How to make stories more interesting

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

To make stories more interesting, you could use pictures to spice it up a little and send them as emails to your students. What do you think? I’ll have to come back to this one, but could you add a short one of your own?

By Mike Krath

High and Lifted Up

It was a windy day.
The mailman barely made it to the front door. When the door opened,Mrs. Pennington said, “hello”, but, before she had a real chance to say “thank you”, the mail blew out of the mailman’s hands, into the house and the front door slammed in his face. Mrs. Pennington ran to pick up the mail.

“Oh my,” she said.
Tommy was watching the shutters open and then shut, open and then shut.
“Mom,” he said, “may I go outside?”
“Be careful,” she said. “It’s so windy today.”
Tommy crawled down from the window-seat and ran to the door. He opened it with a bang. The wind blew fiercely and snatched the newly recovered mail from Mrs. Pennington’s hands and blew it even further into the house.
“Oh my,” she said again. Tommy ran outside and the door slammed shut.
Outside, yellow, gold, and red leaves were leaping from swaying trees, landing on the roof, jumping off the roof, and then chasing one another down the street in tiny whirlwinds of merriment.
Tommy watched in fascination.
“If I was a leaf, I would fly clear across the world,” Tommy thought and then ran out into the yard among the swirl of colors.
Mrs. Pennington came to the front porch.
“Tommy, I have your jacket. Please put it on.”
However, there was no Tommy in the front yard.
“Tommy?”
Tommy was a leaf. He was blowing down the street with the rest of his play-mates.
A maple leaf came close-by, touched him and moved ahead. Tommy met him shortly, brushed against him, and moved further ahead. They swirled around and around, hit cars and poles, flew up into the air and then down again.
“This is fun,” Tommy thought.
The maple leaf blew in front of him. It was bright red withwell-defined veins. The sun-light shone through it giving it a brilliance never before seen by a little boy’s eyes.
“Where do you think we are going?” Tommy asked the leaf.
“Does it matter?” the leaf replied. “Have fun. Life is short.”
“I beg to differ,” an older leaf said suddenly coming beside them. “The journey may be short, but the end is the beginning.”
Tommy pondered this the best a leaf could ponder.
“Where do we end up?”
“If the wind blows you in that direction,” the old leaf said, “you will end up in the city dump.”

< 2 >

 "I don't want that," Tommy said. 
 "If you are blown in that direction, you will fly high into the air and see things that no leaf has seen before." 
 "Follow me to the city dump," the maple leaf said. "Most of my friends are there." 
 The wind blew Tommy and the maple leaf along. Tommy thought of his choices. He wanted to continue to play. 
 "Okay," Tommy said, "I will go with you to the dump." 
 The winds shifted and Tommy and the leaf were blown in the direction of the city dump. 
 The old leaf didn't follow. He was blown further down the block and suddenly lifted up high into the air. 
 "Hey," he called out, "the sights up here. They are spectacular. Come and see." 
 Tommy and the maple leaf ignored him. 
 "I see something. I see the dump." The old leaf cried out. "I see [url=http://www.detonationfilms.com/Return%20Of%20Agent%2012/RA12%20Production%20Stills/Burn-Smoke-Cookie.jpg]smoke[/url]. Come up here. I see [url=http://216.26.190.16/galleries/outdoors/camp_fire_001.jpg]fire[/url]." 
 "I see nothing," the maple leaf said. 
 Tommy saw the fence that surrounded the city dump. He was happy to be with his friend. They would have fun in the dump. 
 Suddenly, a car pulled up. It was Tommy's mom. Mrs. Pennington wasn't about to let her little boy run into the city dump. 
 "Not so fast," she said getting out of the car. "You are not allowed to play in there. Don't you see the smoke?" 
 Tommy watched the maple leaf blow against the wall and struggle to get over. He ran over to get it but was unable to reach it. 
 Mrs. Pennington walked over and took the leaf. She put it in her pocket. 
 "There," she said, "it will be safe until we get home." 
 Tommy smiled, ran to the car and got in. He rolled down the back window and looked up into the sky. He wondered where the old leaf had gone. Perhaps one day he would see what the old leaf had seen - perhaps.
2

I’m interested in what happens to the mailman, please tell me more!

3

Hi aubrey,

First, I think you have a really good idea there (by the way, I also like your peripatetic teaching idea).

I could be wrong about the following, but here goes:

I think that in order to do what you’re talking about with e-mail, the sender of the e-mail would have to “embed” (or whatever the term is) the link using hypertext markup language (HTML) tags.

I don’t know HTML, but I looked up how you would embed a URL using HTML tags and saw an example that looked something like this:

NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML

I tried the above embedded link on my Lycos e-mail account, by typing it in plain text and switching to “Power Editor,” and it worked. I also tried it on my Hotmail account by typing it with “Rich-Text Editor OFF” (i.e., plain text) and then turning “Rich-Text Editor ON,” and again, it worked.

With my Yahoo account, I can’t just click a button on the e-mail message I’m composing to change from plain text (either that, or I can’t find the button). To change from plain text to rich text, or vice versa, I have to click “Mail Options,” about halfway up on the far right side of the page, then click “General Preferences,” then scroll down to “Composing E-mails” and click the circle by either “Compose messages as color and graphics” or “Compose messages as plain text.” Then I have to save the change.

So with Yahoo, I put the link with HTML tags in a plain-text message, then saved the message as a draft, then went back to Mail Options > General Preferences > Composing E-mails, clicked “Compose messages as color and graphics,” and then saved the change.

When I went back to Drafts and clicked on my message, the link was embedded.

I think that one possible drawback is that (again, I think) not all e-mail recipients’ accounts receive embedded links as embedded because (I think) some accounts don’t accept HTML tags, but rather, just display them as text, the way my HTML-tag example above does.

But your idea is a good one and well worth trying.

I hope this helps, and I hope someone corrects me soon if I’m wrong about anything (or, as is quite possible, about everything).

xp+10K

P.S. The URL of the page where I got the example is included in the example, and I’ve embedded it here, too (using bulletin-board tags).

4

I might use this idea on the website I am composing for my language arts classes to reinforce their spelling and vocabulary words.

5

I think you want to be careful with that aubrey. For example if you want to show what a windy day looks like it would probably be better to have a picture of a windy day. Otherwise your students might think that a windy day was actually a guy doing a trick with a pole. And if you want to show a “front” door you should probably show a door that is obviously a “front” door and not just any door. And when your story refers to a “front” door in an open condition it is probably better to show a “front” door in an open condition rather than an “inside” door in an open condition…

I think the question that you want to ask yourself generally with this is -
Does this picture really capture the essence of, for example, the word outside? To me a picture of a light pole somehow doesn’t quite cut it. To me a picture that really got to the essence of the word “outside” would be one that contrasted “outside” with “inside”. I mean it would hardly do to teach them that outside meant “light pole” would it?

6

xp+10k wrote:

I want to teach my summer camp students how to set up new email accounts, and when I do, I’ll use yahoo because I have found it very easy to use. In other words, they’ll all have the same kind of accounts. Thanks for sharing your insights regarding this matter and for your encouragement concerning the peripatetic pedagogue thread.

imaniOU wrote:

Please let us know how well it worked once you’ve done it.

Bob wrote:

I only took a few minutes to set up the story in my opening post. When doing it for students I’ll be much more careful. The guy hanging onto the pole was done just for fun.

7

Hi aubrey,

I hope you keep us posted about your e-mail project and your peripatetic project as well.

xp+10K

8

I sure will xp+10k.