Weekly Slice of Life Story Challenge

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Not exactly a deep SOLS, but it’s a slice of my day!

Major neck pain has found it’s way to the forefront of my life yet again. I spent most of my night waiting for and having an MRI to determine why I’m having numbness in my hand. Hence, I couldn’t write much tonight, but since I make it my business to write daily, I [...]

In Their Words

Today’s Workshop, in my classroom, was spent immersing my students in the memoir genre (or is it genre of memoir… both sound funny to me!). The kids realized that most memoirs are a combination of exposition and narrative. (I compared memoir to a hybrid car. That definitely helped!)
After my kids listened to [...]

WN ENTRY: What do we do when we find ourselves repeating history?

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”
My high school History Teacher, Tom Wilcox, didn’t originate that phrase, but he repeated it to us quite a few times during tenth grade. It stuck with me. I remember this phrase each and every time I have to teach something difficult from our [...]

A Visionary in the Bronx

My mother-in-law sent me the link to a story from “The Today Show.” It’s about an unlikely principal who turned a failing junior high school in the Bronx around… completely. Click here to watch the video.

Who Is Responsible?” Literacy and Education for All

This weekend has been about me floating on Cloud Nine! First we heard about NCTE. Then, this evening I found out my proposal to present at the Fall 2008 NEATE (New England Association of Teachers of English) Conference was accepted. The Fall 2008 Conference theme is: “Who Is Responsible?” Literacy and Education [...]

Slight Tweaking

I did some slight tweaking to our memoir unit of study. This is this year’s “final” version.
Session 1: Writers read and listen to student memoirs and then write in order to inspire their own writing.
Session 2: Writers find their life topic by thinking about people who are important to you. One way writers do [...]

Mini-Course: Handmade Card Making

Our school is having mini-courses for the kids on three Mondays in May. I signed-up to do handmade card making mini-course with second, third, and fourth graders who are interested. I started creating samples over the weekend:

I’m debating how to structure the classes. Part of me wants the kids to just [...]

ED in ‘08 Blogger Summit

Alex from the Ed in ‘08 Blogger Summit left a comment this morning on our About Us Page. The Summit is being held in Washington, DC later this month. If you’re interested in attending, then click here to learn more. While you’re at it, check out the ED in ‘08 Website too.
We [...]

Inspired to Create a Book List at OceanCliff

The view of the water from the back of OceanCliff

Originally uploaded by teachergal

We got all of our writing and reading teaching points solidified for the rest of the school year when we were at OceanCliff yesterday. However, we went a step farther and did [...]

WE’RE PRESENTING AT NCTE IN NOVEMBER!!!!

I just got off of the phone with Ruth, with whom I shared the great news. Our conversation session proposal, “INSPIRING CHILDREN TO WRITE: TEACHING WRITING WORKSHOP WITH OUR NOTEBOOKS WIDE OPEN” was accepted for the 2008 NCTE Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas. My speech title is “Teaching With My Notebook Wide-Open,” [...]

Immersing them in the memoir genre

Deb asked me which texts I’ll be using on day one of the memoir unit. Well, the answer is that I will be reading When the Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant or rereading What You Know First by Patricia MacLachlan.
That being said, I’m actually having the kids spend their independent writing time [...]

P.D.

OceanCliff

Originally uploaded by teachergal

I was completely inspired by my surroundings today when I attended a day-long professional development session with my colleagues at OceanCliff in Newport. The drive out there was breathtaking, as was the view from the back of OceanCliff, which is pictured [...]

Gearing-Up for Memoir

We’re starting a new unit of study on Monday: MEMOIR! I’ve taught it twice using Calkins and Chiarella’s Book. However, this year is going to be different. Kate and I decided to mesh C&C’s book with Katherine Bomer’s Book entitled Writing A Life. Our teaching points are from both books. [...]

Poetry Friday: There Is A Time…

I was perusing Caroline Kennedy’s poetry anthology for kids, WHICH I LOVE, with one of my students yesterday since she was looking for inspiration during our Writing Workshop. We came across Ecclesiastes 3, which I had noticed once or twice in there. I reread it today and was, of course, moved. Hence, [...]

Poetry Pass in Interactive Read Aloud

We did a Poetry Pass for the first time during Interactive Read Aloud yesterday. I wanted to do it so that I could get the kids writing about a ‘heavy’ poem I presented them with, which is one of the texts in our voice/silence text set.

They did a simply amazing job with responding, in [...]

Posting Poems

One of my kiddos posted a poem (which was shown to me when it was in draft form a couple of weeks ago) this morning. I’m exceedingly flattered that I’m seeing poems dedicated to me on one of my students’ blogs.

Quotes & Poetry

Today’s Writing Workshop lesson went soooo well. I had never had kids write about quotations before, but it was such a success! I look forward to folding this lesson into the first unit of study in September. (One student I conferred with wasn’t writing much… she was just doing literal explanations, rather [...]

Today’s Lesson Was Inspired By One of My Former Students

Fall 2006.
One of my talented former students, who was part of the Extended Day Program, decided to undertake an independent writing project similar to Lisa Meyer’s Book Quotes for Kids: Today’s Interpretations of Timeless Quotes Designed to Nurture the Young Spirit. My student’s interpretations of a variety of quotations (and overheard things [...]

Wordless Wednesday: A photo I didn’t realize my student took when my camera was in her hands…

Caught Reading – Photo by A.R. (one of my students)

Originally uploaded by teachergal

Click on the photo to read the back story.

ugh –

Let me just say, I spent the past 38 minutes writing a post in response to the comments left on Monday Musings, while periodically going upstairs and explaining to a 4 year old the importance of staying in her room during rest time so her 2 year old brother doesn’t wake up (since he insists on sleeping [...]

Slices of Life

Please add the following image to your post and/or link back to this post so folks can find other participants. Consider inviting-in someone new to the SOLSC Community. Know a blogger who already writes slices of life stories, but just doesn’t link them? Go ahead and invite them to participate in this [...]

Reading and Writing Their Way Through Summer

Last week I blogged about summer writing loss. This is because I’m starting to get anxious about the school year ending since I feel like there isn’t enough time for me to do everything I want to do with my kiddos before I send them off to fifth grade.
Jen Barney contacted me with some [...]

Writing About Reading: It’s Time to Kick It Up A Notch (or two)

Jacquie McTaggart published an article in Reading Today’s April/May 2008 Issue entitled “Appeal to Students’ Pride with Online Book Reviews.” This was a timely article for me since I just put together the May newsletter for my students’ parents stating that I’d like to see my students doing more reading responses (i.e., each and [...]

Stacey’s Slices of Life from Passover

So much good stuff, but there were a few funny mishaps from our Seder that I’m going to share this Tuesday as part of the:

So, here goes…
(1) NAPKINS
I know we bought cloth napkins. I’m so sure of it. However, I have no idea where we stored them. That wasn’t the only [...]