Posts

Teaching Flash Fiction — Lesson 4 Fleshing Out the Story

, ,

Now that students have ideas, it’s time to flesh out the stories.

With any piece of writing, two parts are critical for students:  ideas and organization.  Both of these, known to many teachers as traits of writing, can be difficult for any writer.  Who hasn’t labored over a first rough draft, trying hard to find a way to pull it together? Writing is hard work, so it’s no wonder students find ways to avoid it sometimes.

When you are ready for students to dig in and write a piece of fiction (or any other piece of writing), it’s important to think about what writers need.  I know I need time – time to think, time to experiment, time to get feedback, time to re-examine mentor texts, time to rewrite, and time to read my work out loud.

That’s a lot of time, especially since teachers are constantly battling the clock.

The only way I know to provide students with enough time and support is to utilize a workshop structure in the classroom.  If you need a quick overview on workshop structure, check out this blog post  from Two Writing Teachers.  Workshop provides students in-class time for all the critical parts writing, including time to confer with me and with peers, rather than setting the expectation that students will write outside of class time without support.

After spending some writing workshop time on thinking, drafting, and conferring, students are ready for narrowing their focus and “reading like a writer” again, but with a specific lens. To limit this activity, I ask students to read their mentor texts for the following:  character, suspense, and conflict.  High school students can handle working on all three, but for middle school students, I would suggest letting them choose one, or one at a time at least.

To provide some structure, I pose a few questions such as these:

  • Character:  What character trait is most important about the main character?  How does the writer reveal it in the story? How do this character’s actions move the plot?
  • Suspense:  Where does the writer build tension in the story? How did he/she build this tension for the reader?  Why does it work?
  • Conflict:  What is blocking the character from getting what s/he wants? Does this conflict escalate/complicate as the story progresses? Does this conflict come from outside and inside?

Students spend time working alone, reading and annotating.  Then students meet with their writing group, or you can re-group students by the mentor text or element they chose to analyze.

All students work on the question “What did you learn about characterization, suspense, and/or conflict that you want to try in your writing?”

I think this is an important question on which to spend a little whole-class time debriefing.  Students can benefit from hearing which techniques other writers prioritized and ways students discuss the elements of fiction.  Clearly, students are developing their reading skills throughout this lesson series, and listening to what other students notice is a low stakes way of developing students’ knowledge of and ability to analyze text.

Armed with ideas and techniques, it’s back to writing time.  Younger students may be adding on to their quickwrite, while more skilled or older students should be deep into their drafts.

Within a workshop schedule, time to write, confer, and revise continues for days. I try to have copies of mentor texts available around the room so students can get “professional” help without waiting for me.

Students are also always working on reading goals – always.

Our classroom expectation is this:  If you are stuck during writing time, switch to reading.  Of course, this was something I dedicated time to at the beginning of the school year, defining and modeling expectations, and even so, I would sometimes need to pull a student to have a behavior conference instead of a writing conference.

For students who come to class without their independent reading books, I always have plenty of books of all genres around the room.  Sometimes, though, students do not want to dive into a new book, so I borrowed a wonderful strategy from my colleague Whitney Keeton.  Whitney provides newspaper stories she thinks students might be interested in, and students are able to pick an article, read it, and put it back before they leave the classroom.  Yes, sometimes a student simply wants to read how a favorite sports team fared the night before, but the student is still reading!

If I notice a student chooses to read rather than to write several days in a row, I make sure to confer with that student.  It could be that the student prefers to write at home.  Or it could be that the student is stuck and needs my help to move forward with the writing. Reluctant writers sometimes need short, specific writing goals for each day, so that might be worth posting each day.  The best determiners of success are making sure students are interested in what they are writing and feel secure in the classroom community.  If these two things are in place, I have successful writing workshop days!

Next, students use protocols to provide feedback to each other.

 

 

/by

Teaching Flash Fiction – Lesson 3 (Quickwrites)

, , ,

Follow my blog with Bloglovin
“It must be a piece of writing which, even if someone else reads it, doesn’t send any ripples back to you. It is like writing something and putting it in a bottle in the sea. . . . Freewritings help you by providing no feedback at all. ” Peter Elbow, 1973

“A quickwrite is a first draft response to a short piece of writing . . . . This is writing to find writing, but using someone else’s words to stimulate their thinking.”  Linda Rief, 2018

 

Now comes the fun part – gathering ideas for writing!

Every writer can struggle to get started.  Sometimes our commitments demand all of our attention.  Sometimes our worries crowd out every other idea or thought.  For many of us, our inner critic smashes down every inkling of an idea before it blossoms.

If all writers struggle, how does a teacher get a classroom full of students to write at the same time ?  Quickwriting!

I first learned of this concept from Peter Elbow’s work.  I was a new teacher at the time, and Elbow’s “freewriting” not only made sense for use with my students, but also helped me with my own writing through college.  Freewriting as Elbow defines it is writing without stopping for a designated length of time.  Then the writer chooses an idea from the freewriting and writes again. The goal is to keep going no matter what, even if you repeat a word or phrase over and over until a new idea comes.

