• Writing paper and pencils
• Optional: Clipboards

• Optional: Find more detailed instruction for using "I am from... " as a writing prompt on the Scribd website and on Fred First's blogsite.
• Optional: If you do not have table space for everyone to sit and write comfortably, be ready to offer clipboards.

Introduce this activity in these words or your own:

We are going to write our own "I am from... ." poems. Poems work best if they have concrete images-things, people, or events that the reader can picture in their mind. An example is the glistening dirt that tastes like beets in the poem we heard.

Before you start writing your poem, you might want to do what George Ella Lyons did. Write some notes about the things, people, or events that stand out in your memory and help to make you who you are. Then, on another piece of paper, write your poem, beginning with the words "I am from... ."

Optional: If you have found some online, offer additional guidance for writing the poems.

Allow about 12 minutes of writing time. Then, invite volunteers to share aloud what they have written. Acknowledge that the time may not have been enough to complete the poems. Encourage children to spend more time on their poems at home and bring them back to share again, if they wish.

Participants with learning disabilities or limited coordination may do better dictating their notes and poems to a co-leader, rather than writing them out.