Very Short Stories

These stories are written to help students focus on the use of language and structure where key aspects such as mood, characterization and setting are evoked in a short space of time. There are activities for exploring the stories at word, sentence and text level, with speaking and listening tasks.

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A New Windmill Book of Very Short Stories contains a collection of very short stories from a range of genres chosen to interest and appeal to students at Key Stage 3. Some of the stories are written by well-known authors, such as Paul Jennings, Jan Mark, Susan Price and Ray Bradbury. Others are by new authors. Each of them can be read in less that 10 minutes and offers and example of a well-structured and complete text. The stories have been arranged into pairs so that students can compare writing on similar themes or in the same genre. The activities at the end of the book are based on identified sentence and text level objectives of the Framework for Teaching English. Speaking and listening objectives are also covered. The stories have been chosen to enable students to read for meaning, understand the author's craft and apply what they have learnt to their own writing. They ae also accessible stories that will arrest the attention and engage the imagination of all students across Key Stage 3.