Beyond the Book Report: Ways to Respond to Literature Using New York Times Models. Victor J.
Blue for The New York TimesWord, a bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, provides guidance to browsers with irreverent “shelf talkers,” like this one for “The Book of Night Women,” by Marlon James.Go to related article » | Go to related slide show » Below, we present some alternatives to that classic classroom assignment, the book report. All of our ideas are inspired by The New York Times in some way, either because we’ve adapted an interesting format, or because we were inspired by an article, review, essay, interview or multimedia feature. Less Is More: Using Social Media to Inspire Concise Writing. Overview | How can online media like Twitter posts, Facebook status updates and text messages be harnessed to inspire and guide concise writing?
In this lesson, students read, respond to and write brief fiction and nonfiction stories, and reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of “writing short.” Materials | Slips of paper with brief stories (see below; one per student), computers with Internet access Warm-Up | Before class, select six-word love stories from The Times’s Well blog, in the post itself and in the reader comments, to share with students. (You can find more stories in the same vein at the Web site Dear Old Love and Smith Magazine’s Six-Word Memoirs.) Teaching Creative Writing.