Descriptive writing based on random chaos

Descriptive writing based on random chaos
Read your students this short story where Frank demonstrates to Oliver that random biscuit crumbs can become fascinating pictures and all it takes is a little bit of imagination.
“The human mind does not like meaningless chaos and so when we see a collection of crumbs which are random our minds impose a pattern, an order onto the shapes to forge something that makes sense.”
Once you have engaged their curiosity with the specially written story (by Johnnie Young) ask them to continue the story from their own imaginations.
It is a good idea to set them a piece of research homework to follow this idea up:
“Research the work of the German artist Max Ernst (1891-1976) and write, in your own words (crucial requirement), a summary of how he used random shapes and patterns to give him artist ideas for his own work.”
Also it is an interesting idea for the students themselves to try using randomly sprinkled crumbs of a biscuit to use it as the story does – that is to take a picture of the crumbs, print it out and use coloured pens to create a picture based on the crumbs. The results are fascinating. Again, this part works much better if it is organised carefully, with written instructions, for homework.