VERY short stories

In recent weeks, I have been writing very short stories for my English classes (adult ed). By very short stories, I mean 250-300 words in length. Stories that will fit on one sheet of paper, followed by text-based questions and critical-thought questions, to help my ABE (Adult Basic Education) readers develop stronger reading comprehension skills, as well as using context clues, predictions, and such, in pursuit of overall English Language Arts improvement. I also use writings from various websites, always using proper citation for other authors’ works.

Sometimes I use prompts that I’ve given to students in the past, and other times I have ideas that I want to use for an essay-length tale, but whatever the topic, I try to make it interesting and appropriate for the setting–i.e., incarcerated adults. I’ve received countless suggestions that I use this textbook or that workbook containing short stories with questions at the end of them, but what I’ve discovered in my years of teaching Adult Education in the correctional setting is that most of my students do not possess enough working short-term memory to read a traditional-length short story and answer questions about it. If the story is longer than one 81/2″ x 11″ page, they will struggle mightily to retain the gist of the tale long enough to answer questions about it.

Now, you might protest and say that it’s my job to take them beyond single-page stories, and I might agree with you. But I have to start somewhere, don’t I? In this limited setting, then, I start where I can do the most good. As my students improve, I can lengthen the stories to a page and a half, or two pages. But the point is not the length of story, my friends. The point is the Lexile difficulty of the story. The more advanced I make the vocabulary of the story, the greater the progress that my students can make, even if the story is very short.

So I will continue with my VERY short stories and follow up questions. I intend to post some of the stories here, and I might even include the questions. How thrilling for you. Really.