sols: waking up!

Slice of Life hosted at the 

Two Writing Teachers

"Hey, welcome back!  What did you do over spring break?"  

“I didn’t do anything."  "I stayed home."  "I sat around.”

After a week off from school, from reading and writing and thinking hard, some of my students needed a little brain massage to wake up this April Fool’s Monday.  

Of course, I thought: What about those books your borrowed from me? What about that blank notebook waiting for your stories?  

But instead, I said, “I know you had to do more than just sit around and do nothing.  You have stories to tell, I just need to help you remember them.”

I grabbed a couple copies of the “Words from A to Z!” organizer:

Topic: Spring Break

To do:  Fill in as many letters as you can about spring break, including:  Places you went, 

people you saw, things that you did, etc.

I started to share some of my spring break activities to spark some thinking.

This allowed my small group of students to start sharing and remembering and gathering ideas from each other.  The conversations continued and ideas were scrawled  onto the organizer.

After about ten minutes, I explained that we were going to do a quick write:  write and write and write as much as you can about one of the ideas without worrying about spelling or fear of grammar mistakes.  Just write.  They flipped over their paper and wrote their selected topic at the top.  I set the time and we all wrote.

Here’s one of my quick writes:

This month I wrote every single day.  31 days straight.  I wrote about BIG things.  I wrote about small things.  I wrote a lot about my girls.  I wrote about writing and the process, and the frustrations and celebrations.  My goal has never been to write a book or publish my work, but rather capture stories in my life, today, in this moment.    

The timer beeped, and we finished the sentence we were writing.  Round two:  either continue your first story or pick another idea to write about next.

Here’s another one of my quick writes:

Yesterday our family enjoyed a walk down the street to an open field.  We let out the string and quickly the wind took hold.  Up, up, up into the air.  Swaying and swerving in the sky.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  The wind died and it quickly dove towards the ground.  We pulled on the string and the wind caught hold again, lifting it higher and higher -- until M. accidentally let go.  She was convinced the wind took it away.  It skimmed the ground gaining speed.  Daddy chased as fast as he could to catch it.  He finally did catch it only after it was stopped in a big leafless tree.  Flapping in the bare branches, M. pointed and said, “Get it.”   

After writing, some students shared their quick writes.    Slowly, we are waking up those reading and writing brains.  Ready for the last two months of school.