Go to Lynn’s blog to learn more. Share the love!

Peace (in the days),
Kevin

This week, I used Jog the Web for publishing the collection of Days in a Sentence. Please spend a few minutes looking at our blogs and websites and get to know each other beyond the words.

Jog the Day in Sentence

In two weeks, Day in Sentence ventures over to Lynn J.’s blog, where I guess she will be hosting from the National Writing Project Annual Meeting in Philadephia. Whoohoo.

Peace (in the jog),
Kevin

How is your day going? Your week? Consider joining us for this week’s Day in a Sentence. Here’s how it works:

• You reflect on your day or your week
• You boil your thought down to a single sentence
• You use the comment link on this blog post to submit your sentence (it will go into my moderation bin)
• I gather up all of the sentences and post them as one collective post over the weekend
• Bravo!

Come join us. It’s fun. It’s easy. It’s a way to connect with other educators and writers around the world. You are invited!

Here is mine, spurred on by an onslaught of conferences just ahead:

What was I thinking when I agreed to lead or co-lead so many workshop sessions in November?

Peace (in the days),
Kevin

This week, Day in a Sentence rests comfortably on the beaches of Israel with Bonnie as the host. She asks that you consider boiling down your week or your day into a six word reflective sentence.

Come on — six words! You can do it. And you are cordially invited to join us by heading over to Digital Bonnie to post your six word Day in a Sentence this week. We hope to see you there!

Need some inspiration? Here is a song that I wrote last year for Day in a Sentence. Get your Six Word Groove on!

The Day in a Sentence Theme Song

Peace (on the other side of the world),
Kevin

A shaken Ken writes:

The day I wrote this,
An earthquake shook Wellington;
I was distracted.

Cynthia notes that her haiku is inspired by her students work with a town partnership.

Festival highlight…
Students read “My Homeplace Is…”
Oh, so proud teacher.

Jim/Jan (who is new to Day in a Sentence, so welcome — not sure if it is Jim or Jan who wrote …) noticed the week on a bright note.

What a week it was
it flew right by with a whirl
lots of laughs and smiles

sara loves her meetings! (slight mocking … sorry)

grade level team meetings,
you mock my crafted agenda
with off-task tangents.

On the hunt for a house is Amy.

Looking for a house
Oh so many to choose from
This will take a while

Glen – my comic strip mentor — has such a marvelous way with words.

Electric sparks spit
Bold digital sleight of hand
Canvas refreshes

Paul had a tractor. Now he has memories.

Sold my old tractor
She was a beauty Ford N
Sad to see her go

Gail P. seeks some peace in the days of hectic energy.

aiming for zen-like
coaxing stress from the schedule
takes bit of finesse

Cheryl turned to technology for her haiku, using a site called Computerized Haiku, which she suggests might be a starting point for students who struggle with haiku.

ALL RED IN THE LEAVES,
I FLASH CLEAR HILLS IN THE FALL.
WHIZZ! THE STREAK HAS BURST.

Thanks to all you Haiku-ians and see you in two weeks over at Digital Bonnie.

Peace (in three lines),
Kevin

PS — I used the site recommended by Cheryl and came out with his:

ALL GREEN IN THE RAIN,
I TASTE CURVED POOLS IN THE DAWN.
LOOK! THE MOON HAS PASSED.

I’m going poetic this week. For Day in a Sentence (which will now become a twice-monthly activity as we share hosting among many bloggers, starting with Bonnie in two weeks), I ask that you consider a haiku reflection of your day, or your week.

Traditional haikus are five-seven-five, but who’s counting? You write your haiku as you see fit.

To contribute, just click on the comment link to this post and I will gather up the haikus and post them together over the weekend.

Here is mine:

Emotional fragile
student almost melted down:
But stress turned to smiles

Peace (in three lines),
Kevin

Ken sees magic and probably can now breathe easier.

What it is to be on leave, the exams marked, all the projects checked and a clear week ahead, just like the last: magic!

As many of here in the United States are just starting the year, Anne is just ending her year. Have a great break, Anne!

After two weeks of spring break, I am preparing revision, extra notes, correcting outcomes etc for the final three weeks that I have my senior secondary students before their VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) exams, as this is last term for our school year in Australia.

The world is full of hopefulness.  And it’s a good thing Art knows enough to plan for hope.

I am hoping that if I get behind in my grading really quickly, I will have a lot more time to catch up–a guy can hope!

I can almost feel the energy in Lynn J.’s comments — the active learning commotion of the classroom.

The seventh graders are on the rampage this week, full of questions and comments about absolutely everything!

Yes, Jim, Fridays are nice days.

Wow, It’s Friday. Time to stop and smell the roses.

Ben has his students deep into Hawthornian terrrain.  It sounds deep and exciting there.

My students are chipping away bits and pieces of Hawthorne’s text to reveal characterization.

Good advice here from Shaun. Was this a lesson plan almost gone awry?

If you must leave something to the last moment, be prepared.

Marg’s thoughts are on the outdoors.

My last week of holidays has involved mowing, pruning, mulching, weeding, planting and watering my garden, which only seems to look this lovely, each set of school holidays.

sara may be leaning in a little close to the plants. just let them be, sara. just let them be. (ha)

it skeeves me out that the spores on the back of ferns on my desk are the ferns’ way of getting it on; i feel like i should be getting dinner and a movie if i’m this close to something so personal.

Ok — Amy – tap into the rebels of the classroom (and hope they don’t see you as the English Monarchy)

As we begin talking about the American Revolution, I am hoping to relate their teenage rebellions or revolutions and feeling about rules to the colonists feelings about the British!

