finding short stories for genre study

Hello Everyone.  I know this post would be better on the site Sarah told us about on the last day of class, but I was in such a fog, I really can't remember anything about it.  Anyway, I am looking for short stories for middle school (or upper elementary) to teach different literary genres.  I have found excellent examples for  poetry, science fiction, and fiction but am looking for examples of fantasy, historical fiction, biography (if possible), and autobiography (I was thinking about just looking for a chapter in a larger chunk of text).  I have already taught a million Edgar Allen Poe stories with them and also "The Lottery".  Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!  Hope you all are well

Sarah Rebecca

Sarah Rebecca, my daughter named after my own mother whose advise to me usually started, "The Good Book says.." or  "You can not do wrong just because someone else does wrong." She was named after my grandmother as well whose words were "Never tell a man what you are leaving until you are gone" and "Always keep your FU money in the bank." Sarah is my grandmother, Rebecca, the middle name my daughter shares with my mother.  The order of names was no accident. I thought it best to will her my grandmother's fire tempered by my mother's grace instead of the challenge of always looking for forgiveness for breaking the rules. I believe in the weight of names. My given name Marissa is used outside the family, but the people closest to me call me Mimi, a childhood nickname. Marissa tries to follow the rules, Mimi would rather make a mistake, acts on impuse and will never look back wondering what if because she did. It is a hard life at times, but I hope Sarah will be like that, although I know that being her mother as she lives that kind of life will take a certain amount of patience and a certain amount of wine.

I  semi jokingly tell Sarah that she will definitely need therapy one day being my daughter but she will have great stories to tell at cocktail parties. I say your mother is a feminist, but not the Gloria Steinem kind, more of the Erica Jung mixed with Condelessa Rice, a large dose of Zora Neale  Hurston and equal portions of your namesakes. A Chocolate Elephant, I say who can't wait until her friend Joe can marry his partner, and whose favorite president is Ronald Reagan. I am a smorgasboard of contradictions I warn her. It will sometimes be do as I say not as I did. I have broken a good number of the Commandments with no regret. I am the daugher of an alcoholic raised on constant alert and anxiety. I have no idea how to be like your friends' mothers I tell her. I can make cookies, carpool and french braid your hair, but I am never going to marry your father, I say way too many bad words and I seriously do want you to hire Chippendale dancers for my wake. 

She is more conservative than me although I can see her dipping her toe into rebel waters. I won't let her wear make up or date until she is fifteen, but I bought the fushia hair dye for her she wanted, although she furiously objects to my interest in purple streaks. We argue alot. She can make me madder than anyone else, but I admire my girl's toe to toe verbal combat skills. She will make her way just fine in this world rising up to face the challenge of growing up middle class among alot of McMansions, half-white, half-black, harder on herself than I ever could be. 

Sarah and I make deals and have developed a system for Q &A on hot button issues that sorta of works. She will ask me a question and since we both agree I am not my own best censor I will say, "Do you want Marissa to answer meaning I will pause, sometimes for a while and give her the most Ozzie and Harriet answer possible to her question or do you want Mimi to answer which means her cheeks may turn red and she may wish she had waited until eighth grade health class in some cases, but either way I won't lie to her. Well not anymore, now that we are past Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, things I never had the chance to believe in that I want her to have in her memory as times of wonder and awe. 

She thinks I love her twin brother more. This of course is not true, its just that they are both very much like me, only she is the hell raising side of me, the driven from some place so deep I can't even find it place, the fighter, and stubborn willed side. While her brother has the softer side, the rum and coke let's lounge on the sofa and make up funny stories starring the cat with different accents. Two live wires spark, a negative and a postive make a charge, neither is better, they just look and feel different.  I watch her run 12 miles a week. I watch her get straight A's. I watch her my little social butterfly. I watch her watching me and I try my best to lead her well. My Sarah Rebecca, from me, and more than me. The best of me.

