Do you(r students) enjoy contemporary young adult fantasy and/or sci-fi such as Harry Potter, Divergent, or The Hunger Games? Can that sort of literature jive with your established educational goals--reading, (creative) writing, brainstorming... even ebook publishing? Consider working directly with an indie YA author in a master`s level teaching program to customize an individual lesson or extended curriculum just for your class FOR FREE!

Although LEGEND OF THE ELEMENTALS is written primarily for entertainment purposes, as an English teacher I sometimes think very hard about how the text can be co-opted for educational purposes. I will never forget the fantastic opportunities given to me as a student to reflect upon books such as The Phantom Tollbooth, The Hobbit and 1984... which, combined with myriad other factors, contributed to my decision to become an author. And so I remain very much aware of the importance of choosing books that resonate with students as individuals and the class at large. I think that, ideally, students should be able to choose their own texts and reflect upon them in ways most appropriate to them individually... but I also understand that, more often than not, practical constraints--including but not limited to immaturity--preclude the ideal. And so tasks led--or at least strongly guided--by the teacher become necessary.

I am often tempted to write a thorough (mini)curriculum to tackle LEGEND OF THE ELEMENTALS as as a whole... but, without a great deal of context, this becomes very difficult. With that said, the following is an outline of a one-off, decontextualized scenario, submitted (and graded favorably) as part of my master`s program in TESOL. For the original assignment, as you can see, I have imagined a context that I felt may be appropriate to the proposed task, but whether or not I was right is up to the judgement of the teacher, and, ultimately, up to the students, as expressed in practical outcomes: Did they learn something from it? Do they understand how/why they learned something from it? Did they find it valuable (if not enjoyable, then at least interesting)? Was the lesson, objectively, a valuable educational experience for all involved? Guided by these student-centered principles, and a great deal of particular classroom context (including institutional goals), I would very much enjoy the opportunity to work "one-on-one" with teachers (and students, if reasonably possible) to develop English lessons that have real impact. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sample Legend of the Elementals Reading Lesson Plan
Learner Profile:Junior-high international school students with a high degree of fluency in English and a relatively high degree of emotional maturity, in a class of between 8 and 40 students. This lesson would take place midway or later in the semester, when students and the teacher are familiar with one another, when general classroom expectations have been well-established.Pre-reading Learning Objectives:Students will focus on the classroom subject at hand, with awareness raised. Prompted by audio-visual motivation, students will interact with each other in spoken English. Students will engage their episodic intellectual processes, relating themselves to a hypothetical situation in English.Pre-reading Task:Students have greeted the teacher, and all initial classroom management procedures (attendance, announcements, etc.) have been addressed. Students are seated, quiet, and paying attention to the teacher. The teacher plays a short video from Youtube featuring wingsuits (for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmlAW_1hgT8 ). As the video ends, the teacher says, “I know you're probably a bit young for bungee jumping or jumping out of an airplane, but have you ever fallen down or jumped from a high place... into a pool or a lake, for example? Were you excited or scared, or both? Did you land safely, or did you get hurt? If you haven't jumped or fallen down form somewhere high, you can talk about your impressions from videos like on Youtube, what you've seen on TV, or heard about directly from someone who's done something like that. Please form your desks into pods, groups of about 4 of your neighbors, and talk about it.”After a quick visual check to verify that students are on task, rearranging their desks and talking appropriately and in English, the teacher rewrites the prompt on the board: “Discuss your experiences falling or jumping from high places. Use your imaginations and/or stories you've heard.”After writing the prompt, the teacher is free to patrol the classroom, ensuring that students remain on task, and, as necessary and appropriate, identifying students who may have had traumatizing experiences with a fall, and perhaps discouraging discussions of suicide, for example, that may tend toward counterproductive distraction.After an appropriate amount of productive small-group discussion (no more than a few minutes), the teacher brings the students back into their original (teacher/forward-facing) classroom orientation for larger discussion, using a question form such as, “What were the most interesting stories you heard? Please talk about what you heard from your friends, not what you yourself said originally.”After working through a small