Alex’s poetic words mask an adventurous spirit! Have fun in those woods!

Experiencing synapse-lapse, my brain flashes back greenery, scent of smoke, crisp air, and rugged mountains, making the classroom seem suddenly claustrophobic; I am so looking forward to four days of wilderness mini-break, starting tonight!

Vacation … vacation … vacation. Come on and say it with me: vacation. It’s what Illya is needing right about now (anyone else?)

It seems hardly a month gone by since the beginning of the school year and yet I’m already looking forward to the next vacation!

(Luckily, in Switzerland we have a two week vacation in the fall after only 6 weeks of school!)

Oooo. A bit of rhyming in Delaine’s lines.

School is in full swing, with all the madness that brings.

My head was spinning a bit with the math here as Nina talks about the demographics of her class. I love that the diversity is celebrated, Nina.

My intermediate ESL class at the University of Maryland includes twelve students, speaking six different languages, from three continents and eight countries! I am in heaven.

Chocolate cake, Cynthia? Or ice cream cake? Or?

Homecoming week is over; SACS training is over; the rest of the week should be “a piece of cake”!

As the father of three boys, I have made a mental note of Mary H’s list here. Maybe you should, too. And I can’t help but wonder about the backstory behind this sentence.

Tomatoes, superglue, duct tape, bubble solution–things to keep away from three teenage brothers.

Gosh, Connie, your sentence is beautiful on so many levels.

Weaving a fabric of knowledge in my fifth grade class; linking all subjects in a huge tapestry that has “change” as its central theme.

Gail P and I are starting to speak the same language — which is good, since we are colleagues. But I think that this year’s push into Literacy and other areas will be helpful for teachers like Gail (Kindergarten) and me (Sixth grade) to converse about our school curriculum in meaningful ways. Right, Gail?

Communities of practice and standard based report cards are helping teachers communicate about how we can all assess with the same tools, and benchmarks.

Tracy had experiential learning on her mind — something I wrote about in my own Day in a Sentence the other day.

I’m jealous of Kevin though remembering community building with our students as we zip lined on the first day and apple picked last week, also thinking that community building is an ongoing process and can’t end when we pack up at the end of a fun day.

Mary gives a good recipe for creativity in the digital age.

Word and images, images and words, add music and narration for a digital composition in Photo Story 3.

May the End soon arrive for you, Cheryl, so that you may begin again.

Our students and teachers are in a holding pattern while waiting for our state wide testing to come to an end.

Peace (to all of you in this interesting sentence community),
Kevin

• Reflect upon your week, or a day in your week
• Boil it down to a single sentence
• Share it here by using the Comment Link with this blog post
• I will gather up all of the sentences and publish them as another blog post sometime over the weekend (probably on Sunday)

I am starting to set up a bimonthly schedule for Day in a Sentence to roam the blogging planet and if you are interested (a bunch of you already expressed interest via our Day in a Sentence survey, so no need to repeat), please leave me a note with your sentence.

Here is my Day in a Sentence:

I am getting geared up for going down the river on our annual Whitewater Rafting Adventure with our entire sixth grade.

I look forward to your words.

Peace (in the sentence),
Kevin

I took the summer off from hosting the Day in a Sentence feature that mostly takes place here at this blog, but also travels very nicely (it packs tightly into virtual pockets) to other blogs. I’ve been the main host for some time and I started to have doubts about whether to keep it going, to be honest. (And as a back story, the Day in Sentence did not originate here — it started with another blogging friend — The Reflective Teacher — who decided to retire from blogging and he gave me the go-ahead to continue with Day in a Sentence at my blog, along with help and wonderful support from from Bonnie).

Anyway, last week, I sent an email out to the 100-plus folks on my Day in a Sentence list and asked them to take a quick survey to gauge their interest in continuing the feature and if they would be willing to take on more of the hosting duties. I was so happy that so many folks took the survey (see the results above). Clearly, we all see the value of this reflective writing and the connections that we make. Not one person said “no” to the concept of Day in a Sentence. That was a powerful statement to me.

It also helped that Bonnie and I used Day in a Sentence as a prompt at our new iAnthology networking site and folks just loved the idea and wrote such powerful reflections. It reminded me of why I got hooked so long ago.

So, here is what I think:

• We’ll keep Day in a Sentence up and running;
• We’ll move it from once a week to twice a month;
• We’ll have many more guest hosts this year (thanks to all of you who offered … I’ll be in contact soon)
• And Day in a Sentence will start up again this coming week.

If you are visiting this blog and want to host the Day in a Sentence feature one of these weeks, just let me know via the comment section here and I will add you to the eventual master list of hosts.

I like that Day in a Sentence will be on the move, traveling the world on the fuel of words!

Peace (in a sentence),

Kevin

I’ve decided to let Day in a Sentence take a much-needed vacation (which, coincidentally, coincides with my own summer vacation). My plan is to relaunch Day in a Sentence again in August and I hope that many of you who follow the feature will join us again at that moment in time.

As a final call for words, I wondered if you might want to share a sentence about what Day in a Sentence means for you. I often wonder what folks get out of it. For me, Day in a Sentence provides me a reflective moment in the week and the act of narrowing down the essence of the week or day into a single sentence is a wonderful structure. Plus, I love reading what other folks write.

So, what does Day in a Sentence mean to you? Please considering posting your thoughts as a comment here and I will release them as they come in.

Thanks for joining me on the Day in a Sentence adventure.

Peace (with sharing and reflection),

Kevin