Here’s a slightly more off-the-wall idea for a youth work session – spend some time having your young people write haikus.
What’s a haiku?
A haiku is a short Japanese poem. It has a few things that make it distinctive, but the most commonly recognized features are:
- The haiku is made up of three lines
- The first line has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables and the third line has 5 syllables
An example of a haiku could therefore be:
Back To The Future
McFly travels back in time
Then comes back again
(n.b. As the Wikipedia article we’ve linked to explains, a traditional haiku doesn’t have 17 syllables, as in Japanese it’s based on phonetic sounds rather than syllables as such. The aim of this session idea is more to encourage youth creativity and get them to consider issues more deeply, than it is to create authentic haikus.)
Getting your young people to write haikus also helps them work on the skill of being concise (similar to this retweetable job interview resource). With such a limited number of syllables available, they’re forced to communicate what they want to say in just a few words. You could therefore tie in this activity with another session about communication or about the importance of choosing our words carefully.
Subject Of Haiku
Haikus can be written about any and all types of subjects – whatever you’re covering in your youth work program can be explored. Here are 15 suggestions though to get started:
- Love
- Anger
- Friendship
- Family
- Forgiveness
- Poverty
- Substance abuse
- Crime
- Bullying
- Bible story (if you lead a Christian youth group)
- Generosity
- School
- Health
- Making choices
- Hobbies
If you’ve watched a movie as part of a session, you could get your young people to write a haiku summarizing the moral of the story. Alternatively, you could also use haikus as a session evaluation tool.
Tone Of Haiku
You don’t have to make the haikus super-serious. You can have your young people make them funny, abstract, hard-hitting, whimsical, literal – whatever you like. In fact, encouraging them to write multiple haikus with a different tone behind them would be another way for them to work on communication skills.
Question: Have you ever run a haiku youth work session? What tips can you give? Let us know in the comments below.
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