This activity requires careful listening and understanding. Have students work in pairs. Each takes a turn to interview her partner, asking questions about her life, including information about hobbies, family and pets. The interviewer must listen carefully to her partner's answers, making notes. She will use these notes to write a short biography about their partner.
Have students go outside with a notebook and pencil. Encourage them to find a space where they can be quiet and spend a few minutes listening, writing down the different sounds they can hear. When they return to the classroom, discuss what they heard and brainstorm some interesting and powerful adjectives, similes and metaphors. Use these as a basis for descriptive or creative writing.
Listening carefully to a piece of music can inspire creativity in students. Play a dramatic or evocative piece and have your students listen with their eyes closed. Then have them listen again, this time making notes about the picture they imagine when listening or the feelings they have. Use these notes as a basis for a descriptive paragraph, a poem, or even a story or painting.
This activity works well for younger students. Play a piece of music that has a strong rhythm. Have students listen carefully a few times and then have them play along to the rhythm with percussion instruments, copying the beat that they hear. Do this a few times and then try having them play without the music. Extend this activity by having students work together to produce their own piece of music with a similar beat.