Welcome to Day 7 of the Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge!
2018 CLASSROOM SOLSC PADLET
ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Please be sure to comment on our daily inspiration/questions. We are hoping this will foster a sense of community among the teachers who are participating! Have an idea for how to do this even better? Great! Leave your suggestion in the comments or contact us using the information below.
- If you haven’t already we encourage you to reach out to another teacher who is participating in the challenge and partner up. You may find it a bit easier to teach your students to comment on other students’ writing if you get familiar with one or two other classroom blogs and how they work.
- Only post the link to your students’ slices of life here. Do not post the link to your personal slice of life stories here. Go to the daily call for individual slice of life stories to post your personal slice. This is the link to Day 1 only. This link will change each day. You should visit the Two Writing Teachers blog daily for the newest link.
INSPIRATION/TODAY’S QUESTION
Today’s Question for Classroom SOLSC Teachers:
Instead of general question about the Classroom SOLSC, today we have a quote for you to respond to.
I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts … so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just gonna delete whatever I write anyway. ~John Green
Please respond in the comments below, or leave a question or thought you have about the challenge so far.
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.
TWO WRITING TEACHERS 
I love John Green’s writing so much that it’s shocking to hear him say that. It’s refreshing and interesting to know that that’s what he has to tell himself in order to get words on the page! I struggle with perfectionism, so it’s very thought-provoking!
My students are really getting into the challenge this year, and it’s so much fun to see their growth!
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Thunder Snow!
https://michellehornsblog.blogspot.com/2018/03/thunder-snow.html
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I think it’s important to understand, embrace and face struggle. This is one of the many reasons I feel it’s crucial that teachers write alongside their students. As my 84 year old mother-in-law wrote on her apple pie crust recipe,
“Toss together flour and salt in a bowl
Cut in some Crisco, wad it up, and then roll
Lots of flour on board and on pin
Do that before you even begin
Too much water will make the dough really too sticky
Too much flour-it will be lumpy and icky
If dough falls apart and won’t slide into plate,
Perhaps you can save it, perhaps it’s too late
If all remedies fail, and your crust is a bust
And you’re wondering if Grammy you really can trust
Take her advice, she “swears” it’s OK
To mumble Oh (beep), and throw it away!!!!!”
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I do want my students to NOT be satisfied with writing junk, but I also don’t want them to feel as though they suck either. I think there’s a fine line we tread, encouraging, but holding them to a higher standard.
Myself, I know my writing is trash and I tell my students as such. I’ll reread my stuff two or three times, finding little changes or big changes. Either way, I know my first draft is never my final draft. Thank goodness for Grammerly! 🙂
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Funny how with some students conventions are writing, while others just get their words down and do not worry at all. Either way can be problematic (or not, depending on the writer). Today I felt for one of my students who will not write unless she can write perfectly (in her second language)- so hard!
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I think this advice is a little too harsh for my students. I don’t want them to think their writing “sucks”. I do want them to revise and edit and change things, but right now I just want them to write. I am hoping with more writing they will begin to evaluate and reflect on their writing.
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As a writer, I totally agree with the above quote, but the third grade teacher in me isn’t comfortable sharing “suck” with the kids…am I being too proper? I could share with them the idea that writers often write a lot and then change a lot. That the first thing you write often isn’t what the text looks like at the end. My students don’t really get this. Does anyone know of a video where a writer shares this idea put forth by John Green but in a little more elementary way? Would love to show that to my students! I also think Paula Bourque’s book Close Writing is one I have to reread- she wrote about students not reading their own writing and not reading it through the eyes of a new person reading their work for the first time. When it comes to blogging, I have some kids who are very stream of consciousness in their writing. No conventions in sight. And I struggle with how much to direct them with blogging- it’s their space to create but conventions would make it so much better!
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I guess I’ve been spending too much time in middle school these days! Kathleen, the book Ish by Peter Reynolds holds a very similar message, in a much more elementary-friendly way : )
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