SOLSC Classroom Challenge

Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge: Day 12 of 31

Anna Gratz Cockerille

Slice of Life_classroom image Black

It’s Day 12 Classroom Slicers! 

Today, why not consider turning points as a place to look for inspiration? Remembering turning points is a popular strategy for generating ideas in Lucy Calkins’s writing workshop curriculum. In Slice of Life writing, we are looking for a part of our day about which to write. Turning points, which are really transitions, often happen constantly if we know where to look.
You might encourage your students to pay attention to turning points in their days, looking for:

  • Times they learn something new
  • Times they change their routine or way of doing things
  • Times someone close to them (or they themselves) act out of character
  • Times they try something for the first time
  • Times they do something for the last time (last piano lesson, last page of a great book)

These occasions can all be rife with writing possibility.

Happy Slicing!

 

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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).

35 thoughts on “Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge: Day 12 of 31”

  1. I teach a creative writing class and Turning Points would be a great journal starter for my kids. In addition, it would be an excellent way to develop a conflict for the short stories we are creating in class!

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  23. I love this idea! We’re on our poetry unit and the kids are all writing poems for their own anthologies. This will be a great one to add to theirs! Thank you for being such a smarty pants!! 🙂

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  24. My dear uncle Venu passed away two months back, a young and cool 75 year old. I grew up hearing about his escapades from him and his siblings. Each version was made just a bit more far-fetched and exciting for effect, Here is my rendition of one such episode of his very young days. Warning: there is some toilet humor.
    http://wp.me/p16XoV-1i

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  25. Thanks Anna. I posted these ideas on our blog for my students. Today, my students are working on memoir writing. I want them to go through the whole writing process, so these may not be posted until later in the week. Yesterday they wrote bio-poems about themselves and a book character. I also have some lurking line lifters. We are loving this! http://kidblog.org/SliceofLifeChallenge/

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