Archive for the “Day in Sentence” Category

It’s difficult to express the wonder and amazement that I get when I put out a call for Days in a Sentence and receive back such a wealth of words. There were more than 20 contributors this week! The vibrancy and giving of our writing community, and the way that a sentence pinpoints the act of reflection, is really quite something.

Thank you.

Here are your Days in a Sentence, traditional-style:

Bonnie as salmon? Naw. But in her role as a leader and mentor of teachers, she admits that the classroom is getting more distant, particularly as a heat wave pounced on her (and my) region last week and fried plenty of brains in the schools.

I am moving upstream from the rest of the fish in my river, as teachers I know melt in their classrooms while I am in my AC planning for work this summer and finally taking on the projects demanding my attention. I still hold my memories of school in June but they are fading.

Paul had a sudden realization of the balance between what he carries around in his hand from place to place and what carries him around from place to place. Until he thinks about the debt. It’s a skewed financial equilibrium (OK, that has to be a good band name, right? Skewed Financial Equilibrium!)

I think it is scary that my laptop is worth more than my car, or my truck, or all of my clothes, or my living room furniture, but not as big as my student loan.”

Ken composes poems that are not of this world. Spend a moment reading this one aloud and you’ll see what I mean. Thanks, Ken. (Note: Ken and I crossed many paths during the Comment Challenge and he is one of the finalists for prizes for that event. Please consider casting your vote. First, read the nominations and then consider voting – Bonnie is also a nominee, as is Kate — see below)

Somewhere between dreaming and waking,
when least expected,
there’s a turning point
with no life going into it,
no usefulness coming out of it,
where cogent thought
carries no weight
for sensibility
and idiocy
are in dispute -
Reality,
its hand
held out to meet you,
Fantasy,
its limbs
spread out to greet you,
confusing
night and day,
life and death,
till passage
is complete.

Kate had weather on (and in) her mind this week as the term neared its end for her. (Kate is also a nominee in the Comment Challenge)

Rain and sunshine, wet and dry as mixed as my feelings in the last week of term.”

Connie sees the virtues of continuity with an initiative she is part of. That would be nice, since most of us know that continuity in education rarely happens unless there is a solid base underneath it to support and nurture it. And if anyone is good at nurturing folks, it is Connie. (See the Fireside Ning for examples)

Ah, here I am, the last day of school, weary but emotionally elated from having broken new educational ground; the funny thing is we’re now so completely networked, I know we’ll just continue on from here–and that has never happened before.

Amy makes the quick and seamless (?) transition from the classroom to camp, with barely time to catch her breath. She must love kids!

School is over but my camp director job has already begun - no rest for the weary! It would be nice to have a break in between the two jobs, but it is a change of pace anyway. Camp tours begin today so I will be meeting many nervous parents (and kids).

Lynn cites “frozen brains” in her post. To be honest, a frozen brain would have felt nice in my head this past week. Lynn also talks of renewal — that way in which we have in finding new energy and motivation in our life.

Frozen brains will melt soon enough with respite, roaming, rare family-time—ah, renewal!

Illya has had quite a week — from sports to teachers to climbing walls (in a good way, it seems).

It’s been a full 3 days of teaching baseball to a group of eager young boys, showing eager teachers how to teach with their new book and tomorrow I’ll be helping eager young children to climb walls - now that is a fulfilling week!!!”

Matt appreciates the fact that we threw no curve balls (continuing with Illya’s reference to sports here) with Day in a Sentence this week. Sometimes, we need solid footing in our lives.

This week I’m finding change is hard. I’m glad my day in a sentence remains the same.”

Barb’s part of the world got hit hard with Mother Nature, but does anyone in the outside world know about it in this Age of Media? Not if you live in a small market, unfortunately.

Southern Indiana fields plowed, planted, and flooded with devastating flooding across the state get very little press.

Janice (who joins us for the first time, I think) pushed herself hard this week in a physical way. She may have paid the price with a sore body but, hey, she got a sentence out of it! (Thanks for participating, Janice)

My brain, which believes it is still twenty, had great difficulty convincing my almost fifty year old legs, lungs, and heart that they COULD keep going when I filled in as the extra player in an intense game of Ultimate, and then, later, on a lengthy hike to release salmon back into the Credit River.