Top 10 Reasons to enroll in the Seven Valley Writing Project Summer Institute, by Kelley

Top 10 Reasons to enroll in the Seven Valley Writing Project Summer Institute

10. you can take part in lively, thought-provoking discussions

9. you become familiar with professional terminology such as BTFU and “pain in the ass”

8. you learn interesting facts, like Liv Tyler’s dad was in some band

7. you can enjoy music, mayhem, and mashugana

6. your fear of math may transform into fun with math

5. you have the freedom to free write

4. you create some useful demos, and steal some useful demos

3. you meet some great people

2. great stuff happens in writing group, and whatever happens in writing group stays in writing group

1.  you will witness nervousness blooming into beauty at the Blue Frog

Kelley's mission

My Mission Statement:

I am a teacher who values lifelong learning, not simply for the sake of acquiring knowledge, but with the purpose of using it and sharing it. As we share our knowledge, we also grow. I strive for students to thrive. I strive to instill in students an intrinsic joy of learning, of reading, of writing, of math, of science, and exploring their world. I attempt to treat all students and colleagues with respect and kindness. My mission, as I tell my students, is to do everything within my power to “help you become your best you.”

Burning Question Final Reflection by Bird

I entered Summer Institute with a multitude of questions. How can I become more technologically savvy? How can I engage my students more? What is wrong with my curriculum? How can I stop feeling so frustrated with myself and with my students? How can I learn about the profession of teaching through a philosophy that reflects my beliefs? How can I learn some of the professional vocabulary that I have never been exposed to so that I sound like I know what I am talking about? I wanted the common language that all teachers use to discuss theory and practice. This was a lot more than just one burning question.

I began by trying to narrow down these questions by trying to find commonalities between the topics and finding what was being answered through the curriculum of Summer Institute, I slowly began to chisel away at the gigantic boulder that had been weighing me down. Specifically, Google Docs became my new best friend. He taught me how to blog and how to use him as a tool to keep myself and my students more organized and have less clutter. I learned about the write-talk-write method, found it to be personally and professionally fulfilling, so I began to restructure my curriculum to integrate more of these strategies. I stopped and asked myself- what is working in my classroom, what is not, and what power do I have to change it? I sorted though the body of my curricula and decided that my skeleton needed to be reconstructed with a 3D printer. I needed a better framework to hang all of the different systems that I taught. My bones would be build through my writing program. I was finally able to focus my burning question onto my writing journals and independent reading program. By this time, it was the middle of Summer Institute. I had finally stopped feeling like I had a tangled ball of string that I was desperately trying to unravel, but could never find the end, only more pieces. Through mentoring, conferencing, reading, participating in demos, and listening to stories of other teachers, I formulated a plan on how to set up writing logs for each of my classes: social studies, science, and ELA. I reflected on the problems I had in the past with my classroom journals and what I wanted them to look like this coming school year. I chucked out junk that was not working with wild abandonment. I redesigned my supply list for my students and began to explore more multi-modalities to use as texts and learning strategies for my students. I will be designing the strategy list and the rules for each book during the rest of my summer while I redesign my reading program to reflect more independent reading instead of book clubs. I know that my students will want to be able voice their opinions on the curriculum changes (excellent authentic persuasive writing time!) and we will reflect on them together in class using the write-talk-write model. I will probably be making adjustments after eight weeks of trying out our new system (if not sooner!). It is an organic process that will happen with both parties involved. I will ask them: what is working, what doesn't work, and what would you suggest? My goal is to keep writing about the process of these changes, taking notes on how the new ideas work and observing my students' reactions to the new learning styles. I will also chart if my changes to my curricula addressed my questions from the beginning of SI.

Ellie's Final Research Reflections

Ellie's Burning Question

When I am asked to help a student with writing, I wonder how much feedback to give.  Having worked in a college setting where we concentrated heavily on grammar, usage, and mechanics (because so many students arrive with large gaps in their knowledge), then moving to middle school level, I am not sure how thorough to be.  I understand that I need to approach each student where he or she is, and each classroom according to the teacher's style; but in the end, where should the students be by the time they reach high school?  And how can I best assist?  

