For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.
6 words but a full story, right?
It has all of the parts of a story: character, plot (with a climax & implied resolution), and conflict. It also evokes a strong image and emotions. I find such stories are a great way to get students working more closely with these story parts and using their inference skills before tackling longer works of fiction, or even non-fiction.
I use short, short writing in a variety of ways in my high school classroom. Here are a few suggestions you could use right away in your classroom too!
Six-word memoirs
These little stories (https://www.sixwordmemoirs.com/) from Larry Smith (no relation!). These provide life stories in, you guessed it, 6 words. There’s even a section of the site devoted to teens. I use these as a form of introduction at the start of the year (I’m not a fan of traditional ice breakers but these work well.). Or consider writing the ‘memoir’ of a character or summing up a unit as part of the review process or even a reflection activity to end the school year.
Here’s my contribution:
Pandemic – everyone is tired. Summer’s here!
Need some added inspiration? Looking for added timely options? Here are examples focused specifically on the pandemic with a list curated by Smith, creator of six-word memoirs: Opinion | The Pandemic in Six-Word Memoirs
55-word stories
An online search will find you swimming in options for 55-word stories but I tend to focus on those by Steve Moss, who ran an annual contest and edited several anthologies too. I love them for practicing inference skills. Each story usually has a twist and so a first read or a re-read means students have to connect pieces that might not be immediately obvious. An added challenge is in having students write their own 55-word stories. To plan the parts on a larger scale and then boiling it down to 55 words to share character, plot, conflict, and a great twist!
From Anecdote to Poetry
Boiling it down is the name of the game with this activity. I ask students to write out something that happened to them recently – a quick moment from their life as a quick write or free write (often as a bell ringer to warm up for class). Always making clear that this is something for school and might be shared with other students in the class throughout the process. So after the quick write, they start to boil it down. First cut it in half; just go through and cross out words. It doesn’t have to be grammatically correct but it should still convey the moment. Then again, down by half. The ultimate goal is to get it down to 15-30 words at most and then to create a free verse poem from the story.
Here’s a student example with the drafts from beginning to end.
For other ideas about quick writes check out this post or this post on ELA Matters.
And if you’re looking for an already made lesson all about short, short writing – aka Flash Fiction, then check out this lesson about 55-word stories from Lesa @SmithTeaches9to12.
