instructor could bring the class to a full discussion about some of these descriptions they'd like to share, an how it felt noticing particular things about objects in the room, and what kind of memories they associated with certain objects. Good ones? Sad ones? etc. From here, the instructor could begin a lecture about figurative language tactics in novels, poems, and short stories while referencing the activity.

I got the idea for this activity from Michael Sommers. He frequently uses this activity as a way to teach perspective to his puppetry students.
M. Sommers, personal communication, Specific date unknown.