Works Cited

Atwell, Nancie. In the Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1987. Print. Atwell provides the gold standard to teaching writing in the middle school. She believes that grammar, usage, mechanics, and spelling are only addressed after the content is set, and the piece is ready for actual publication. Even then, she concentrates only on one or two high priority items, with the understanding that a student must build her skills slowly and deliberately.

Calkins, Lucy. The Art of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994. Print. In the chapter, "Editing: Learning the Conventions of Written Language," Calkiins prioritizes content writing over correctness, but she also makes a good case for "precise, graceful language," in final published pieces. To that end, she will take a student's work home and apply her blue editor's pen, but she qualifies her actions by telling her students that all published authors have the privilege of an editor. Therefore, she is providing a real world, authentic writing experience.

"Middle School Teacher to Literacy Coach." Web log post. : Incorporating Grammar and Conventions into Writing Workshop. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 July 2013. <http://middleschoolteachertoliteracycoach.blogspot.com/2013/03/incorporating-grammar-and-conventions.html>. A middle school language arts teacher discusses her inner pondering over grammar instruction. She posits that "writing should be fun and free." While I don't agree that that is always possible, I am in concert with her opinion that no student needs a personal editor in the early stages of writing, and that no teacher should be spending hours correcting. She says, "Students will never internalize how to use the proper conventions in their writing if they do not construct that knowledge and learn how to apply that knowledge to their own writing."

Weaver, Constance, Carol McNally, and Sharon Moerman. "To Grammar or Not to Grammar: That Is Not the Question." Voices from the Middle 8.3 (2001): 17-33. Print. The premise is that "a little grammar goes a long way," but that grammar lessons are often necessary, as long as they are not delivered in isolation. McNally offers a sample lesson using a passage from The Giver. She first chopped Lowry's sentences, putting the text through a "regression process," and then let her students "discover" the discrepancy. The authors are heavily influenced by the "brush stroke" technique of writing as delineated by author Harry Noden in his 1999 book, Image Grammar. Noden compares an artist's brush strokes to words that create imagery. The writing here tends to be technical and scholarly, most suited to the serious grammarian looking to hold off on the red pen.

Zemelman, Steven, and Harvey Daniels. A Community of Writers: Teaching Writing in the Junior and Senior High School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1988. Print. "The English Teacher's Red Pen" provided an excellent overview of the philosophy behind limited selective grammar instruction. The chapter "Responding, Evaluating, and Grading" was especially useful in providing nuts and bolts procedure. Included are The Diederich Analytic Scale for grading and another generic scale, both powerful tools for times when there is need for more intensive assessment.

Conclusion

             Having perused these five entries, I have come to the conclusion that grammar instruction has a place in middle school writing, but that it must be approached sparingly and with great sensitivity.  No instruction should be ever given as a drill separate from the context of actual student writing, although it may be approached within a piece of authentic, published young adult literature, (as demonstrated by Carol McNally in “To Grammar or Not to Grammar: That is Not the Question”).  On any given assignment, most students will do best with one revision that, once pointed out in a limited context, they will then search out through the remainder of their piece.  No teacher should wield a red pen, marking out every correction until a student’s page is a sea of red.  Lucy Calkins, however, offers the blue pencil treatment once a piece is in the publication stage and with the author’s permission, because that is real world editing.  In conclusion, I am hereby satisfied that my “burning question” has been most satisfactorily laid to rest.

Ellie's Mission Statement

I am a bright, well-educated, talented individual who believes in the power of Teaching Assistants to influence change.  I value the thirst for knowledge and innate curiosity that lies with every student.  I strive for  personal, co-constructive relationships with my students, the ones who need my assistance and the ones who seem to stand on their own.  I will create change by rising above my status, giving all that I have to give, listening as hard as I can, and affecting growth, one child at a time.