SOLSC Classroom Challenge

2018 CLASSROOM SOLSC FOR STUDENTS: DAY 2 OF 31

BethMooreSchool

classroolsolsc

Welcome back to Day 2 of the Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge!

“Writing is like baseball or piano playing. You have to practice if you want to be successful.” -Betsy Byars

Keep up the great work everybody! Reading your slices is such a pleasure.

If you haven’t already, make sure you’ve added your class(es) to the SOLSC Padlet so that others can find you and leave your students’ comments!

2018 CLASSROOM SOLSC PADLET

ANNOUNCEMENTS

  1. If you didn’t already read the Essential Information post, then please click here to read it now before you post the link to your students’ slice of life stories to the padlet. Don’t forget to keep your students’ identities anonymous for their protection.
  2.  If your students are slicing from their personal blogs, then you should link their blog posts together using your classroom hub or personal blog. Then, share the permalink to the location of the “round up” of student slices. (Click here for more information on how to do this.) Individual students CANNOT link here directly. Students who are under 18 must have an adult linking for them. Any student links left without an adult link will be deleted.
  3. Only post the link to your students’ slices of life here. Do not post the link to your personal slice of life stories here. Visit the Two Writing Teachers blog homepage to find for the newest link.
  4. If this is the first comment you’ve left on Two Writing Teachers, then we will have to moderate your comment. We will be checking throughout the day in order to get your links up for the community as soon as possible. As long as you use the same username/email to log in going forward, your comments should appear instantly in the future,
  5. We invite you to copy the Classroom SOLSC badge and use it on your blog(s).

INSPIRATION/TODAY’S QUESTION

Today’s Question for Classroom SOLSC Teachers: Are you offering badges or other incentives to inspire your students to write? Please respond in the comments below.

For returning participants: Note the change to this year’s challenge. Instead of leaving the permalink in the comments, please leave your permalink in the padlet and respond to the daily question/inspiration instead! 

QUESTIONS?

After reading the information in the links above, if you still have questions about the Classroom SOLSC contact one of us. (Please don’t use Twitter or Facebook to contact us with SOLSC questions).

  • If your last name begins with the letters A – G, please email questions to DebFrazier4{at}gmail.com.
  • If your last name begins with the letters H – M, please email questions to beth{at}elizabethmoore.work.
  • If your last name begins with the letters N- S, please email questions to Lanny Ball lanny.ball[{at}gmail.com.
  • If your last name begins with the letters T – Z, please email questions to Kathleen Sokolowski mrs.sokolowski{at}gmail.com.

2018 CLASSROOM SOLSC

Published by BethMooreSchool

Literacy Coach, Consultant, Author, Graduate Course Instructor, and Mom. Passionate about fostering a love of reading and writing in learners of all ages.

18 thoughts on “2018 CLASSROOM SOLSC FOR STUDENTS: DAY 2 OF 31”

  1. I teach in north east India to kids who have to learn in English but it is not their first language. So getting them to write well and imaginatively in English is a challenge. But I don’t offer badges for writing at this stage….maybe some incentives in the future. RIght now I want them to enjoy writing for the sake of writing and most of them seem to do that….

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  3. I also use food. For all those who blog all 31 days, I arrange to take them out for french fries during our lunch break. Last year I had to borrow a huge SUV from our art teacher two days in a row just to get them all to McDonalds.

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  4. Nope, no badges or anything of that nature. I’m offering food! 🙂 The top prize, pizza for lunch in the library with me (last two years, we’ve averaged about 20 kids who’ve done that), all the way down to a firm handshake and a “thank you for sharing your voice”. It’s fun to see where the kids fall out on the conitum of prizes as about half of my pizza winners, I would have never guessed would blog 31 days. 🙂 Thus the nature of the SOL Challenge, it brings out the best of studetns!

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  6. My class is not doing badges although, I do like the idea and maybe something I try next year. This year we are doing a big #SOL18 Slice Party on April 2 to celebrate all of the students’ hard work. Students will earn different foods at the party depending on how much the blog. Once they’ve reached that level they earn that food and can work towards the next one.

    – 16 days (all school days)- Slices of Fruit
    – 18 days (all school days + 1 weekend)- Slice of Pizza
    -24 days (all school days + spring break)- Orange Slice or other beverage
    – ALL 31 days- Slice of Cake

    The kids are really excited to earn the different “slices” for their party.

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  7. No, I did not do badges last year, my first year with the class. I do hope to get organized enough to present some sort of tangible “prize” this year – notebook or fancy pens?? Let’s see how many are able to meet the challenge. My class is still on winter break and will return Monday to class and blogging!

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  10. First of all, I just have to say that I spent 5 minutes this morning crying at my desk because of the heartbreaking post one of my students just wrote about the moment her life in Syria changed.

    As for badges / rewards, I do periodic “surprise” rewards for people who have posted a certain week or day (little things like our school’s reward cards, candy, pencils, bookmarks). I also am going to do Schoology badges this year now that we have that capability. For students who really take on the challenge and write 25 posts or more, I do a special celebration with food, give them notebooks, and have them create signs celebrating how much they wrote and what they enjoyed, which I then use to introduce the challenge to next year’s students. At the beginning of April, we also do Slice of Life awards where students nominate each other’s posts for awards of different categories and then vote. The winners get certificates in class and we celebrate!

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  11. If we wanted to do badges, how do we get the badges or make them for the writers, do you have a template we can use? Sorry if I missed this with the instructions given earlier.

    On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 10:00 PM, TWO WRITING TEACHERS wrote:

    > BethMooreSchool posted: ” Welcome back to Day 2 of the Classroom Slice of > Life Story Challenge! “Writing is like baseball or piano playing. You have > to practice if you want to be successful.” -Betsy Byars Keep up the great > work everybody! Reading your slices is such a pleasure” >

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  12. My teaching partner and I have not done the badges, maybe we will ask our writers what they would like to see happen. We are only in school for 16 days in March so we tell the learners that the goal for sure is 16 days. We have a breakfast celebration before school with gifts that are writing items if they complete 16 days. It is a time to reflect on favorite posts (their own and others). The items would change if they sliced for all 31 days.

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  13. I love reading all the different ways that we award our students. I will be doing badges. They each have a sticker chart to mark their posts. I will give each student who makes it to 31 days a book. We are only in school for 17 of the days, so if they slice for 17 days, I will give them a treat bag. The true value of this challenge is the community of writers and the development that daily practice makes.

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  14. I am doing badges again this year! I feel like it keeps the motivation high and gives students the chance to try different types of blog posts and genres. It also encourages them to comment more on each other’s posts. I set up a digital badge sheet for each student and every Tuesday I check in to see what badges they’ve earned. I created a packet for them where they write the title of their post for the day, the type of post it was, and who they commented on. I use this information to track badges. At the end of the challenge, I print out the badge sheets for them, give out certificates to kids who earned at least 5 badges, and have a raffle for kids who earned 7 or more badges. My prizes are often literacy based- books, stationary, cool pens or markers.

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  15. I do have prizes for students that complete 25 or more blog posts. I ask parents to donate writing themed prizes and I also include no HW passes and things like that. My fifth grade students do get quite excited and motivated by the prizes.

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  16. I don’t do badges as we go, but I don’t do any type of badge system anything. If they choose to slice the entire month they will receive something. I leave it loose as it will totally depend on how many kids rise to the challenge. I can tell you it will involve public acknowledgement of their hard work with a certificate and a presentation. As far as a tangible ‘prize’, we shall see. In the past I have given notebooks and lunch with me to talk about what it feels like to have sliced all month.

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