Day 10

What kid wouldn't want to participate in a drabble contest? We're working on fiction writing in my classes right now, and kids have been highly engaged in a series of writing activities that get them into character development, setting descriptions, and plot. We've also brought in a lesson about irony and a refresher on other various tools that have been introduced this year. All of this is leading up to some time for the kids to write their own short stories. You'd think we were serving up ice cream sundaes by the way students respond to this genre of writing. A good teaching buddy and fellow SOLer summed it up nicely in her post called Story Time.

So what's a drabble? For the last several years, I've known it to be flash fiction, "fiction of extreme brevity" according to Wikipedia, but this year I learned that a drabble is a story of exactly 100 words, which suits my purposes; plus, the word has a certain ring to it, so I'm sticking with it for now.

Today, we set the ground rules to include character, setting, conflict, and a surprise ending. Then we set the timer. The race was on, and it was the most fun I've had in writing workshop all year. Writers wrote with urgency in an unleashing of creative energy I wasn't sure was possible. And the ideas around the room were all over the place leaving me to wonder, "How did these kids come up with this stuff?" I read drabbles set at birthday parties, dinner plates, on the branches of a tree, and in a fish bowl all in one class.

Yesterday, I attended a meeting about a student who struggles with writing. We discussed this complex case for an hour and a half to implement new accommodations and a plan for the future. It's been weeks since any of us have been able to get more than a few words on the page from him. During today's contest? He drabbled with the best of them.