Slice of Life Challenge Starts in March

I’ve been thinking a lot about the March Slice of Life (SOL) writing challenge sponsored by Stacey Shubitz and Ruth Ayres, creators of the Two Writing Teachers blog and authors of Day by Day: Refining Writing Workshop Through 180 Days of Reflective Practice. It was my frequent visits to their blog that prompted me to start my own blog so I could participate in the challenge for the first time last year. Taking part in the SOL experience has left its handprints all over both my thinking about young writers and my teaching practice. If you don’t have a blog, consider starting one. It will be good for your writing soul. After all, if we are going to teach youngsters to take risks with their writing and push through the hard parts, shouldn’t we, as their teachers be willing to do the same? Visit TWT and join the SOL challenge.

One Little Word Wednesday: Thread

          Kids really say the most amazing things. Yesterday in a third grade class, I introduced the students to writing snapshots. I used Barry Lane's ideas about how details are like boxes inside boxes and writers zoom in with their words like photographers zoom in with their cameras. I read aloud samples from wonderful authors and shared some of my own writing. Using a slide show of images on the smart board as inspiration, the kids made their first attempts at writing their own snapshots. It wasn't easy for them. I didn't expect it be. I told them that they had to try to push through their struggle, like lifting a heavy weight or running a long distance. They had to try. All the students shared one sentence from their snapshot. I heard similes, great hooks, and complex sentences. Then they shared their whole snapshot with someone near them. After the lesson, two excited boys came up to me before heading out to lunch recess. The first one said, "I know what I could do! I could go back to my book I'm making and add a snapshot and put a simile in it." I was stunned. This young writer was beginning to weave together all the threads of the lessons we had done together throughout the trimester. The other little boy plum blew me away. He said, "Writing is fun. I used to like gym but now I like writing better." He actually thought that writing was more fun than gym. I couldn't agree more.

An Easy Writing Celebration: Gallery Walk

I can’t stop thinking about Tytiana. Right after Thanksgiving, I started a fresh coaching cycle in a third grade class during their writing workshop. We only had a few weeks until Christmas vacation and I wanted the students to have the opportunity to celebrate their writing before the break. The students, their teacher, and I decided to use their quick writes about “hands” and turn them into finished pieces.  Some kids wrote about their own hands, the hands of a parent or sibling, or Santa’s hands. The format for the celebration was very simple. The kids put their fancied-up “hand” writing in the middle of their cleared off desks then stood quietly nearby. We had invited another class, administrators, secretaries, and some teachers to attend the gallery walk the week before.  As guests arrived, they signed in and browsed the pieces at their leisure. They were free to pick up the writing, read it, and ask the writers questions. After about fifteen minutes or so, the teacher and I asked the attendees, as a group, what stuck with them about the pieces they had read or seen.  The guests noticed that even though everyone had written about hands, all the pieces were different.  Many of the visitors noticed that the writers had used similes. Lots of compliments. Lots of smiles.  Then our visitors were thanked and they departed. Quick and painless. As soon as everyone left, the class, their teacher, and I gathered at the carpet to debrief. The kids were bursting with excitement. One little girl, Tytiana, a decidedly reluctant writer, was smiling so wide I thought her cheeks were going to pop.

“Tytiana, you are smiling so much! Are you happy?”

(enthusiastic head nod)

“Did it feel good to share your writing with Mr. P’s class?”

(another enthusiastic head nod)

“Did you want to tell why it felt so good?”

(animated head nod and a big breath in)

“Wellllllllll, this girl read myyyyyyy writing.”

“So, why was this so wonderful for you, Tytiana?”

(big breath in)

“Welllll, she is in my cheernastics class annnnnnnd, usually  . . . she doesn’t even notice me. Today . . . she did!”

I looked over at Tytiana’s teacher biting my lip and swallowing hard. Tytianna continued.

