What
can 100-word stories help your students understand about writing? The short
answer is, everything!
This
flash-fiction form has become a popular structure for efficiently teaching a
wide variety of literary devices, terms, and processes in a targeted way. Part
teaching guide, part anthology, 100-Word Stories is a dynamic guide
complete with lessons and prompts to help young writers learn and practice
literary elements, narrative skill, and personal voice.
Through
a collection of accessible lessons, each with a mentor text that is either
student- or author-created, Culbertson and Faulkner share insight into using
these “small, bright things” in the ELA classroom. The book’s structure is
meant to be flexible–you might dip in and out of the lessons as needed to
supplement existing curricula, or you might choose to teach an entire unit
based on the lessons. No matter how you
employ them, this short form can create expansive practice for young writers.