In recent years, I’ve heard educators use terms such as “writing sprints” or “quickwrites.” Writing sprints increased in popularity alongside NaNoWiMo’s climb into the education world, and writers can even join a writing community of sprinters through Twitter ( See @NaNoWordSprints )Linda Rief uses the term quickwrite to combine mentor text models with writing ideas quickly as she described in her book The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students’ Thinking and Writing.  Lots of educators, including me, use the term “quickwrite” to refer to a variation of freewriting and writing sprints.

All variations of a quickwrite have a few key qualities in common.  They all

  • Increase the amount writing in the classroom
  • Help the writer focus on ideas without critique, either by an inner voice or the teacher
  • Increase fluency over time
  • Help writers of all ages find success, even enjoyment, in writing
  • Utilize little class time
  • Provide starting points for writing conferences

For our flash fiction unit, I used a variation that focuses the writer on brainstorming for a particular writing task.  Although I altered the quickwrite prompt each year, here is an example:

Choose one of the following settings (or one of your own) and build the picture by focusing on imagery:  What do you see? hear? smell? feel? taste?

  • a real or imagined classroom
  • night time in a woods (or city!)
  • a childhood bedroom
  • distant relative’s house
  • an abandoned car on an embankment of a stream
  • a setting of your choosing

My classroom routine for quickwrites looks like this:

  • After I share the prompt and students have written the date in the quickwrites section of their notebook, students have a couple of quiet minutes for thinking. Then everyone, including me, writes for three minutes without stopping.  I volley between writing and “kidwatching” to notice who might be struggling or to note someone to give a shout out to for their work.
  • I quietly tell students when they have 30 seconds remaining. At the end of 30 seconds, I ask students to stop without finishing the sentence they are working on.  If they know they want to come back to this piece, they can put ellipses.
  • Everyone tallies their word count and writes it in the margin next to today’s quickwrite. I ask students to give me a thumbs up if their word count is at least 5 more words than their previous word count, a “thumbs to the side” if their word count is plus or minus 5 words, and a thumbs down if their word count is 5 or more fewer words than their previous word count. I make it clear that everyone is working on fluency at his or her own pace.
  • Depending upon the goals for the day’s lesson, students might do a two-minute share with a shoulder partner, a few whole-group show of hands for who wrote to which choice, or a whole-group workshop session if a writer wanted to share his or her piece to get advice for next steps.

This routine is something I introduced every year, no matter which grade level I was teaching that year,  in the first few days of school, and the classes practiced with high-engagement prompts until everyone knew the routine.

Yes, there were usually students who tried to avoid writing by writing “I don’t know what to write” over and over for the full three minutes, but that often stopped without my intervention.  Students quickly realized how boring it was to write the same thing over and over, or they realized all writing was celebrated and none of it was perfect.  If we were a week into the routine and the avoidance behaviors were still in place, it was time for a one-on-one conference to find out why and to do what I could to take away the student’s fear of writing.

For this assignment, I often chose a whole-group show of hands to get a sense of which settings appealed to each class, and then students shared with a writing partner. The partner’s job was to ask questions so the writer could continue to think about how the setting could be developed. We spent about 10 minutes of partner time, so this lesson was not a whole class period.

Next, students go back to a mentor text to read like a writer with a purpose.

 

/by

Invitational Groups

I was introduced to the concept of invitational groups when Ellin Keene first worked with our middle school ELA team.  Our school had completed a book study of Mosaic of Thought, but it wasn’t until Ellin led a demonstration lesson in a colleague’s classroom that I started to understand the power of the invitational group.  While Mosaic of Thought focuses on reading, the invitational group works just as well with writing, too.  See below for a summary.

I started invitational groups as voluntary groups in my classroom:  I would ask anyone who wanted to see me demonstrate a concept such as writing with imagery or thinking aloud about suspense in a text to join me in a certain location in the classroom.  All the other students were writing or reading independently, or sometimes students were working with writing partners on giving feedback.   After students became comfortable with the structure, I added the specific invitations to our routine.

While nothing can take the place of one-on-one conferencing, utilizing invitational groups helps solve a bit of the time issue, since the teacher can work with several students at once. Other students move at their pace, too, without being forced to spend time reviewing concepts they already understand, as often happens in whole-group mini-lessons.

Surprisingly, after invitational groups became a routine in my classroom, students who seemed secure with a concept sometimes self-selected into an invitational group.  We all know students who are skilled at pretending they “get it” when in fact, they may be confused.  Because this structure removes the stigma of “extra help,” students felt comfortable dipping into a group as needed.

 

Definition

Invitational groups are small groups of students who have shared needs for intensive instruction or discussion.  Students are invited to participate in an invitational group so the teacher can reinforce or extend a concept discussed in whole-group instruction. (Students can also join voluntarily.)  This is an opportunity to practice a skill with teacher support. Students have an opportunity to observe the teacher model in a more controlled, focused setting.

