SOLSC Classroom Challenge

Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge: Day 30 of 31

Anna Gratz Cockerille

Slice of Life_classroom image Black

It’s Day 30 Classroom Slicers! Two days left in our March Challenge!

One really powerful takeaway from writing over time is that the writer can get to know a whole lot about himself or himself. Two huge and important things to know about oneself as a writer are:

1. What kind of writer am I?

2. What do I mostly write about?

When getting to know yourself as a writer, you can consider the writing moves you often make that have power for you. You can study:

  • The tense you often pick (I personally tend to write in present tense and have been experimenting with future tense)
  • The voice you often choose (Most of us tend to choose first person for Slice of Life writing. Third or even second person can offer a fresh perspective.)
  • The word choices you make (Do you use strong nouns and verbs and tend to stay away from adjectives and adverbs? Are there words you use over and over again?)
  • What parts are easy or hard for you as a writer (beginnings, endings, middles)

When getting to know what you mostly write about, look over all of the writing you have done recently and notice the themes or topics that emerge. Many writing gurus call the topics we write about a lot our writing “territories”. Lately, I have been writing a lot about my baby son. This is a territory that is proving fruitful for me. Knowing what topics are fruitful to you can help you to choose what to write about quickly and can help you strive for deeper meaning.

At the end of this month, we urge you to take some time for reflection. Getting to know yourself more deeply as a writer will go a long way toward shaping the writing you will do next week, next year, and always.

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!

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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).

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