I Am

Students create a first-person description of an object (personification) and other groups guess what it is.

Procedure

1. Read an example description and ask students to guess the object. E.g.: "I'm sometimes made of plastic. I'm usually round. I have many different shapes. But I'm often quite small. I have numbers. I often sit next to the bed. You usually use me during the week. You need me but you don't like me." (Answer: alarm clock)
2. Seat students in groups. Give each group a different object to describe (from any lexical set: furniture, animals, buildings, food, everyday objects — use flashcards, digital images, or just assign words).
3. Students work together to write a first-person description of their object. Remind them to start with basic factors (material, size, shape, location) before adding detail, so they don't give it away too quickly.
4. Groups take turns reading their descriptions aloud. Other groups try to guess the object.
5. Monitor to check descriptions correspond accurately to each object.

Tips

• Cognitively challenging because it requires personification — leads to surprising, creative descriptions
• The resulting texts can be turned into poems, illustrated and displayed
• For higher levels: describe objects from the point of view of a Martian who doesn't know what things are for (inspired by Craig Raine's poem "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home")