amount of stories in a conversational manner, students' intimate, episodic memories should be activated, and the reading itself is ready to be introduced.Reading Objective:Students will read an unfamiliar text with the goal of getting the gist. Students will encounter surprising reading to inform practical reading strategies: specifically, that writing is sometimes intended to confound expectations. Students will learn to anticipate encounters with the surprising and unusual in reading selections.Reading Task:The teacher holds up the text to be read and says, “This is part of a story about someone who falls from a high place. You might expect for a fall to end with a landing, soft or hard, with a parachute, or with an injury of some kind, like we just talked about. Please read along silently, reread as you need to, in order to understand the situation, and be prepared to discuss what is... unique about this fall, about this landing. When you're ready, tun the text face-down and think about what surprised you, or maybe... what was supposed to surprise you, but didn't surprise you. If you finish faster than your friends, I'll put you in a small group to discuss what you read... in low voices, of course, until everyone comes to a point where we can begin a larger discussion.”The teacher then passes out the text, allowing students to start reading as soon as the selection is received. First visually checking to make sure that students indeed appear to be reading, the teacher then writes the new prompt on the board: “What surprised you? (What was supposed to surprise you?)” That done, the teacher is free to patrol the classroom, navigating toward hands raised silently by students with questions. Meanwhile, the teacher is anticipating problems with less proficient students, to be addressed one-on-one and case-by-case. In the expected absence of behavioral problems, students who finish quickly are directed by the teacher to take their chairs and form a group at a reasonable distance from the quietly reading students to discuss in low voices what they have read.Text Summary:In this early section of the authentic fantasy novel (the first in a series, rated 4+ stars and frequently among the top 10,000 free ebook downloads on Amazon.com), Ryan (the first-person narrator) is shoved over the edge of a balcony by the mysterious Sensei. As he falls, Ryan's innate ability to control the air is awakened. Ryan launches himself over the opposite site of the cylindrical tower from which he fell, and, after settling into a hovering position, Ryan is finally dragged onto a balcony by his friend Jason.Post-reading Objective:Students will engage in communicative speaking practice, relating themselves personally to the reading text. Students will engage with feedback provided in relation to the reading tasks. Students will apply meta-cognitive skills, reflecting upon what they have learned and how they have learned it.Post-reading Task:Once all the students have completed reading (and perhaps rereading parts of) the entire text provided (or most of it, in the case of lower-proficiency students who would have been identified and addressed case-by-case by the prudently anticipating teacher during the reading period), then the class would come back together in its original, teacher/forward-facing orientation for a survey and discussion.The teacher says, “Who was VERY surprised by what they read? Who was pretty surprised? Who was not really surprised? Who wasn't surprised at all? I'll repeat the questions. Please raise your hand for the one that seems most appropriate to how you feel.”The teacher then records the survey results for the four categories on the board, using tally marks, and making sure that each student has raised his hand once (and only once) in order to establish baseline universal classroom participation. Students who are not participating are addressed individually and, with help from their peers and the teacher, assign themselves to a category, or else create a new category. (This may take place once small-group discussions have begun, in order to limit pressure on the individual student from the group.) Then, the teacher says, “What do you see here? Is there an interesting question you want to ask the class based on what you read and what you can see here? Remember, try to ask the question to the class, not to me!”Students raise their hands for a chance to comment, and the students' questions guide the discussion. In the case of disciplined students highly motivated by the selection, moving directly back into free, small-group discussion of the text and its twist(s) may be possible. Questions such as “What surprised you? How do you know that this situation isn't 'realistic'? Did you like it? Why or why not?” could be pushed to the fire by the teacher, as necessary to guide small-group discussion, with different group membership, possibly randomized by the teacher.Some key notes for the teacher to hit explicitly, either drawing directly from student comments (in summary) or transitioning from the small-group discussions back to the whole class for conclusion at the close of the session: “Oftentimes, the most noteworthy, extraordinary writing surprises us, and it's not just in cases in fiction like this where the author wants you to think 