Find a full dictionary and flip through the pages to find 20 words. Don’t be afraid of words you don’t know. This is a dictionary and the meanings are right there. If there is a word that is really very hard to understand then pick either the word above or below it instead.
Use these words to write a short poem. Of course you can add helping and to be verbs, conjunctions, prepositions, etc to have it all make sense. Don’t get bogged down with symbolism or metaphor but make sure it makes sense.
Once you’re done with this see if you can expand on the themes and images that you find in your poem to create a story. Feel free to inject life into your story in the form of new themes, references to culture, etc. The story should build on the poem and someone who reads the two should be able to decipher the relation between the two. This is known as an epigraph. You will find them at the beginning of a story either in the form of a quote or a poem.
Of course if you would like to work on your skills as a poet, then edit your existing poem to contain more meaning than you see in its first draft.
For more interesting English worksheets and lessons, head on to this page.