“She never even talked to me before. (pause) Cuz, IIIIIIIII’m like on the bottommmm of the pyramid, yunno, and she’s on top cuz she’s smaller.”

Tytiana struggles in so many ways. But that day was different. Tytiana wasn’t struggling. She was noticed. She was noticed and smiled at and respected. And by the way, her writing has amazing voice!

My RtI Cake

It was a stunning fall day in southeast Michigan on Sunday. Crisp air. Brilliant blue sky. Fiery colors. And what was I doing? Making a cake! Not just any cake. A wedding cake. The cake has three layers or tiers. I’m planning on using my wedding cake made from paper mache stacking boxes to explain the concept of RtI at several sessions of our countywide in-service next week. Actually, I am supposed to explain how our school uses Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) and Fountas & Pinnell Phonics Lessons for Tier 2 interventions. I needed to show how the F & P Lessons start in Tier 1 and can also be used as an intervention in both  Tier 1 and Tier 2 . I’m sick of looking at the RtI triangle and I figured, who doesn’t like cake? And I can show how things tend to tip when alignment is out of whack. Not sure if I will have the guts to wear the chef’s hat.

My husband walked in and looked at my project.

 "What the heck are you doing now?"

"What does it look like I'm doing? I think it needs some

little flowers or something for color, don't you?"

(Pause. Big sigh. Hand rubbing forehead.)               

"You have receipts for all this stuff, right?

I think I'm going to cut slots in the lids of each
box and as I talk about each card, I can slip it
into the cake tier.

This is one of the handouts I'm planning on
including in a packet for the teachers attending
the sessions.

Coaching Conversations Don't Always Fit a Protocol

If blogging along with TWT has taught me anything, it is the power of audience, no matter how small, to motivate and give purpose to writing. During a recent discussion with a teacher I am working with, she mentioned wanting help with publishing with her students. At the beginning of the school year, when I met with this teacher to plan for the trimester, it was sort of a flop. I had to let go of my protocol and honor her current practice. This was one of those unplanned conversations. As a coach who is more comfortable with nudging than pushing, I knew this was an opportunity that had to be seized. She was ready and open. Here is an edited summary of the exchange that took place:

Teacher	Coach
I need your help with publishing.	How many times would you like them to publish by the end of the month?
At least once.	Do you want the piece to be something of their choice or an assigned piece?
Choice.	If you want to be able to attach some kind of grade to the piece, you’ll need an instructional rubric so the kids know the expectations.
Yes, I want to grade it. I need to be able to show parents and include the points in their report card.	Planning a celebration now will give your kids purpose and an audience for their writing. It could be very simple. Nothing fancy. Maybe set something up before parent-teacher conferences.
Good, because I don’t really have time for a big party or anything like that.	You could have the kids put their pieces on their desks along with a sticky note. You could invite another class to come in, walk around, read their work, and write a comment on a sticky. After that, the kids could share their comments. You could even have the parents write comments on a sticky note too.
I could ask one of the other 3rd grade classes in the hallway.	Let the other teacher know what you would like her class to notice about your kids’ writing. How could we make sure every kid gets a comment?
Maybe have them write one comment per sticky note or partner them with the writer they will comment on prior to the walk through.	That might speed up the process and help the commenters be more specific.

The conversation I summarized above would never have happened if I would have put filling out questions on a coaching protocol before the need to establish trust with this teacher. Before the end of the trimester, I will attempt to re-visit the coaching protocol but then again maybe I won’t. Sometimes using a coaching protocol feels a bit like forcing a writer to use a graphic organizer to write. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn’t. Protocols are tools, nothing more.

This is a writing folder from one of the teacher's students. One pocket is
labeled still working on and the other is labeled finished. The teacher is
just beginning to play with the idea of writer's notebooks.

