(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
I happily wore the mask she made by hand for me, another sewn gift to celebrate a moment in time.
Peace (decorated and worn),
Kevin
(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
The classroom seemed unusually crowded and louder than usual as some semblance of normal, or as close to normal as one can get in a Pandemic, settled in, with every single one of our masked-up sixth graders returning physically to the building for the first time in a year. *
Peace (with the energy of the young),
Kevin
*We’d been in Hybrid Mode since October, with half the students in school some days.
(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
This is a sample of some of the faces created and shared by students last week as we talked about “reading emotions” in the Pandemic, when our masks cover our faces.
Their task, as part of our social-emotional lesson, was to answer the question: How are you feeling about coming back in full to school?
(Which happens this coming week) They had to capture their feeling in a picture with both a mask and mask-less face, as we then talked about the importance of our eyes and addressed any anxiety over the coming changes ahead for our school.
Peace (noticed),
Kevin
(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
It was exactly one year ago, today, when we walked out of the classroom on a Friday afternoon (the 13th) and never returned to the building for rest of the school year.
Peace (thinking on a year),
Kevin
(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
I do love it so very much when I get a chance to see the choices my students make for the books they want to be, and are, reading.
Peace (in pages),
Kevin
(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
Give them a chance, and young writers will invent words that will spark your pondering and set you guffawing, and make you wonder where our language might yet be heading.*
Peace (invented and spoken),
Kevin
*This is the 17th year that my sixth graders have been building an online collaborative dictionary of invented words. It’s part of a unit on word origins. Each year, every student adds a new word, and their voice (through audio file), to the dictionary. It’s just one of those annual rituals that keeps moving forward …
Listen to this year’s voice collection.
(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
In the moment in which that solitary snowflake landed in her outstretched hand, as if she were capturing a bit of loosened magic from the sky, the start of a small poem, too, tumbled into my head.
(A draft started in freewrite time with students, revised during the day)
Peace (falling),
Kevin
Little Geometry
One single silent
snowflake, loose
– a goose lost from
its group – slow-motion
tumblerIts landing softened
by her outstretched
hand: melted timethen, her lips
on skin
on ice
on sandWe’re lost in a
moment we may
never understand
(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
What I had at first hoped would be a straightforward technology lesson for students — using Quicktime to capture voice on audio — became, instead, incredibly unexpectedly complicated due to the distance between us — me, at home, with screenshots and tutorials; them, at home, using an unfamiliar application; and Zoom, refusing to play nice in allowing me to show what I needed to show.
Peace (finding the button),
Kevin
(The Slice of Life Challenge in March is hosted by Two Writing Teachers as way to encourage teachers-as-writers. You can join in, if you want. There is also a monthly call for Slices on Tuesdays. You can write then, too)
I laughed, and then she laughed, and then we all laughed as the insult generator landed on a particularly funny Shakespearean phrase that she expertly lobbed my way with her voice, cushioned first by a heartfelt apology not even necessary.
Peace (from the classroom),
Kevin
The comic above led to a great conversation on Twitter the other day about the role of mentor texts, and learning from genres, and remix. Thanks to everyone who added in to the conversation (Sarah, Terry, Sheri, Daniel, Ronald, Jayne, etc.)
At one point, something somebody wrote (prob Terry) brought me back to making a comic about remix …
Peace (in learning),
Kevin