Author Topic: High School - Story Writing and Telling  (Read 2531 times)

Offline zachmokpo

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High School - Story Writing and Telling
« on: April 06, 2009, 07:40:18 am »
I was using another lesson week and it was horribly failing so I came up wiht this. I had students work in groups of four. Each student would write down four words. There would be a total of 16 words. I would then have the students write a story of 12-16 sentences using all 16 words. I could give them 30 minutes to write their story. The final 156 minutes of class would be used for presenting their stories. The lesson worked pretty well and I got some creative stories.

Here are some of them below.

Yesterdy was April Fools Day. In the morning, we can't do any jokes to our teacher because we had an unlucky timetable and we didn't prepare our joke for April Fools day. So we decide to shock our teacher. We ordered chicken without saying to our homeroom teacher and we waited for it to arrive. Our homeroom teacher has disappeared. We didn't have any money.Therefore, we had to make money ourselves. Fortunately, we could borrow money from our friends. When the chicken arrived, we could pay and enoy it.

I achieved my dream. I became a computer specialist. I heard the information about computers. I studied English for this job and I was given a salary. So i bought the shoes and cut my hair in the hair shop. One day suddenly, I stole a woman's handbag and somebody saw that. So I killed him and I was cutting his head, arms, and body. I entered the prison. Finally, I was hung by the executor.

This is math class and I'm falling asleep. In the dream, I saw Super Junior. They cooked food on the desk and then I spilt a cup of milk on the desk and water on my pencil case. "Oh my g-d!" Super Junior was angry and Dong Hae hit me by car. I was surprised so I woke up! MY notes were wetted by my spittle and I raised my head. The teacher was in front of me. She has a stick with a rotten smile. I'm determined that I don't sleep in class. That is the worst nightmare in my life.

While I was going to the hospital because I was very sick, I saw a big rabbit, but then there was a bigger monkey! And then I saw a deer that was bigger than the rabbit and the monkey. I put cream and vegetables and all the animals in a pot and cooked them. I ate the food while listening to music. And after that, I wrote a book with a pencil. I ate it!!!!! And!!!!!!!! Suddenly, my body and face changed into an animal! Wow!!!!! My face turned into a deer. A tail grew out of my butt. It's so disgusting!!! But it was a dream. Thank god!

Offline Brian

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Interactive story telling (from JLP Resource Book)
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2009, 09:04:39 am »
** from the JLP Resource Book **
"You know, there comes a day in every man's life, and it's a hard day, but there comes a day when he realizes he's never going to play professional baseball." - Josh Lyman, from The West Wing.

Visit me: http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com

Offline nelg

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Reading a Short Story
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2011, 08:05:54 am »
I'm doing a class for winter camp with a few of the English teachers.  We all thought doing a book club type class would be fun and a relaxing way to spend a few hours this winter. I was thinking of doing a couple short stories rather than one longer book.

Any suggestions of a good, modern short story (old English can be difficult)? Or, on where to find them online?

Offline Bittens5

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Re: Reading a Short Story
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2011, 09:19:13 am »
What's the reading level of your group?

Students here seem to love Roald Dahl, and he's got a variety of short stories. Lamb to the Slaughter is the first that comes to mind, but the story is about a woman who kills her husband, so it may not be appropriate for your class.  Poison may be a bit more appropriate, but a bit less interesting.

Also, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is quite popular to read in American high schools. 

You could always use a flash fiction book like Nightfather.  The chapters are just a few pages, and not really related to each other, so you can pick and choose what you want to read. It's also about the Holocaust, so you can put some history in there if you choose.

If you need something grade/level specific, I can give you more specific examples.

Hope this helps!

Offline cath-mandu

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Re: Reading a Short Story
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2011, 09:39:43 am »

Hmm, here are some short stories...

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&docId=9863665

It would be interesting to start with something like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald-- mostly direct, clear language. If they've seen the film adaptation you can compare/contrast the two forms, if they haven't you can show them clips (or even watch it all together/assign it as a "homework" task) and talk about that!

Here's the link to that short story...
http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/

As for maybe something more contemporary...
http://www.short-stories.co.uk/cgi-bin/read_db.pl?genre=fiction&search_field=classic&search_for=N&order_by=author_last,title&page=1&type_ind=stories

But I don't know about the quality of these, as it's just a database.

Good luck!  :)

Offline bobranger

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Introduction to story writing
« Reply #5 on: April 07, 2011, 02:50:20 pm »
These are some ppts I used for an introduction to story writing lesson.

Offline alfredmaul

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Re: Introduction to story writing
« Reply #6 on: April 07, 2011, 03:10:09 pm »
I was thinking about making this for my advanced classes, to try to get some creative thought flowing from them.  Today we did the whole 'unscrambled story' thing and they seemed to enjoy it.

Your powerpoint is above usual waygook quality too.  Thanks.

Offline angelcyoung

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Re: Introduction to story writing
« Reply #7 on: May 16, 2011, 08:36:49 am »
These are some ppts I used for an introduction to story writing lesson.

Really great powerpoints.  Im doing a creative writing block with my students and this gives great subtance to the lesson.  Really high qualtiy

Offline aprcherry

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writingashort story
« Reply #8 on: August 03, 2011, 08:32:26 pm »
You can refer to it when teaching writing a short story.

Offline connielovesyou

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Re: High School - Story Writing and Telling
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2011, 06:05:22 pm »
Thank you.  This is something my advanced classes could probably do.