Touchy Writers

I form pupils of English here are beginning their year's work with an introduction to figurative language and with writing tasks that explore the different senses. Mr. Swift's set recently split into pairs with one member taking it in turns to be blindfolded while their partner took notes of their observations based only from touch and smell. Here are some of the results -

Matt Brooke :
It’s like the hair of my hamster, it’s squishy like a banana. It’s got a hard bit at the top, like a house on a planet of emptiness. No, wait! Two houses. It’s as though I’m at home testing the plums. It’s rough like the bark of trees. It’s as if I’m holding a tennis ball, about to serve. It smells like the market in France, when my brothers and I collect fruit for breakfast. It smells like my baby sister’s room. It’s like a small egg with hair. It’s rough like the sand of Oman. It’s like a sand ball just waiting to be thrown. Oops! I’ve made a tiny crack in it, like the desert on flood day as the juice sweeps around the thing. [kiwifruit]

William Wood :
It’s like smooth particles of glass or broad sand on a beach. It’s something lovely and smooth, like marbles. It’s getting sticky, like your hands after eating sweets. It may smell of nothing but it’s so good you’d go swimming in it. [rice]

Tara McCormick :
It’s as smooth as this soft, creamy table, as cold as ice, just out of the freezer. It’s scrunched up like a ball of paper carelessly thrown in the corner of a room. It’s hollow, like a paper-thin wall. [crushed can]

Harry Johnson :
It’s fluffy, like a cloud. It’s like the end of a soft paintbrush. It feels like a pom-pom. It’s a duvet wrapped around you on a cold rainy day. It is weightless almost like a feather, but lighter. It is the building blocks of heaven. [Cotton wool]

More shortly ...