Facilitating a PLC is Different than Giving a Presentation

         I don’t know why I still get so nervous about these things. I’ve been facilitating study groups and giving presentations for over a decade. What worries me the most is I don't want teachers to feel like their time spent in the PLC is a waste. I am very sensitive to the fact that these teachers have to write sub plans and will probably have to mop up a mess or two after having been out of their classroom.  I need to calm down and trust the process. This year I’m participating in a professional learning community with a focus on supporting young writers. The first meeting went well and our second meeting is tomorrow afternoon. I’ve read and reread the agenda, replaying possible scenarios in my mind. Mostly, I want to ask the right questions, at the right time, in just the right way. I need to assist teachers to consider links between what we learn and think about in our PLC to classrooms and students. At the same time, I need to stay out of their way. I’m hoping that one teacher from the group might be willing to let the rest of us visit her classroom to learn how she uses her smart board for interactive writing. It all depends on how safe everyone feels with each other. That reminds me. I need to bring snacks.

Our PLC is pulling together a collection of lessons that
will hopefully function as a resource for teachers new to
writer's workshop in kindergarten and first grade. In our
district, due to building closures and budget cuts, many
 teachers have changed buildings and grade levels.

Informational Writing: My Messy Process

Since attending a summer writing workshop, I’ve been trying to write more informational pieces. I discovered that my process for writing expository text was all over the place. For me, it was very different from writing a narrative, or a vignette, or a poem. Writing about a memory or a moment in time seemed easier. My thought was if I kept writing informational pieces, eventually it wouldn’t feel so hard. I wanted to write an informational piece for this week’s slice but I couldn’t seem to zero in on a topic.  For example, this slice started out seven different ways. It started as a piece about collaboration, then coaching, then my upcoming PLC, then back to coaching, then literacy celebrations, then writer’s notebooks, and then back to coaching again. Purpose and audience were screaming at me, distracting me. For Pete’s sake! Focus, for crying out loud! Some of my topics were geared more to a particular audience. Audience influenced what I wanted to write about. So was I trying to choose a topic or an audience? And in choosing an audience, how would I write about my topic? I needed to determine the purpose for what I wanted to write.

In an effort to organize my jumbled thinking, I made a map of my ideas on my dining room floor. My big ideas were audiences, purposes, and topics. Under Audiences, I listed who I wrote for, other than myself, and where my writing would be published. Under Purposes I listed all the reasons I liked to write. I didn’t have anything under topic yet. With the Tuesday SOL deadline looming, I picked cards from my audience and purpose categories which finally helped me to choose my topic. There . . . now wasn’t that easy! Uhhmm, no. At least audience and purpose stopped screaming at me.

Fred decided to help me out.

Roxy joined in the effort to help me
figure out my topic.

Starting with audience and purpose helped
me narrow my topic.

My husband looked at me and said, "You're not
gonna leave that all over the floor are you?"

Boxelder Bug Adventures: Part 2

This is my second installment of the Boxelder Bug Adventures. I tried to inject more factual information into their conversation. As I talked with my colleague, Billisue, about my slice, she thought a comic would be a fun format for a research project. We talked about how when kids start to research a topic, they often want to just copy the information they read out of an article or book. Thinking about what an animal, insect, or plant would say if it could talk, allows students the opportunity to synthesize what they have read and present it in a format other than a report. I did have one problem: I could only find one live bug in my sun room when I went to take the pictures for the slice. The bug with the crinkled up legs is unfortunately deceased. At least he kept still when I took the pictures.

The Boxelder Bugs Are Back!

On Sunday, I got to hang out with my teenage son. My husband took my daughter back to college after lunch so it was just the two of us for the rest of the day. We made a killer carrot cake, watched basketball, and he checked out my blog. I told him about my idea to create a piece that conveyed information about boxelder bugs through a conversation between the two bugs. He was instrumental in posing the bugs and re-positioning them when they ran away.





6-Word Memoirs

Last Friday, Deb Day posted several 6-word memoirs written by her students. If you haven't read her post, check it out. I was familiar with Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure, edited by Smith Magazine, but reading Deb's post was a great reminder of how motivating this kind of writing could be for children who struggle to get much down on the paper. Jennifer Allen also wrote about how she used 6-word memoirs as a staff development tool in an article posted on Choice Literacy.  Here are my latest attempts at 6-word memoirs:

Speak softer. I can hear you.

