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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…
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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,…
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Teaching Flash Fiction — Lesson 2
After students practice reading like a writer to create anchor charts for elements of flash fiction, it’s time to apply their learning to new texts. Again, I like providing several text selections so students have choice, but this time, I give students a very brief text chat, a shorter version of a book talk, and let…
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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…
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Why Fiction?
We have all read the research about the benefits of reading fiction, but isn’t writing fiction a task for the few talented, creative people in the world who will make their living writing novels or children’s books? Most every English language arts teacher has either heard this question or has posed this question. Many ELA teachers I know…