From about mid-March to mid-April Misha, Sam, RJ, Stuart, and Jiyong participated in a short story unit where they further developed their writing skills and critically examined the parts of a short story and learned how to write one themselves. The unit started off with learning about where writer’s find their story inspiration or “seeds” from. Similarly to how E.B. White found his inspiration for “Charlotte’s Web”, the students examined their journal entries for a possible “seed” for a new story. The students then developed one story “seed” idea from their journal. During the next class, the students learned about another way of generating story “seed” ideas. In this class, the students were learning about looking at events, feelings, and memories from their past and using those to create a new story “seed”. To do this, each of the students were given a question that prompted them to talk about an event or feeling from their past. In small groups each student would answer their question and then as a group the students would generate possible story “seed” ideas based on the students story. Our next class was spent examining the parts of a short story. The students learned about the terms introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution which are the different parts of a story. They also learned about the types of events that take place and the information that is typically revealed in each part of the story. The students practiced identifying the parts of a short story by looking at the story of “The Three Little Pigs” and a Coca Cola commercial. During the next class, to gain even further practice, the students read the short story “Zhlatah the Goat”. The students once again examined the text and identified it’s different parts and the types of information that was revealed in each part. The students then spent the last class brainstorming and narrowing down their final short story topic. The students would eventually develop their story idea into a short story. 

by Hannah Smith