ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an example of what teachers often aim towards when they do 'creative writing', and in more general terms of what they hope may be realized through a stress on pupils' own experience and ways of handling language. It seems interesting that the pupils dismissed the idea that there was anything poem-like about the 'descriptions' of fire pinned on the wall. Teachers call free verse compositions 'poems' because they are aware that such writing often displays metaphoric power and orchestrative richness. In the lesson itself there seemed to be a change of focus from language used unselfconsciously for telling stories to language gathered to create a structure of, or display in, words. Words and phrases are first gathered according to a principle, and meaning in writing is then constructed out of the pieces in a way analogous to the construction of 'meaning' in jigsaw puzzles.
