To contribute to this aim, I want to present you through this post, another way to enjoy with literature. I am referring to micro stories, also known as micro tales, micro fiction, flash fiction… In order to have a more clear idea about micro stories, it is useful to read some definitions about this term. For instance, Mac Millan Dictionary website defines them as “a style of literature in which stories are extremely short and often consist of less than 300 words”. Meanwhile, MicroStory website explains that “a MicroStory has no limits but length. A MicroStory must be 499 words or less. That is all”.

First image

Nevertheless, this is not something new for us. During the first year, in the subject Desarrollo de las Habilidades Comunicativas, the teacher taught us micro tales, concretely, he talked about a school where students wrote their own micro tales. He told us a Spanish micro tale that a girl of primary education created:

I do not exactly the reason why that moment was amazing for me. Maybe it is true that the best perfumes come in small bottles. Since that moment I understood, that micro tales could be a great and innovative tool to develop literature activities with our students.

In this sense, it is really interesting the lesson plan that Brown and Schulten (2013) propose to read and to write micro stories with students. An example could be the warm-up activity, where the teacher has to write in the blackboard the following micro tale, attributed to Ernest Hemingway:

Then, the teacher asks them to consider whether or not they think it is a story. Once students have had time to reflect on it, they can discuss with their peers about it.
Another great possibility to work micro tales is Twitter, where students can create their own flash fiction. Due to the fact that on Twitter, we have a limited number of characters to write each tweet, it is quite easy to develop good micro stories. A great model is @themicrostories.
Finally, I would like to stand out The tiny book of tiny stories, a book created throughout the collaboration of many flash fiction authors. Right after, there are some micro stories belonging to the book.

Second image

Third image

If you are interested in micro tales I recommend you to research the following websites and articles.

http://www.microstory.com/definition.php

https://www.guernicamag.com/fiction/epstein_5_15_11/

https://goldbot.wordpress.com/category/prose-2/micro-tales/

http://www.sixwordstories.net/

https://twitter.com/microcuentos

http://www.brainpickings.org/2011/12/13/the-tiny-book-of-tiny-stories/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLQAqAhrDPY

Brown, A. and Schulten, K. (2013). Short and Sweet: reading and writing flash fiction. Retrieved from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/short-and-sweet-reading-and-writing-flash-fiction/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

First image from http://www.tericrosschetwood.com/why-i-hate-flash-fiction/

Second and third images from http://www.brainpickings.org/2011/12/13/the-tiny-book-of-tiny-stories/