Walking Compositions
Try this rationale with your administrators: Classrooms are often sterile places in which to teach writing. Students’ powers of observation have been dulled. Good writers must see and hear and feel their environments directly. You are taking your writers outside the classroom to develop fluency, increase motivation, and sharpen their powers of observation. You, too, will be outside the classroom, circulating among students, reminding them of why they are out and about, encouraging them, and helping them to observe, note, jot, and write.
Give students the opportunity to practice the Walking Composition on a regular basis. When students have only occasional experience with the Walking Composition, they begin to think that it’s just fun and games or what you have them do when you aren’t prepared to teach. Establishing routine and structure lets both the students and the administrators know that the activity is meaningful.
Give each student an instruction sheet something like the one below. We suggest that you use the following list of procedures to be sure you have structured the activity carefully:
| Walking Composition Instruction Sheet |
| Grab your Writer’s Notebook and a pen or pencil. You are about to take a trip. As you walk, please observe the following guidelines. |
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1. Go alone (or be alone in yourself). Talk as little as possible.
2. You are a sensory sponge. Soak up and record sensations and observations.
3. Look for the small, important details.
4. Record your observations in four columns: things you see, hear, feel, and smell.
5. Be considerate of your neighbors.
6. We’ll return to our classroom in fifteen minutes. Then, you’ll select observations from your notes for a place/feeling description or a sensory poem or a written meditation.
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Choose one of the following itineraries:
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Tour A: Go to the gym. Walk around the gym floor, sit in the bleachers, and visit the locker room. Return to our classroom ready to write.
Tour B: Enter the cafeteria. Sit down and pretend to be studying. Change seats at least twice to view different areas of the room. Return to our classroom ready to write.
Tour C: Leave the building toward the parking lot. Turn right and proceed to the grassy knoll with the large trees. Stand under a tree. Wait, observe, and listen. Return to our classroom ready to write.
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Sensory Tour
This activity is a variation of the Walking Composition, but it is less structured.
Send your students out on campus with a definite time limit and the following instructions:
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1. What mood are you in?
2. See something smaller than your hand.
3. See something bigger than you are.
4. Hear something far away.
5. Hear something very close.
6. Feel something soft.
7. Feel something rough.
8. Bring back several items that caught your eye.
9. What mood are you in now?
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Dawn uses this activity to set the tone for nature readings and writings or just to shift subtly the mood of a grumpy class.
Remember, there are many ways of walking out of the classroom doors if you are not comfortable with the tour. Assign the Walking Composition for homework when students can go outside of the classroom on their own time and turf. Prepare your assignment sheet the same as you would for an in-school activity. List tour options that are more extensive and lengthy outings, such as going to the mall or to the local hardware store, taking a short trip on the light rail, sitting in the city park at lunchtime on a Saturday, or whatever locale is sure to yield sights, sounds, and impressions. Or, “go outside” with music, film, invited speakers, or fine pieces of writing. Most of the subjects for student writing come from outside the classroom from their experiential, intellectual, and emotional lives.
Listening to a Place
This simple variation of the Walking Composition can also give good results. Again, alert colleagues and administrators about this activity, or expand it to be an activity that students complete on their own in their neighborhoods.
Ask students to follow these instructions in order:
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1. Go to a place you like in or around the school.
2. Do not talk while you do this activity.
3. Listen for ten minutes without writing.
4. Close your eyes for two minutes and concentrate on what you hear.
5. Rapidly write your impressions of the place.
6. Eavesdrop on the people around you and write down some of the things they’re saying.
7. Bring your notes back here and we’ll turn them into something.
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Cemetery as Classroom
Cemeteries are interesting places for writers. Take your students to the local cemetery or instruct them to go there on their own. Then, have them try the following suggestions:
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1. Explore, move, and meditate among the living and the dead.
2. Enter some observations and thoughts into your journal.
3. Try a ten-minute freewrite, using something you see or feel to get started.
4. Take a word picture. Photograph a tombstone with language.
5. Using a name you find here, write a first-person narrative or a monologue in which you become that person.
6. Collect some sensory experiences—touch, see, hear, and smell the environment. Capture these stimuli in short phrases.
7. Pretend to interview one of the permanent residents. Ask him or her questions and jot down your answers.
8. Look inside yourself; examine some of your feelings about being here.
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