Aliens!

May Swenson's poem “Southbound on the Freeway” is a lot of fun. The poem is from the alien’s point of view. The alien sees cars, and it thinks that cars are creatures on Earth. What the alien thinks are guts are really the people inside the cars. It thinks this, because it has never seen people before.

My class did a really great job of writing their own descriptions of what they saw as aliens.

Here are the instructions I gave them for the project:

• Choose a place or a thing that an alien might see on Earth. (Examples: a baseball stadium, a movie theatre, the mall, an animal, a roller coaster ride, etc.)
• Describe the place or thing from the alien’s point of view. What might an alien think of one of these things? (Use at least four sentences.)

Example
If an alien saw a baseball player, it might think that people had blue, plastic heads that lifted off (baseball caps). It might think that baseballs were hard fruits that different people were trying to crack open with a large stick (bat). What else might the alien think?

I landed on Earth today and got my first glimpse of human beings. They have blue heads which they remove when they are not trying to break a small, round, white fruit with a large stick. These creatures have two hands, but some of tem have one hand that is bigger than the other. I saw that one of the creatures had a face with metal stripes. People with striped bodies speak only in hand gestures.

Now, it’s time for you to describe “What the Alien Saw.” Answer the questions below to plan your writing.

1. Place or Thing the Alien Saw
2. Facts About the Place or Thing
3. What Will the Alien Think It Saw?