Blog 2 CALL January 19, 2010

Dear TESOL bloggers,

I found three great sites that contain short stories that can be used in K-8 classes.
http://www.indianchild.com/short_stories.htm This contains SHORT INSPIRING STORIES. The site is user-friendly and not slick, simply functional: scan list, select story and click, print text, read with kids and do your follow-up activities.

The second site is slicker, contemporary, is better indexed, but is basically a good resource for texts:
http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/childrenindex.html SHORT STORIES

These can be used as a text for cultural or ethical conversation courses, the point de départ for a writing or dialogue/role-play activity. I would suggest studying a genre such as the fable, then having the kids write individually or as a group to create their own fable. The fables could be copied and assembled into a book that would be distributed to the parents and kept for posterity. Students (people!) love to get published!!!! Great for parent teacher conferences or for the first parents' night of the scholastic year. The stories would make great displays, either all together in a display window in the hallway, or featured one story a week on a special board. The student would read their story either in the library (read "New York bookstore') or in the classroom for their peers.
So now you have reading, vocabulary building, discourse, literary genre, art of writing and editing, peer editing, group project, publishing, reading out loud, celebrating creativity!! IT'S WIN WIN WIN.