'Wow, cool!' It happens in science, for example. Copernicus surprised everyone when he wrote that the earth revolved around the sun, not the sun around the earth, and Darwin surprised everyone when he wrote that humans and monkeys are related. We know it's true now, but the fact is, arguably, that they wouldn't have been as famous if they hadn't surprised the world so much. The lesson is this: anticipate the unexpected. Or, as Sensei says a little bit earlier in the book: 'Accept the unexpected.' In life, things change... for better and for worse, sometimes in reading, too. You have to be ready for it.”Rationale:“The teacher begins with a general introduction that also serves to check the students' background knowledge about the topic. This discussion not only orients the students to the topic but also increases their levels of motivation; since the teacher has now brought the topic to life, the students may want to learn more about it by reading the passage” (Farrell, 2009, p. 41).The main thrust of the lesson has been to anticipate surprises and handle them in a top-down (Nuttal, 1996, p. 158), broad, higher-level manner, combining whole-class discussion, group discussion, and one-on-one direction for a variety of approaches in order to meet the full spectrum of student needs. Students are tasked with reading critically, predicting surprises, visualizing and summarizing the action of the text, identifying genre (fantasy, not realism), paraphrasing discussion to formulate new direction for the discussion, and drawing conclusions and inferences, all of which are effective reading strategies according to Farrell (2009).Nuttal (1996) suggests that a general goal for a reading program might be “To enable students to enjoy (or at least feel comfortable with) reading in the foreign language, and to read without help unfamiliar authentic texts, at appropriate speed, silently, and with adequate understanding” (p. 31). To that end, scaffolding has been provided, with simple prompts to begin discussions, probing questions posed to elicit particular reasons throughout the discussion, and explicit clarification to be provided. (See key notes for the teacher to hit, above.) (Nuttal, 1996, p. 36)By the end of the post-reading activity involving the unfamiliar authentic text, students can be expected to have made some progress toward enjoying reading in English as a second language, after identifying what they did or did not enjoy about the reading, as a by-product of the simple analysis of what did or did not surprise them during the reading. Students who enjoyed the text may be quick to ask, “What happens next?” The use of aroused interest to tap into creative prediction ability, pushing the upper limits of Bloom's taxonomy, should be encouraged (Krathwohl, 2002).Even for students who did not enjoy the particular reading, they had been given ample opportunity to identify the reasons for their lack of enjoyment, and thus have been at least partially equipped with the means to identify the opposite: texts that have qualities that the individual student is likely to enjoy.Nuttal also identifies the role of the student in reading activities. Though the focus is clearly on the reading, the activities agree largely with Nuttal's focus on oral classroom interaction (p. 36) in a flexible, open-ended framework (p. 149). Throughout the given lesson, students have been tasked to take an active part in learning, leading their own discussions and dictating the larger class discussion. “Don't explain — explore!” (Lewis, 2000, 22). The students are responsible for monitoring their own comprehension, discussing what surprised them personally, with help coming from the teacher only as a last resort. “Usually, the ultimate objective is to for the students to achieve global understanding: that is, to understand the text as a whole and relate it to personal experience, other sources of knowledge other texts, and so on” (Nuttal, 1996, p. 151). By starting off with personal experience and others experience and comparing that with the content of the text, students are allowed the opportunity to intelligently compare and contrast their expanded knowledge base. In learning about the intent of texts to surprise, students learn to engage texts and take risks. They also are given the opportunity to work with potentially delicate, controversial subject matter (when the topic of suicide may come up) as an appropriate challenge (as determined with all due responsibility by the teacher) for learners' socio-linguistic skills. (Nuttal, 1996, p. 33)ReferencesFarrell, T.S.C. (2009). Teaching Reading to English Language Learners. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.Krathwohl, D. (2002, Autumn). A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: an overview. Theory into Practice, 41: 4. Ohio State University. ncdpi.wikipsaces.net/file/view/8+pers..., M., ed. (2000). Teaching Collocation: Further Developments in the Lexical Approach. Hove: Language Teaching PublicationsNuttal, C. (1996). Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language(2nd ed.). Heinemann.Sommer, J. (2012). Dream Lines Part III - Wingsuit proximity by Jokke Sommer.Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmlAW_1hgT8 Thornbury, S. (2005). Texts in context. Beyond the Sentence: Introducing discourse analysis, 85.Timmermeyer, K. (2012). Legend of the Elementals, Book 1: Reintroduction. Retrieved from http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/140553

