The Border

This exercise also is appropriate for a classroom in which most students have come from elsewhere.

1. Ask students to draw up two lists. The first list is a series of words indicating things they left behind in their countries (or cities or states) of origin (for example, people, things, places, and animals). The second list is a series of words indicating what they have found in this country.

2. Ask students to think about the “borders” that separate these two places: the actual borders, rivers, resources necessary to pay for airfare, history, choices, and so on.

3. Ask them to write a poem that incorporates as many words as possible from both lists.

This lesson is from the WritersCorps book “Jump Write In!”