Short stories can provide diverse and fun lessons. With those lessons, you can pack in mentor sentences, student choice, writing lessons, and more. Read how two teachers balance it all.
Melissa’s Approach
Use short stories to meet standards and teach literary devices. As an instructional coach, Melissa models reading skills for her students. Plus, since short stories are short, they are easy to use as differentiation tools in reader’s workshop. Try it in middle or high school by starting with these tips!
Lauralee’s Ideas
Short stories are the perfect opportunity to provide student choice. Because teachers can hit a variety of standards from literature to language to writing with short stories, allow students a voice in what they read. By providing student choice, you are creating student buy-in.
We both typically teach short stories in August, but we find them useful to scaffold difficult concepts all year.