An excerpt from Legend of the Elementals, Book 1: Reintroduction
When the four of us had gathered around him, Sensei put his arm around me and pulled me so that I was looking over the edge.“It is time for a demonstration,” he said.The wind whistled, cold and mournful. The tower seemed taller than it did from the outside. I gave Sensei a look and saw that he had another arm over Jason's shoulder, while the girls were standing on Jason's left. Then the old man let go of Jason to point a bony finger straight down.“Whatever happens, I want you to stay calm,” Sensei ordered, “and watch closely.”I peered through the thickening shadows for signs of anything interesting, but there was nothing there, except the green-black ring of grass that surrounded the tower.“Are you going to show us your talent, Sensei?” Erin's voice came from next to Jason.“Hopefully not,” Sensei answered in a little more than a whisper. He pulled back his arm and said, “There, look!”I put more weight on the railing and bent lower, encouraged by Sensei's excitement. As hard as I tried, though, I saw nothing but dark green. And the next thing I knew, my knees were scraping over the railing.I fell. I twisted on my back and watched Erin, Kris and Jason draw away in horror from Sensei, whose arms had pushed me over! The world was spinning, around and around and upside down. It was a long, dark way down, getting shorter every moment. A dream! I hoped, but no, this wasn't like any dreams about falling. I didn't wake up. I felt the wind tear through the space between my tensed fingertips. Breathing was like inhaling a roar, a scream against the inside of my mouth. My eyes wouldn't close. I was spinning. I saw the blur of gray stone and orange sky and black forest. I was moving further from the building. This was the end. After all the crazy things that had just happened, this would make sense.I suddenly remembered that in a high-speed collision, tightened muscles tear more easily, so I relaxed. Now, I could close my eyes. I inhaled a prayer… and suddenly felt something I could hold onto. Instinctively, I grabbed at it.It wasn't in my fingertips and it wasn't in my skin, though I felt it across my whole body: power, energy, potential of some kind. It felt like a billowing sail wrapped around me. I was suddenly no longer spinning. Though my eyes were closed, I knew that I was now falling face-first, spread-eagle, toward the ground.It was like a sail… No longer just grabbing, I pulled.A blast from the below hit me full in the face. Plummeting backward, I opened my eyes. My hands were balled into fists, but there was nothing in them but my own skin. Pulling again at the mysterious force, in the opposite direction, I tried to stabilize as the dark world shook about me.I slowed, and my direction seemed to shift. The cliffs were ahead of me. I was in a standing position. I noticed a massive circle of gray sticking out from in the dark green as I flew over it. Something had thrown me backward, over the tower. What was this? Twisting my body to see where the arc was taking me, there came the whoosh of wind, and I found myself falling again. I spread my fingers to pull once more at whatever had saved me.I shut my eyes against another loud, forceful burst of air. This time it was a bit more moderate; I wasn't pulling as hard. This feeling, whatever I was pulling on, helped me realize that I was rising again, spread-eagle. I pushed with my arms this time, as if swimming, and stopped rising. After a few moments, the hum of the blowing force—the air, I knew it was—didn't seem so frightening. I found the courage to open my eyes.“If you're worried about Ryan, let me go.” It was Sensei's voice, very close. “Grab his arm and pull him in,” he said.I turned and saw Erin, Kris, and Jason rush into view on the balcony immediately below. The tower seemed to be bobbing slightly, like a boat on the waters of a lake, in tune with the whine of the air that blasted beneath me. I felt something brush my foot—someone's hand?—and I went off-balance, spinning, slowly this time, in the air. The side of the tower was coming closer. I reached out, afraid I would bust my head against the stone, pushed back, and threw my arms down. It was as if I was holding onto the currents… and only needed to assert my balance.The next moment, I was standing straight up in the air. There was Jason's arm outstretched. Kris and Erin were there, too, staring at me wide-eyed. Sensei, though, stood with a satisfied half-smile, his arms tucked into his wide, white sleeves.Jason's hands closed around mine, and I immediately fell. The faint roar finally stopped; I swung heavily against the side of the tower. There was a thick smack, and something wet was running down my chin. My left arm twisted painfully in its socket as Jason dragged me over the stone balcony. Scraping over the rail—in the right direction this time—I fell in a heap. Static buzzed in my brain, and my stomach sloshed. I rose to my feet beside my friends. Jason looked at me and flexed his dusty hand. I grabbed my chin to stem the bleeding.“How… did you do that?” Kris asked.