Today, 5B were treated to a Creative Writing session from the Callaghan College, Waratah Campus English faculty as part of a taster lesson program. We worked on creating blackout poetry. We talked about poetry in general and what it means. Then we were shown some examples of blackout poems and discussed the process of creating one. Firstly, you take an old book (or newspaper, or another type of text) and rip a random page out of it. The messier the rip, the more artistic your blackout poem will appear. Next, scan the text on the page and find a word that jumps out at you. Circle the word with a pencil. This is your anchor word. Your anchor word will help you choose other words or phrases in the text to create your poem with. Next, read through the other words on the page and circle words or phrases that you think would make an interesting poem. Finally, once you have selected as many words/phrases as you are happy with, use a black marker to blackout the remaining words. You can be as creative as you want with this last step and even create pictures. It was an extremely engaging lesson and I was very impressed with the poems that 5B created. Have a look at these photos from the process below.
I loved every minute of it