SOLSC Classroom Challenge

Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge: Day 31 of 31

Anna Gratz Cockerille

Slice of Life_classroom image Black

It’s Day 31 Classroom Slicers! The final day in our March Challenge! 

It always seems impossible until it is done. –Nelson Mandela

It’s the final day of our month-long writing challenge.  How did it go?  We would love your thoughts, feelings, and reflections when you leave your link today. Perhaps you’d like to reflect on your students’ growth. Perhaps you’d like to reflect on the logistics of the challenge. Perhaps you’d like to share some of your students’ thoughts on the experience. We welcome it all.

Thank you for taking the plunge and joining us on the March classroom challenge.  It was a delight to read your students’ posts! What a rich, varied, intriguing community we have.

We hope it was a wonderful experience for you and your students.  And of course, we hope you’ll be back next March for another classroom writing challenge.

CONGRATULATIONS!

WRITE a slice of life story on your own blog.
SHARE a link to your post in the comments section.
GIVE comments to at least three other SOLSC Classroom bloggers.

Happy Slicing!

Useful Links:

Published by Anna Gratz Cockerille

Anna is a staff developer, literacy coach, and writer, based in New York City. She taught internationally in places such as Sydney, Australia; San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and Auckland, New Zealand in addition to New York before becoming a staff developer for the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University (TCRWP). She has been an adjunct instructor in the Literacy Specialist Program at Teachers College, and teaches at TCRWP where she helps participants bring strong literacy instruction into their classrooms. Anna recently co-wrote Bringing History to Life with Lucy Calkins, part of the 2013 series Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing (Heinemann). She has been a researcher for Lucy Calkins, contributing especially to Pathways to the Common Core (Heinemann, 2012) and Navigating Nonfiction (Heinemann, 2010).

18 thoughts on “Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge: Day 31 of 31”

  2. It’s been a fantastic month of writing through the challenge for my 5th graders! I had 6 out of 22 students write for all 31 days, including a week of their spring break! I also had 4 students achieve their goal of 25 posts! I hope that next year I can have the commenting challenge for my students. It was a bit difficult to find time to do that this year. Many of my parents mentioned how they were excited and pleased with all the writing the students were doing for the slice of life challenge this month. The students that wrote for 25 or more days will be in the running for some special writing themed prizes that we will give out on Thursday. Thank you Anna and the rest of the Slice of Life team that helped run this challenge so smoothly this year. My writers thank you! 🙂
    http://mskimgrade5.blogspot.sg/2014/03/slice-of-life-challenge-day-31.html

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  3. This was such a great experience for my students and me. Two who posted today reflected on the month of writing, and I think that their thoughts really help me know why we do this- why we teach our students to write, why we try to encourage the habit of writing, and why writing matters in the first place..We are going to have a slicing celebration this week, with slices of pizza and time to share aloud our favorite posts and reflect on the experience. My 17 students wrote over 285 posts in March. They did an amazing job supporting one another with comments, and their comments, combined with comments from guests, totaled over 900 in March. While they did comment on other classroom bogs, that part wasn’t as easy to facilitate as I had hoped. I’d love to think about how to connect with other classroom slicers more effectively.
    Last posts:
    http://kidblog.org/MrsKeelersRLAclass/

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  4. When my first graders said they wanted to join me and write every day I wasn’t sure how it would go, but we decided to figure it out together. I’ve been so amazed by the energy. In the coming days we will talk about what we’ve learned about ourselves as writers and how the challenge went. It seems to me my first graders have learned to look for stories in their lives and that even the simplest idea can become a story. I’ve learned that it is easiest to keep up with slicers who put their writing on their blogs — all the papers were tricky.

    All but three students participated. Participants all wrote more than usual, several made it to the goal of 25 days out of 31, and some even managed to write every single day. I’ve been impressed with their commitment.

    Thank you for providing this opportunity and thanks to everyone who has stopped by to comment! Congratulations to all of your classes on their success in this challenge. Amazing!

    Cathy

    Our Final Day
    http://merelylearningtogether.weebly.com/1/post/2014/03/the-last-day-slice-of-life-31-of-31.html

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  5. This was quite a journey for me and for my students. We just jumped in, not really knowing what to expect this month. We’ve surprised ourselves, I think. After listening to kids say how tired they were and how short on ideas they were, etc. for several weeks, they surprised me today in our discussions. They were proud, reflective, even willing to consider future slicing. As one my kids put it in her slice today, “Slicing is an addiction.” I’m so glad to hear that from the lips of 6th graders! About 35 of my 100 made it to 31 slices, and another 25 or so reached a goal of 16 slices. Some sliced here and there, as well. We’re going to celebrate soon, but my celebration was today when I read one little girl’s writing that said she wants to be a teacher one day and offer this tradition to her own students. Now that’s motivation! Thank you to all who commented and facilitated this journey. You made our month.

    Our final slices (to be updated later with a few late-night slicers): http://slicesfrompod2.blogspot.com/2014/03/slices-from-march-31st.html

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  6. Even on the last day I forgot to link up. This has been a problem all month long. My students are posting their reflections to Anna’s questions on our blog today, and yes, they are sad. I think we will try to keep going for the rest of the year. It’s just too much fun to stop now. http://kidblog.org/sliceoflifechallenge/

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  7. Thanks so much to everyone here at Two Writing Teachers for sponsoring this challenge. What an experience! Had such an awesome conversation with my students today about their thoughts regarding Slice of Life. So many of them said they surprised themselves by going well beyond what they thought they were capable of. Many told me that they looked back at their writing from the beginning of the month to the end of the month and were amazed at how much MORE writing they did as the month continued and how much more freely they wrote as the month continued. For myself, it was quite a challenge to jump in first time with all 3 grades (6th , 7th, and 8th) but in the long run, I am glad I did. Many students were sad that today was the last day, but were glad to hear of the Slice of Life Tuesday option. Here are today’s servings of slices…enjoy!
    http://creatively-cardinal.blogspot.com/2014/03/call-for-slices-day-31.html#comment-form

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  13. Thank you so much for allowing us the opportunity to write for a true audience. Amidst the groans of “It is hard to write every day,” students enjoyed the challenge daily writing presents. In fact, when I announced that it may be the finale of Slice of Life, but it is not the end of our blogging, there were even cheers. Thank you for all your support.

    Final Slice of Life: Adieu

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