Category Archives: Day in Sentence

There was another wonderful collection of Days in a Sentence from folks this week. I am always surprised and interested when another submission finds its way into my blog bin. Here goes:

In Massachusetts, we are entering our testing season — the MCAS. Mary, my colleague at the Western Massachusetts Writing Project, is already thinking of how the testing can be turned to her advantage. She is so smart like that.

I wish that helping students become better test takers actually helped them become better learners. Alas, I feel the real test comes after all our tests are over.

You have all read about the tragic fires in Australia and Anne M. is right there, teaching her students about safety and we call cross our fingers that the drills don’t turn into reality for her.

A more settled week at school, where we practiced fire drills in anticipation of a high risk bushfire danger day again today (Friday) but fortunately all is well for us.

Ghosts in the computer? Hacker spirits? Byte-sized sprites? Lynne C. experienced some oddities in the lab this week.

My timer blasts for no reason, and one of the computers repowers up out of nowhere; noise kharma?

Ken gets his Haiku mojo up and running this week.

With no computer
there’s time to reflect on life
without a PC.

Janice suffers from the pressure to put a grade on knowledge acquisition when her gut tells her that it might not be the most adequate way to gauge learning and progress in her students. I think her conundrum is also most of ours, right?

This week I hate that the timelines of report cards seems to contradict almost everything we know about good teaching practice; the kids aren’t ready, I know they’re not ready, but I test them anyway just so I’ll have marks to put on report cards. Aaargggghhh!

Did someone say Groundhog Day? Matt enters the cycle.

I’m wrapping up loose ends to begin the process again.

Shaun experiences both sides of the coin.

I have been the assessed and the assessor, to grow as a learner and to grow my learners.

Happy birthday, Elona!

This week my granddaughter and I combined our birthday celebrations-she’s 4 and I’m 4+.

sara is feeling .. uh … antsy.

oh my god – not having a vacation at this time of year is akin to being swarmed by angry hornets and seeing the smoke pot twenty yards away.

Mary Lee has been away and now wants to return. I have some snow and ice and cold that I can let her have, for cheap!

Weeks full of long days and hard work got me to this Phoenix IRA pause, and it’s been SO good to slow down in the sun, but I am ready to go back to clouds and cold and work and family and home and friends and students and routine.

Aram is faced with a dilemma I bet a lot of high school teachers, in particular, face in this age of easy cut-and-paste-with-no-attribution research papers. I don’t have an answer for him but I wonder if there is a better approach out there for him. Maybe creating multi-modal documents that force students to be creative and make their own materials?

After discovering the fifth research paper that “borrows” freely from Wikipedia, I seriously am considering completely pitching the way I teach research papers, as opposed to calling them all lazy.

Two years of work … off in the mail and Nina can breathe a sigh of relief.

As I mailed 11.5 pounds of an institute self-study we have been working on for almost 2 years, I felt an even bigger weight lift off my shoulders.

Stacey — whose collaborative site, Two Writing Teachers, begins the Slice of Life Challenge this week that is worth checking out and participating in — had one of those heart-thumping moments that I hope you never experience (but I have).

I consider myself lucky since my defensive driving skills saved me from an accident on 95 South this evening… scary!

I was not sure if this was Bonnie‘s sentence, but I like it because it shows how immersed she is in working with teachers and kids, and how ambitious she is.

I am getting ready to work with 100 6th graders as they create digital stories.

Ben is riding high on a pave of optimism and pride in his students, and I think we should all ride along with him. When one of us succeeds, we all succeed.

My students (11th grade) have truly impressed me with their ability to rise to my expectations for literary quote IDs. Judging by their performance on my test, I would say that those who made 80%+ on my test could walk in to a college English class at a university and perform and get the same grade as the university students. I have never been so proud of students.

Cynthia, a dear friend from the National Writing Project, had some good news, too, as an initiative to create a Technology Institute seems to be gaining ground when she gathered up a crucial audience.

A small modicum of success–today the Alcorn Writing Project’s leadership team agreed to be the participants in our first technology institute!

Amy had a breather, thanks for a holiday.

On this three day weekend celebrating Casimir Pulaski, I am appreciating an extra day for catching up.

Parades … dancing … Lynn J. also has a nice break. I bet we see some evidence on PhotoFridays in the coming week, right?

Grateful that today is Saturday and I can forget about the kids for a couple of days, I’m headed out to watch them march and dance in a parade this morning.

Thank you to everyone and one final note: The Slice of Life Challenge for the month of March is now up and running over at Two Writing Teachers and I encourage you to consider joining in the fun of writing about those central moments of life. I “ran” into Stacey and Ruth last year with the Slice of Life and found it a great way to connect with others. See Two Writing Teachers for more information.

Peace (in sharing),
Kevin

Thanks to Bonnie and Anne for guest hosting Days in a Sentence for a couple of weeks while I was off to Japan with my family. I appreciate the fact that there are plenty of folks who are willing to host the feature from time to time, and if you are interested in hosting Day in a Sentence at your blog, let me know. It’s a fun and relatively easy way to bring the network to your doorstep.

This week’s Day in a Sentence is the traditional format: reflect, and boil down your week or a day in your week, and use the comment link down below to share out. I will collect and then publish them all over the weekend. Easy, right? Come on in and join us.

Here is my sentence:

Although I am required to teach it, I can’t quite figure out how a student learning about parts of speech and breaking down the role of an individual word in a sentence becomes a better writer.