Can you hear them? The kids? They are calling you out to the playground.The monkey bars and swings await. Delaine heard them and is on her way. (Me, too. See you there).

Just like small children, my friends are anxiously waiting outside, ready to play, for me to come running from the house after all my chores are done. The end of school is very near, and the playground is calling.”

Michelle feels her feet sinking into the Earth that once was solid but which now has absorbed the rains. May she soon find solid ground again!

Rain-soaked nights and rare sunshine make me feel as if I am sinking into a very spongy clay earth here in Vermillion, South Dakota.”

Sara can find some space this summer to breathe and to talk as a married couple. Her single life is behind her now (good thing, right?). I love that she has big dreams. I hope she achieves them (I know she will)

my thoughts lately are of freedom, sustainability, choices, and the tenacity of my first summer of married finances - discussing big dreams with my husband and taking the first journeying steps to reach them. (and god forbid i write “baby” steps, or both mothers will sense something grandchild-ish in the atmosphere…)

Warm, gentle and nurturing thoughts go out to Nina, who clearly has had a difficult time. I hope these words find you with some sunshine peeking through the clouds, Nina.

I feel surrounded by cancer; it has been a cruel week.”

Alice’s sentence reminds me of the song from Semisonic that goes “Every new beginning starts from some other beginnings end.” I always liked that line. And the prospect of summer brings that idea forth for many of us.

Welcome to summer vacation, where ends become a beginning.”

Mary got a gift of cooler temps as she headed to Beantown to explore the Freedom Trail with her students this week. If she had gone any earlier in the week, she and her kids would have melted into the sidewalk and ended up in the Charles River.

With temperatures above 90 in the classroom on Monday and Tuesday it was ironic that on Wednesday we were walking the Freedom Trail in Boston celebrating the cooler temperatures and the change in venue. The Boston Massacre was refreshing after the South Hadley Melt Down.

Brandi (Welcome!) is new to Day in a Sentence, I believe, and her blog, Lead by Example, is very cool and worth your attention. She’s a bit tired from the technology, but I appreciate that she found the energy to contribute here.

As I watch the week come to an end, I am exhausted from trying to catch up on all of my digital communication.

Anne was one step ahead of her principal in a cross-world journey this week.

It was announced at morning briefing that our principal was leaving for USA, but I reported that I would be there before her, taking my kids with me, as we were using skype to participate in an amazing videoconference for a “show and tell finale” with the New England students we had connected with through blogging.

Amy P. is having one of those unscheduled moments of blissful confusion. I think it is blissful, but it may not be.

This week brings randomness due to no established summer schedule.”

Cynthia always packs a handful into a sentence and this time, she realized how she could use a tool to explain a tool. Great insight and I would love to see her movie.

I spent all week working on my presentation on Photo Stories for the 21st for the MWTI Writing conference, and then Wednesday night I had an epiphany about what I should have done, so I spent Thursday re-vamping and re-creating a Photo Story on how to use Photo Story. Whew!

I also redid my Wordle experiment from the other day, adding in the newest sentences and then editing out my own introductions to each sentence. Here, then, is a gift to everyone who participated this week: Your Days in a Wordle.

You can go right to the Wordle Gallery to get a better view of the design, too.

Thanks for participating this week. Be on the lookout for a guest host for next week.

Peace (in our connective words),
Kevin

Comments 9 Comments »

I found this site via Larry (always a good connection) and it is called Wordle. Wordle takes your words and then reforms them as a Word Cloud, giving prominence and good placement to words that are repeated or used most often in the text you provide it.

As an experiment, I took all of my own Days in a Sentence from this year (since January — I keep them in a Google Docs file) and created this:

I love that Students is the biggest word on my cloud. (Although why the word Goo is bigger than some others has me pleasantly puzzled)
Then, I grabbed all 20 (so far) submissions for this week’s Day in a Sentence feature, and gave Wordle another go.
Check this out:
The word Week is pretty big, but I also see Summer and Teachers and Students in our collective Wordle Mix. I love transforming words, you know?
What can you do with Wordle? Let me know.
Peace (in word clouds),
Kevin

Comments 14 Comments »

Welcome to Day in a Sentence — your weekly adventure with words and reflection.
After a wonderful visit to Nancy’s blog, where books were all the rage, Day in a Sentence returns home this week and we want you (and you and you) to consider joining us.
The premise is simple:

  • Consider a day in the past week or the entire week itself
  • Write a single sentence that captures the spirit of your day or week
  • Use the comment feature here on this post to share your sentence
  • Over the weekend, I will gather up everyone’s words and post them together as one big collective Days in a Sentence

This is an open invitation to anyone passing through this neck of the Bloggery Woods or anyone who happens to collect my blog in your RSS.
Please consider joining us this week.

