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Freshmen and Five Hundred Words
Author(s) -
Batchelor Katherine E.,
King April
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of adolescent and adult literacy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.73
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1936-2706
pISSN - 1081-3004
DOI - 10.1002/jaal.324
Subject(s) - class (philosophy) , flash (photography) , mathematics education , creative writing , fiction writing , pedagogy , psychology , computer science , literature , visual arts , art , artificial intelligence
Abstract This article shares two National Writing Project Teacher Consultants' interest in examining student engagement in writing flash fiction using mentor texts. Our two‐week unit centered on two high school freshmen classes (one class identified as “at‐risk” and another class identified as “college prep”), and we found the use of mentor texts assisted both classes in writing in an unknown genre: flash fiction. We begin by describing flash fiction as a genre and the benefits of teaching it in high school writing, share research on mentor texts, and then describe instructional lessons, noting specific texts and procedures employed. We also share samples of students' writing that resulted in a class anthology of their flash fiction pieces. The article ends by sharing differences between classes and implications for writing in high schools.