I am changing. He's not happy.

Forgot to remember what I forgot.

Played with Barbies. Turned out okay.

Becoming old teacher. Didn't see coming.

Discarded Book

A while back, Michelle posted a wonderful list about happiness. Her slice is a lovely mentor text that could be used with both students and with teachers dabbling in their own writing. Michelle's post made me think of the book, Happiness is a Warm Puppy by Charles Schulz. I happened to find this little gem when I was digging through a box of discarded books in the teacher's lounge. The book  was old, yucky, yellow, and torn and I couldn't wait to read it to the 4th graders I was working with at the time. It was a perfect book to introduce metaphors and an easy sentence model for the kids to play with in their writer's notebooks. All the students, even the reluctant or struggling writers in the class, were able to create touching Happiness is . . . lists. These lists sometimes looked liked poems. Some students used a particular Happiness is . . . sentence as a hook for a longer piece. Other students changed Happiness is . . .  to Sadness is . . . or Loneliness is . . .  and wrote multiple lists. This was also a great opportunity for students to choose their favorite list for publication in a class anthology. As I was writing my most recent Happiness is . . .  list, I was thinking about how participating in the SOL Challenge is impacting me as a teacher and a person. I'm feeling poemy today.

                          Happiness is . . . time.

                          Time to notice.
                          Time to think.
                          Time to try.
                          Time to write.
                          Time to share.
                          Time to sleep.

                          Time to write some more.

Seven Chapters

As March 1st gets nearer, I'm growing slightly concerned about being able to come up with an idea for a slice everyday.  When I was reading Michelle’s post about Choice Literacy, I went back to check out the site a bit before I went to bed. The first time I learned about Choice Literacy was after attending a literacy coach training a few years ago in Columbus Ohio, led by Jennifer Allen. She had us write about our life in 7 stories. She also said we could think about our lives as a book with 7 chapters. After listed the titles of our 7 chapters or our 7 stories, we had to pick one and just write. I’ve done this activity more than once and each time I've had different chapter titles.  I thought I would begin again today and list 7 stories and use them as fuel for the coming month.

1.    Ballet shoes

2.    Mulberries

3.    Oops, I thought I was talking to Jennifer!

4.    Mom’s piano

5.    Ali McGraw Hair

6.    Mustache

7.    The Crabapple Tree

"I can't write because I don't have a pencil."

It's that time of year. It's time to revisit, revise, or maybe even reinvent your writing workshop procedures. I actually love this time of year. I like getting back into the meat of workshop. Right now, I'm feeling a bit annoyed with elaborate units of study. Especially when it feels like the teacher, myself included, is talking a lot and the kids are writing too little. 

In one classroom I'm working in, the teacher and the kids redesigned the writing center. New paper, pencils, sticky notes, and stapler. The students, along with their teacher, decided how it should be set up, maintained, and how abusers would be dealt with. The kids love it and it has increased their independence.

 Procedures for using items, especially the stapler need to be modeled and practiced over and over. And then there is the pencil issue. Do yourself and the kids a favor and establish how to sharpen, when to sharpen, and what to do if a writer doesn't have a pencil. Take the time to figure out procedures you can live with. Accept that you will have to revisit and practice procedures numerous times. That is just the way it is. Without practical routines, workshop doesn't work.

A writing center doesn't need to be fancy, nor the items in it. But it is a critical element in creating a writing workshop that focuses on the work of writing. Having a writing center, even a small one, communicates how a teacher regards the work of writing. And keep it simple. A writing center should be a tool to help students build agency not a chaotic mess that requires the teacher to leave a conference and shoo kids back to their seats. Writers want and like tools. I like my tools. I have my preferences and so do kids.