Here is my sentence (and you can listen to it as a podcast, too)

The early summer heat wave that hit this week has melted my brain to the point that I almost need to stick my head inside the freezer in order to plan out lessons that will take my students and I through the final days of our school year.

Peace (in words and deeds),
Kevin

Comments 1 Comment »

Our very-much pregnant friend, Nancy, has agreed to host this week’s Day in a Sentence (Will she write her sentence on the week of the baby?) So please join this week over at Nancy’s Blog and follow her suggestions for this week’s submissions.

I look forward to your words.

Peace (in rainy days here in New England before the blast of summer about to arrive this weekend),
Kevin

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Thanks to everyone who submitted their Day in a Comic. It was quite amusing to get them in my email bin. I struggled with how to present them all — I tried making a little movie but the text became too small and unreadable. I tried a slideshow but the new Edublogs platform doesn’t seem to want to have the flickr slideshow that I used to use.
So I am providing you with a link to the Flickr Slideshow and I hope you travel there and get a chuckle and/or insight out of the comic creations of this week.
Or, you can follow these contributors names to their comics:

If you want to make a comic, the tools we used were either Make Beliefs Comics or ToonDoo or the Read-Write-Think Site, but there are plenty of other sites out there that are easy for us and our students to use.

If you sent me a comic but I did not get it or post it, please let me know. And you can still link to your comic in the commenting section of this post, if you were a bit — ahem — tardy or occupied with real life this week.

Peace (in the funny pages),
Kevin

Comments 7 Comments »

(click on picture to get bigger image)
Yes, in a comic. But not if you don’t want to. In recent workshops with teachers, and with my own students, we have used this very easy-to-use site called Make Beliefs Comics. It has limits, but ease of use is key.
So, for this week’s Day in a Sentence, I ask you to consider creating a Day in a Comic. You can use any format you want. If you do use Make Beliefs Comics, however, be sure to email your comic to me (dogtrax-at-gmail-dot-com) so I can collect them.
As a matter of fact, you can email me any of your comics, whatever the format. Or post a link to them here, if you can upload them yourself. I hope to collect and post them all together, in some format (any ideas?)
And if the idea of creating a comic is not quite your thing, feel free to just submit your day as a sentence in the traditional way via the comment feature on this post.
Peace (in days),
Kevin

Comments 11 Comments »

Anne M. creatively decided to use PowerPoint as the coloured backdrop (notice I used the non-American spelling there) of PowerPoint to cast our words against the colours of our days. I took that powerpoint and made them into pictures so I could share here. (you can also view it as a Flickr slideshow here)

Come on back later this week and join us for another round of Day in a Sentence!
Peace (in words),
Kevin

Comments 9 Comments »

This week, Anne M. from Australia takes over the Day in a Sentence challenge and she is adding her own little twist (which is what I love about sending the Day out into the world with guest hosts — they have the option of making it their own).

Anne would like you to incorporate some aspect of “color” into your sentence. So, close your eyes and imagine your world in color and please head on over to Anne’s blog for this week’s writing adventure.

(If you want to guest host this feature, please please please let me know. The more people involved, the better, and it is quite simple to do.)

Peace (in rainbows),
Kevin

Comments 2 Comments »

This week’s Day in a Sentence was narrowed down to Day in Six Words, and the words came from all over the blogosphere this week. There were many new voices (partly as a result of the 31 Day Comment Challenge), plenty of veteran writers, and an incredible collection of tales told in minimalistic creativity.

I am going to keep my own narrative intrusions in check this week and allow your voices to come through on their own (because, well, they don’t need any help from me). But I did do something a bit different with your comments/words this week as yet another way to bring us all together in once “voice” and you can find that experiment at the end of the post.

