Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for March Slice of Life Challenge.
Stacey Shubitz, the fearless leader of the Slice of Life Challenge designed badges for our students who are doing this work of writing a blog post every day. I was looking for something to motivate them. My students come back to me year after year, so some of them have done this slicing before, and they were gasping, “Ugh. No. Not again!”
And here comes Kathleen Sokowolski, another brave teacher on the Two Writing Teachers team, sharing pages of badges in Google docs. She also made a Picassa Gallery for sharing the badges. Click here.
I showed the badges to my students on Monday and told them they could make a chart to mount them on. I opened up the art supply cabinet. Some made charts. Some made booklets. And one of my students made a bucket out of construction paper that hangs in her cubby. They were primed, ready, motivated.
As the week went on, we found other things we needed a badge for. On Tuesday, one of my younger kids, a 3rd grader, got his slice done along with commenting and had free time. I announced, “Andrew is the super student of the day!”
“We need a badge for that!” Emily opened up Canva and created this badge. And also a badge for me, how sweet, Super Teacher of the Day.
One of my students wrote a slice of 612 words. He’s only in 2nd grade, but he had a lot to say about his field trip. I told my students that the slice needed to be at least 200 words. We needed a badge for writing more than 300 words. Here it is!
Lani made this badge on Canva.
I also noticed that some of my students were writing outside of class. There’s a badge for that!
I’m not sure how many more badges we will come up with. They may lose motivation for the badges by mid-March, and we will need to find a new way to encourage and cheer for Slice of Life writing, but for this first week, badges are gold!
Thanks, Kathleen and Stacey.
Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.
Great idea! My kiddos and I need to come up with some motivating badges too.
I love the badges your students designed too! I shared the badges that Stacey and Kathleen made with my class and they have inspired my students to try different slices.
It’s so wonderful when educators find ways to motivate students as writers, so that then they learn to share their stories and find ways to want to write on their own. The idea of badges is so clever!
Way to go, keeping it fun!
I love the badges! It is so great how things like this can give us our motivation. Even adults find this type of thing so rewarding. It is great that you gave the students the power to design some of the badges as well.
Love that students are creating their own badges, or ideas for badge needs. Sounds fun!
I love your classroom created badges. They are awarding themselves! To be able to give yourself kudos is a life lesson.
I love this post Margaret and the badges your students made! Heidi Weber in my #cyberPD Voxer thread was talking about gamifying classroom tasks and badges. I wanted to try it and couldn’t figure out how until I thought of the Classroom Slice of Life Challenge! Now you and your students have made it into something new and it keeps evolving. That is the power of collaboration! Thanks so much for the shout-out….would love to link this in tomorrow’s Classroom Slice of Life Post!
Love the creative badges. I believe these make everyone smile.
That night writer badge looks perfect for me! What a lovely thing to do for your kids, Margaret!
Margaret, not only are badges important at this time in your students’ lives but they are attractive and student-driven. How wonderful that is.
Love all the badges, Margaret! You make me wish I had a class of my own to share them with.
These badges are terrific! I can see why they motivated your students!
[…] Simon wrote about how she is using badges with her gifted and talented writers in her #SOL16 post Celebrating Badges. Her class is even creating new badges as the need for them […]
Who doesn’t want a badge? I would work for one too! You sound very intune with your kiddos Margaret. đŸ™‚
These badges look so fun. I would be motivated. đŸ˜‰
[…] am really working hard this year to keep our writing momentum going. Â Last week it was the badges. This week a treasure box. Â Do you have any more ideas to inspire […]