Setting up the Mini-lesson

Call students to a table or a close setting. Plan instruction to address a clearly identified need for each child in the group, such as reviewing a strategy, explaining a challenging writing convention, working on literary technique such as foreshadowing, etc.  Establish routines and protocols to prohibit interruptions from other students.  During reflection time, students who have participated in an invitational group can be invited to demonstrate what they have learned.

Frequency/Time Limits

Invitational groups are short, focused, and active. Invitational groups should be used as necessary and should rarely exceed fifteen minutes. Invitational groups are not static – the same group of children may meet one to three times to focus on an area of need; then they disband.

Adapted from Keene, Ellin Oliver, and Susan Zimmermann. Mosaic of Thought. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2007.

/by

Teaching Flash Fiction Series – Part 1 – Intro Lesson

,

A few years ago, our state standards added fiction (Why fiction?) under the narrative mode strands, and in my roles as ELA teacher and instructional coach, I began a hunt for lesson ideas, resources, and research to share with my ELA team.  After all, for most of my career, teaching students to write fiction was limited to creative writing classes. I felt out of my element.

And then I discovered the world of flash fiction.

At the time, I did not find much information from any of my go-to PD professionals, nor did I find much in the way of research.  But I did find an overwhelming number of sites that promoted and published flash fiction, including student flash fiction.  These sites also offered tips and reviews, and I knew that’s all I really needed.

I dedicated our first class of the unit to immersing students in flash fiction.  For some genre studies, I advocate for total discovery, allowing students to search online and in print, but because many of the flash fiction sites are targeted to adult readers, I pulled grade-appropriate examples for my students.

My students were already familiar with the protocols for “reading like a writer,” so I did not need to model the general strategy.  I piled several selections on the center of each group’s desks, and they started by simply reading the piece they chose.  Some students annotated; others chose not to annotate.

Since each person in a table group read a different selection, students regrouped all around the room with other students who read the same text.  I provided time for students to discuss and to ask questions, and then I directed students to “read like a writer with a focus ” while I listened in and guided groups as needed.

Read like a writer with a focus  takes on various purposes for me.  In this stage of the lesson, the focus was to notice elements of flash fiction.  In groups, students wrote notes of what they noticed in their sample flash fiction. Once students wrapped up capturing their thinking, they moved back to their table groups to share across several text examples, discussing similarities and differences.

I think this is an important step.  I know many teachers limit this part of a “notice and note” lesson, to borrow a term from Kylene Beers and Robert Probst, by asking all students to use one model text.  In this way, teachers ensure students focus on the elements they have predetermined as important.  But I think one key to keeping students engaged is to allow for true discovery.  If students know they are simply trying to “find” what the teacher wants them to find, the joy of the hunt disappears.  Other teachers feel their students would be completely lost without a demonstration first. If you determine your students need to see you model the strategy first, definitely work that into the plan.  See a model here.  In my experience, though, if students have done this with any mode of writing, they are able to apply the strategy without a demo.

Another benefit to allowing students to discover elements of a genre themselves is the lesson is automatically differentiated for the students in each classroom.  What students notice and articulate will reflect their current knowledge about the topic.  This can help determine mini-lessons or small group instruction that each class needs.

Which leads me to another benefit – time.

Almost every literacy teacher I know feels the pressure of time; there’s never enough to do all that the students need.  So why waste time presenting predetermined mini-lessons over basic information like elements of fiction or the structure of flash fiction?

Each table group then contributed to our class Elements of Flash Fiction chart.  While there are many methods of creating a chart, my favorites always include time for students to get up and write on the chart (or multiple charts) themselves or to negotiate what I should write on the chart by using a strategy.  One strategy I like is  Four Corners. For this lesson, a group will throw out a strategy, and then students can move to the corner of the room to indicate how strongly they agree or disagree that the element is important enough to go on the chart.  (The four corners are labeled strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree).

The question in a secondary classroom is “How do I avoid ending up with 5-7 charts of the same information?”  Sometimes I use all of the charts, switching them each class period, but I didn’t always want to have to remember to switch charts.  One tactic I used with success is posting all of the charts the second day, and asking students to choose their top 4 per class period, and from these lists, I created one universal anchor chart.  This is a wonderful way to review the information and to ask students to critically evaluate each idea at the same time.

Depending on your school’s class periods, this is either one or two class periods. I was fortunate to finish the class chart, but that’s all the time we had.  If you have more time, you could ask students to reflect in their journals about what they discovered about flash fiction, what element they want to be sure to try when they write, or their main take-aways.  If you prefer, students could jot one thing they learned about flash fiction and one question they have on an exit ticket.  This would provide a quick check for understanding and provide a record of ideas for explicit mini-lessons.

What’s next?  Students apply their learning to new text.

/by