Slice of Life Classroom Challenge | Reflections on the Teche

Posts Tagged ‘Slice of Life Classroom Challenge’

Slice of Are you Ready for a Month of Slices?

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Slice of Life Classroom Challenge, student writng on February 27, 2018| 10 Comments »

Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life March Challenge

March is coming soon. And you know what that means, a month of slices every day. The Two Writing Teachers has been hosting the yearly Slice of Life Challenge for 10 years. 2018 will be the 11th Annual Slice of Life Challenge. This is my 7th year to participate. About 4 years ago I got my students involved in this challenge. When I bring it up, many of my students who have been in my class for more than a year groan, then smile. They say, “It’s terrible. It’s horrible. I’ll never do it again.” and then “But this year I’m going to try to get all 31 slices done. Just watch me!”

One thing I can count on is their competitive spirit. I do offer a prize of a free book if they write all 31 days. I only require (for a grade) 3 slices a week. So this week we are getting ready. Noah already has 3 slices drafted. He is in the warm up position, revving his engine.

We started a padlet for writing ideas and will add to it as the month goes on. You can view our idea padlet here. We talked about a class hashtag and decided on #GTSOLC18. I set up a category in our kidblog site just for the challenge. I will be putting up sticker charts and a space for badges. A few years ago, Kathleen Sokolowski made badges and shared them in this Google Doc.

Kathleen set up a padlet this year for the classroom challenge. If you click here, you can see all the classes participating.

I am looking forward to joining my students on a monthlong writing journey. It will take us to places we are not expecting. Would you like to come along? You can view my students’ writing at Mrs. Simon’s Sea.

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DigiLitSunday: Why are We Doing This?

Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, tagged Slice of Life Classroom Challenge, student poetry on April 2, 2017| 3 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Do your students ever ask, “Why are we doing this?” Friday we celebrated the completion of the March Slice of Life Story Challenge. Kathleen from Two Writing Teachers shared a Google Slide Show in which she posed these questions to student bloggers:

I discussed these questions with each of my class groups. Sometimes I wonder if my students really understand why we do this. I can see the benefits daily. Each day, they try to do better, write more, and add more craft into their writing. But it’s more than that. They grow as human beings, too. They share a piece of who they are and who they are becoming.

Noah said, “I learned that when you write on the blog, you are showing other people who you are.”

Sometimes these are hard lessons. These kids are at an age where they are still figuring it all out. They try stuff. They write things that may not be true to who they are or want to be. This blog space becomes a safe place for them to express whatever is on their minds.

Erin said she has learned to be more open. Kaiden has expressed emotions through figurative language. And even Tobie said he learned he wasn’t so bad at poetry.

With all the balking about writing every day and even the multiple posts of things like Google tricks, writer’s block, and “Idontevenknowwhywearedoingthis” posts, my students grew as writers and as people making their way in the world. I am grateful to the Two Writing Teachers, especially Kathleen and Lanny who led the classroom challenge. Another year down and many lessons learned.

I am sharing Kaiden’s clever poem about writer’s block.

A vacuous screen

filled with a picture

of a polar bear

in a snowstorm.

Snow swirling,

chills sinking

into your skin

in this winter wonderland.

Place your links for DigiLitSunday below:

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SOL #19: DigiLitSunday: Innovation

Posted in Creativity, Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged innovative ideas, Slice of Life Classroom Challenge, student writers on March 19, 2017| 17 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for the Slice of Life Challenge.

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Some weeks a word will pop into my head for a DigiLit topic. Then I’ll mull over it and wonder why. This is how it’s been with Innovation. Like Blended Learning last week, I am wondering if innovation is happening in my classroom.

I think of my young students who are writing for the Slice of Life Classroom Challenge every day. Last year I put together a treasure box of writing prompts. I decorated it and filled it with little odds and ends I found around my house. One of these was a wishing rock. Andrew put his hand into the box and came out with this rock. I immediately thought of this Harris Burdick image.

