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...

 While my younger students are on their Around the World Virtual Trip, my older students are working on various writing assignments. We decided to try out Six Word Stories this week after discussing Flash Fiction. Is it really posibble to write a story in six words? After reading many samples, we realized that what you write is just enough for your mind to fill in the blanks with the rest of the story. Even if it is only six words, it still needs a character and conflict. And the best ones also have a twist.  After writing both together and individually, we thought this was a fun genre of writing. The next step up from this is called Dribble, with max 50 words. After that comes Drabble with a max of 100 words. As a natural progression, I plan to have my students turn one of their six word stories into a dribble for our next lesson. What will enhance the story and head the reader in the right direction? For the picture on the right, here is a sample of a six-word story:  P...