Not the End of My Tale

 To help my older students start writing fiction, I used a prompt generator at  diyMFA . I also added a word of the day from NextStepEnglish:  https://nextstepenglish.com/word-of-the-day-conflagration/ .  Our word was conflagration, a very large fire that destroys buildings or large pieces of land. As we shuffled the prompt generator, we picked...  "shopping mall Santa, lost something important, has bullets but no gun and a picture of a modern building". We discussed these elements together and wrote both together and individually. Each of the students wrote their own version of this story while I wrote one, too.  I do believe that an English teacher should be able to write anything they ask their students to write and to proudly demonstrate their craft. I realize that there is the risk of the teacher's work being judged harshly, but how can we expect the students to be brave enough to write and share with others if we are not willing to write and share wit...

 Since most of my classes will be online for the next 6 weeks, I registered for an educator account at getepic.com . It is free and full of thousands of digital books (most in English, but there are a few other languages there). Students just use the classcode (no personal info needed) and can choose books to read online. Some books even include audio. As a teacher, I can keep track of how many books each student has read (if they click on their initials when they start) and how they did on the end-of-book quiz. I even tried one of the short quizzes with one of my students, and she liked it. The quiz was short enough to not be bothersome while providing just enough positive feedback to let her feel like her accomplishment was seen. The only drawback is that the students can only read for free during school hours local time, Monday- Friday 7 am - 4 pm. You can even make reading lists for your students. I made one with books about Hawaii or based in Hawaii since that is where we curr...

The same story of the week, but this time it is in English. Not our problem It was a beautiful, sunny day throughout the kingdom. The king and his advisor sat together and each ate bread with honey. The view from the window showed the square below the castle and all the people gathered there. While they talked about this and that,, the king leaned out the window to better look around. Just then a drop of honey dropped from the king's bread, but the king did not notice that it fell down and landed on the windowsill. And then ... Plopp, plopp, plopp (can use your hand to show the drop as it drops) The honey landed on the ground below the window. The advisor immediately noticed when the honey droplet landed on the street and immediately asked the king. "Your Majesty, a drop of honey fell to the ground. Should I have someone clean it up?" "No no. It's not our problem", the king replied. Soon a little fly came by. Swish, Swish, Swis...