Eyes sunken in, hair matted with salt, skin taut against our bones–Ella and I must have looked a sight. It seemed like ages ago that we were lounging on the beach, painting our nails and comparing summer reading lists.
I had put Life of Pi on mine but, given the present circumstances, I figured I could probably cross that one off.
Inspired by Sonya’s #3LineTales at Only100Words. Interested in writing your own three lines? Here’s the original prompt. Happy three-lining!
Lend me your stories in all their threads–
tangled yarn, sun, prayers, shadows undone
–and I’ll stitch you a dream. Don’t worry; it’s harmless. It’s fun.
Inspired by Sonya’s #3LineTales at Only100Words. Interested in writing your own three lines? Here’s the original prompt. Happy three-lining!
It’s amazing how a simple set of instructions can elicit so many questions.
Imagine you are Nicholas. Write a short story starting with the phrase: “Yesterday, I got in trouble because…” Describe what happened and how you handled the punishment.
I gave this writing prompt to my Class 7 students. We had just finished reading Hector Hugh Munro’s “The Lumber Room,” a short story about a witty boy named Nicholas who gets in trouble and repeatedly outsmarts his aunt. These were the questions that came my way over the next twenty minutes:
Ma’am, should we write in our Language or Literature copy?
Do we need to write the question in our copy?
Is this story supposed to be about Nicholas or about us?
What if I’m not really a naughty person?
Should I include Nicholas’s family in the story?
Why are you telling us to be the person who gets in trouble and also be the person who gives the punishment?
What should the heading be?
Can I write my story all in one paragraph?
How long does it have to be?
In India, students have a “copy” or notebook for each subject. They do all their classwork and homework in their copies. It’s very rare to see teachers handing out worksheets or students doing work on loose sheets of paper.
My students don’t have a generic English class—they have Language, Literature, and Creative Writing. This means that I always have to specify which of their three English copies I want them to write in. As you can tell from their questions, students are also incredibly concerned about how they should format their work.
Despite the initial confusion, most of the students understood the assignment after I re-explained the directions. By the end of class, I had a stack of copies with stories about broken glass, stolen cookies, pranks with rubber snakes, broken television sets, and angry mothers.
One useful technique I learned from that lesson is to ask the whole class some clarifying questions after I give out the instructions.
Last week during Creative Writing, I handed each student colored paper and pictures of nature and explained this fictional scenario:
I’m your boss and we all work at a travel company. Tourism has gone down because people are too busy or too lazy to travel. Now, I need you to describe your picture with as many details as you can to encourage more people to travel.
Then, I asked the whole class these clarifying questions:
Can you write something fictional?
Should you give your place a name?
To which most of the students chorused: Yes. Only a few thought the answers were No, but their voices were drowned out by the people who answered correctly.
This strategy saves a lot of time because it means I don’t have to answer the same question many times. The activity went really well, and the students were happy to see their work displayed in the hallway.
Students are always excited to do anything that involves pictures or props.
Aksharbet 