One of the first things that traveling WITS teams work on with students is trying to get them to understand the importance of creating poems using concrete language.
Concrete language is language that the readers can perceive with their senses.
This exercise works best with younger students up to about the second or third grade. Push them toward outrageous choices, such as purple cows or weeping pterodactyls. After the students pick animals, ask them to list the positive and negative elements of the animals existence. Write all of these ideas on the board and then begin the difficult work of turning it into poetry. The flip-flop comes into play near the end of the poem.