Peace (in sharing),
Kevin

PS — Remember the theme song? Here is again, just to keep you dancin’

Please join Day in a Sentence over at Bonnie’s Blog this week while I am away and then look for the call for words over at Anne M’s blog site for the following week. I hope you enjoy your travels as much I intend to enjoy mine (to Japan).

Peace (in flight paths),
Kevin

Hi

This week’s Day in a Sentence explores a new online application called Stixy, which is sort of like a wiki but looks and feels like a bulletin board. I am hoping it is easy to use. You just need to drag a text widget up into the white space, write your Day in a Sentence, add your name, and save.

Would you care to join us this week? You are invited.

Head on over to my Day in a Sentence site on Stixy and use another collaborative tool. I’m not sure of the applications for the classroom yet for Stixy but I would love to hear from you if you have ideas. You can do that by leaving me a comment here.

The way Day in a Sentence works is:

• Reflect on your day or your week
• Boil it down to a single sentence
• Share it out

Meanwhile, I look forward to your words.

Peace (in collaboration),
Kevin

(I created this week’s sharing using PicLits)

Here are this week’s contributions to Day in a Sentence. I want to note that we have a bunch of new people contributing and that is wonderful. Thank you and I hope you spend some time wandering through your links (Maybe it is time to do another Jog the Web one of these weeks):

Stacey is writing again. She’s always writing. And she is a terrific writer, so that of course makes sense. And then add in that her website is The Two Writing Teachers, well, then, it comes as little surprise that she, ahem, writes:

Gail P. says what was on my mind. It is almost as if we work together. (pssst. We do — on far ends of the building).

Writing is on Susan’s mind, too, and her sentence is deep and rich.

Glenn, my comic/graphic virtual mentor from across the country, has an exciting appointment this week. (Krugman is an award-winning economist — I suggested that Glenn ask him about investing in education, particularly science, math and technology)

I

The colors of the world … ack. I hope the reinstall went well, David.

Fred is new to Day in a Sentence (welcome, Fred and be sure to visit Fred’s relatively new blog — he offers a nice take on Malcolm Gladwell’s article on identifying teachers) and he delivers a wonderful reflection on the week in which balance is a key to sanity.

Josh is also new to Day in a Sentence (if memory serves me, which it doesn’t always do) and he notes an unexpected twist to one of his meetings.

Mary Lee sends her regrets that she didn’t try out the Voicethread from last week (It’s OK, Mary Lee — sometimes, I throw out tools that people can try if they have time or inclination, and I am just happy to have you back here this week). For Mary Lee, the snow was a good thing.

Tom, also new to Day in a Sentence and a thoughtful new member in the Western Mass Writing Project technology team, offers up about exploration and integration of technology.

Mary (also new this week but see my note above about memory) wants to read … blogs. Unfortunately, the other things in life keep clogging up her plate.

sara … sara .. sara … thank you sara for making me laugh just about every time you add your thoughts here. it reminds me of why we became friends so many years ago in the summer institute for the writing project. and now, i can’t stop writing in lower-case letters …

Wait a second. Matt had his refrigerator right in his living room and now he is moving it back! Matt, are you nuts? You could just reach over, grab a snack and watch the incredible movies that you make. No need to move or anything. OK, I get it: renovations are ending and the home may get back to normal, right? (I’ve been there, done that, and I know how you are feeling to have some semblance of order on the horizon)

Lynn J. saw me posting on Twitter about using Piclits, so she did one herself (you did great, Lynn).

Ken started off his new school with, on a very optimistic note. Good luck, Ken.

Amy K. is deep into blogging with her students. And it has been a learning experience for everyone.

Cynthia bravely pushes herself and her students into new terrain. She may be swamped but I suspect it is worth it in the end, right?

Mr. Mansour … I hope you are feeling better. There is nothing worse than the rapid spread of illness in the classroom and at home. Drink fluids, man, drink fluids … and get some rest.

And here is a slightly late entry from Bonnie, as she thinks about spring.

Peace (in networks),
Kevin

PS — I tried to find photos that would emotionally connect with the words, with mixed results. Sorry if the picture background befuddles you. But I did try. Here is my own day:

and

here are all of the photos as a slideshow:

Hello out there in the wired world!

This week’s edition of Day in a Sentence is back to the basics: Reflect on your week or a day in your week, and then boil it down to a single sentence, add it as a comment to this post, and then wait with high levels of anticipation for this weekend when I release them all together as a collaborative, community effort.

Sounds simple, right? You bet. And you are invited to join us — veterans and newcomers alike. This is not one of the exclusive spaces — we aim for inclusiveness. So please add your Day in a Sentence. We want to know how things are going for you this week.

Here is mine (listen to the podcast):

My classroom was full of laughter this week as my students found joy in the creation of new words, which will be added to a four-year-and-growing online collaborative wiki dictionary project that already has hundreds of invented words.

And here is a little video introduction I had created for the dictionary wiki that I refer to in my sentence (I will share out more about that project in the coming days). The passage here is from Frindle, by Andrew Clements, and it all about the power of the dictionary.

Peace (in words),
Kevin

Greetings!

This week’s Day in a Sentence moves over to the Voicethread platform. If you have not used Voicethread, it is a wonderful application for merging voice and/or writing with images. The direct link to our Day in a Sentence Voicethread is here or you can use the embedded Voicethread down below.

We ask that you boil down your week or a day in your week to a single sentence and then share it out with us.

Peace (in threaded voices),

Kevin