Writing exercise day 1

Ok... so here goes a first try. I thought I would try offering different age suggestions, though when I taught it was mostly older students. It starts with a poem, that I will paste at the end of the post:

Elementary school kids: 

Do you have a favorite character either on TV or in a book? (If you have the book you can go get it now.)
what do you know about the way the character looks?
what do you think about their personality?
after you have spent a little time thinking/talking/writing about the character, imagine the character was sitting down next to you.
Write a letter to the character. What would you like to tell the character about your life today? What would you like to ask the character about their life today?
Sometimes I wonder what the Pigeon's mom said to him later. Or if Toot and Puddle go to the movies. Do you?
What do you think Snoopy would do if he was home right now?

Middle School: 

Imagine a story you love. It could be on TV or in a book or a comic -- anywhere.
You can do this one of two ways.
A: Imagine that you step into a specific page of their story and rewrite that scene/chapter/story if you could "knock over houses with your breath?"
This, of course, could work the other way and your character could come into your life to help with a problem you've had, or maybe mess up your birthday part...

High School and beyond:
Imagine the intersection of two worlds. Here, Collins talks about the intersection between fiction and reality. What other intersections intrigue you? The place where one person and another person's thoughts are separate, man and machine, dog and owner, sky and tree... I am often obsessed with the relationship of perspective -- where a place (or person or language) can look so strange and too big to take in a moment, while years later it seems so ordinary -- known. Personify some part of that, or embody another consciousness.
Does the sky get cold when the sun goes down?
Write a story where you explore the boundary you have chosen, and what happens when that boundary disappears.

Remember -- writing is play! It's always a good idea to work younger!

Wolf

A wolf is reading a book of fairy tales.
The moon hangs over the forest, a lamp.

He is not assuming a human position,
say, cross-legged against a tree,
as he would in a cartoon.

This is a real wolf, standing on all fours,
his rich fur bristling in the night air,
his head bent over the book on the ground.

He does not sit down for the words
would be too far away to be legible,
and it is with difficulty that he turns
each page with his nose and forepaws.

When he finishes the last tale
he lies down in pine needles.
He thinks about what he has read,
the stories passing over his mind
like the clouds crossing the moon.

A zigzag of wind shakes down hazelnuts.
The eyes of owls yellow in the branches.

The wolf now paces restlessly in circles
around the book until he is absorbed
by the power of its narration,
making him one of its illustrations,
a small paper wolf, flat as print.

Later that night, lost in a town of pigs,
he knocks over houses with his breath.

-- Billy Collins