With further ado, here you go:

  • Seniors graduated Friday. A bittersweet celebration. — Cynthia
  • Field trip - 8 chaperones - hell yeah! Sara P.
  • Learned lots from Will Richardson seminarAnne M.
  • Not getting out produces distorted viewpoints. Christine
  • Wet weepy spongy soggy rainbow day — Mary
  • With friends and sunshine, then rain.Illya (who has been experimenting with six day memoirs on Twitter for the past few days, and I have been trying to keep up, too)
  • Did that Simon says no comment.Ken (who originally let me know: Oil C wot oil do.)
  • Sydney Wednesday. Melbourne Saturday. Perth Tuesday.Kathryn
  • Two-on-two, full-court — DUMB! Larry (who admits that the full court game was a bit too much for him)
  • A whirlwind of activities encompasses me!Amy
  • “Wolf-children on crack” describes my class. — Liza
  • Need to learn to let go.Dani
  • Festival’s coming. Kids crazy. Teachers crazier. — Karen M.
  • Mud-covered frog hunters are wildly happy.Connie
  • Kind of mellow week. Almost summer! — Andrea
  • Sent staff survey. Received zero responses. — Andrea (she was inspired to keep going)
  • One soul who wears many hats. — Eric
  • The Quilt binding encircles us all.Jane S.
  • It’s that time…awards, honors, accolades.Delaine
  • Telling students they’ve failed is excruciating. Nina
  • Graduation ends K12; creates new beginnings!Tonya
  • Last Wednesday class today!! Time for ….!?!?!!!!Illya
  • Wondering if any “boilers” could hear me all the way from California hooting and hollering Wednesday night as many of the teachers and students in my filmmaking project headed onto to the stage at our regional SEVAs to receive awards and recognition?!? Gail (more than six words but Gail also has leeway on my blog)
  • Mulling on the importance of simplicity.Kate
  • Digitalstory dreams as new mac arrivesBonnie

And listen to Bonnie (if it works):

powered by ODEO
Meanwhile, at a Technology Across the Curriculum Conference on Saturday, I had participants in a podcasting workshop record their own Days in a Sentence. I did not limit them to six words, but you can listen to their voices (and I added a second sentence for this week, too).

Peace (in words, short words)

Kevin

PS — So, friends, I took your six words, mashed them all together, and created this found poem of your thoughts. It was an interesting endeavor and I believe all of you are represented in some fashion or another. What does the poem mean? The poet remains silent. :)

Six Words As Collective Thought
A Day in Sentence Found Poem

In bittersweet simplicity:
the quilt of students we once received
now graduate
but just one soul creates celebration/importance;
Just one soul produces sunshine;
to dream a whirlwind of mud-covered
friends who encompass a “response” in these Days
and arrive wildly happy with honor,
then (in digitalstory festivals) I project rainbows of wolf-children wearing hats, two by two –
hooting and hollering like the spongy virtual frogs of Will Richardson
as these viewpoints arrive through the recognition that
learning always honors teachers (even with crazy kids encircled in whirlwinds).
I’m mulling this:
Does this stage of summer create new beginnings?
Or end the time of today?
Let go. Let go.
Hell yeah!

Comments 21 Comments »

This week’s Day in a Sentence returns to a popular format — the Six Word Variation. I had been thinking of this for a few weeks now, but then Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach (at her blog, 21st Century Learning) used the technique this week on Twitter, asking folks to submit their Six Word Memoir.

Once again, I was moved by how powerful the writing can be within the six word limit (and see the book called Not Quite Was I Expecting for a collection of six word memoirs — great stuff).

So, I ask you to consider joining us this week with a six word recap of either a day from your week or your entire week. Here is how Day in a Sentence works:

  • Boil down your day or week into six words
  • Use the comment link on this post to submit your six words
  • I collect all of the comments and then post them all as a collection on Sunday
  • Feel free to use podcasting, video, plain ‘ol writing, hand signals (no wait, that won’t work)
  • Everyone is welcome!

And since one of the tasks of the 31 Day Comment Challenge is to use comments and submissions from visitors in a blog post, this works out nicely. So I am tagging the challenge here, in hopes that some new folks will wander in and take part in the activity.

Here is my Six Word Week, and I am experimenting with Odeo Studio for a podcasting workshop this weekend, so let me give it a try with my words that relate to some state standardized testing this week that has kids and teachers on edge:

Math testing stresses us all out.


powered by ODEO

Peace (in minimal words).
Kevin

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