“Maybe you could write a story to go with this image?”

“I’ve never written a story before.”

Andrew proceeded to type furiously into his Kidblog post. The next day when he came in, he said “I can’t stop thinking about my wishing rock story.”

This is creativity working hand in hand with innovation. You can read Andrew’s story here (part 1) and here (part 2).

My student, Noah, created a list post of “Things I Trust.” Two of the curators of the Two Writing Teachers blog read his post. They wanted to publish it to give other students ideas for writing.

Creativity and innovation happen in a classroom that is open to new ideas. The let-me-try-this-out attitude. I believe in my students. They are more capable than I am when it comes to creativity. Just look at Lynzee’s word cloud she created using the root word color. She went on to write her post and change each word into a different font color.

Sometimes I feel like I just stand by and watch the brilliance of my students shine. They are gifted kids, but more than that, they are open to the ideas floating around in the universe. This openness will lead them on to produce wonderful innovations in the future, but for now, they are my little wonders.

To link up your own DigiLit post today, use this button.

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SOL #5 DigiLitSunday Slicing

Posted in Blogging, Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Kidblog, Slice of Life Classroom Challenge, Two Writing Teachers on March 5, 2017| 19 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers blog for the Slice of Life Challenge.

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

I was just informed that March is SOL challenge month. It’s a cruel, cruel world. We have to make SOL every single day. I don’t know if I will survive this deadly month. Okay, that was a little ( lot ) over the top of the ice cream cone. Yeah, that was a metaphor.

That’s kind of like saying over the mountain but in your mind picture a mountain sized ice cream cone with a ton of chocolate going right on the top and turning it into a chocolate avalanche. Did you do that? Good for you. Now I will grant you as many wishes as you want. NOT!! I am not a genie. But if I had one wish it would be not doing any Slice of Life challenge posts ever again. That is how bad I don’t want to do the Slice of Life challenge.

by Andrew, Feb. 21, 2017

“Andrew, the Slice of Life Challenge is voluntary. Are you saying you don’t want to try it this year? Should I make you a sticker chart?”

“I’m not making any promises. Yeah, go ahead, make me a chart.”

I teach my gifted students year to year throughout their elementary schooling. This is a blessing and a curse. I am blessed to know my students really well. I don’t have to pretest to find their reading levels. I don’t have to do writing prompts to see how well they write. I know all this. They also know that when March rolls around it’s torture time. Time to write a Slice of Life every day!

Every year I try something new to motivate my students. Last year it was these buttons designed by Stacey Shubitz of the Two Writing Teachers. My students proudly collected badges until about March 15th when the newness wore off.

I also use incentives. One day of the month I hold a commenting challenge. The reward, one Skittle a comment. I soon ran out of Skittles. I buy a book for each child who completes the challenge. I usually buy 3-5 books.

Another thing we’ve done is connected with other classes doing the challenge. I’d like to do that again this year. If your class is using Kidblogs, please request to follow by signing in to Kidblog and posting my URL, http://kidblog.org/class/mrs-simons-sea/. Click on the Follow button. Once I approve, I can follow you back. It’s fun and motivating to connect kids across the globe.

After seeing Holly Mueller’s students’ long slices, I implemented a word count rule. This has been both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is found when my students elaborate and expand their thoughts like you see in Andrew’s post above. The curse happens when they ramble on and type things like, “I’m up to 198 words, just 2 more to go!”

This is the nature of the beast that is SOLC! Blessings and curses! We are going to jump in despite the deep waters. Tomorrow we return from a break. Our challenge will begin. I wonder where this journey will take us.

I wrote a blog post for Kidblogs about the Slice of Life Classroom Challenge here.
If you wrote a DigiLit post, please link up with this button.

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SOL16: #5 Celebrating Badges

Posted in Blogging, Celebration Saturday, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged badges, Slice of Life Classroom Challenge on March 5, 2016| 17 Comments »

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.