For the month of March I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I will be sharing a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I’ve been curating a collection of Sparks and will share some with you all month. It’s a great way to ignite your writing life.

That’s News To Me Quick Write.

We are living in a world of BREAKING NEWS, which can keep us on edge if we are trying to stay abreast of it and keep the incoming information in some context or perspective. It almost always beckons us to respond in some way. Similar to quick write responses to print news headlines or magazine articles, we can also encourage our students to respond to news clips of current events or primary source videos. These are sometimes controversial, so always be mindful of your purpose, audience, and information sources to make sure they are appropriate for your students and that you are aware of potential bias and reliability issues. (unless your purpose is to raise awareness of these issues with older students and you want to expose them to these sources).

I recently saw some news clips from the Clinton impeachment hearings and on the eve of the invasion of Iraq wish I had some journal entry or writing that reflected and documented my thinking as news was breaking back then. Never too late to start!

Here’s my 3 minute quick write in response to this C-SPAN clip from yesterday’s news cycle.

Quick writes can help us respond in a visceral and unfiltered way to news and events. We can revisit our responses and see how our thinking can change with time, new facts, or events coming to light. We can see how our first reaction may be quick to judge or born out by more facts. We may learn that sharing our first responses in the privacy of a notebook,  rather than social media may be a better reflective or cathartic practice.

Sure we can pen more thoughtful opinion pieces but that serves a different purpose-to persuade others rather than to explore our own reactions, opinions, and values. This doesn’t replace that form of writing. Writers shouldn’t be compelled to share and if they do, it is important that others are open and accepting of responses.

In a world of constant breaking news, it might be good if our students had a safe and nurturing place to explore their thinking. Our classrooms could be that safe place.

For the month of March I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I will be sharing a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I’ve been curating a collection of Sparks and will share some with you all month. It’s a great way to ignite your writing life.

This quick write idea comes from my dear friend, Linda Rief. Linda is one of the most amazing teachers and authors I’ve ever had the privilege to know, and I am constantly inspired by her. Her latest book The Quickwrite Handbook contains 100 mentor texts that invite students to ride the waves of someone else’s words to find their own. She encourages her middle school students to write for 2-3 minutes, capturing anything that comes to mind. I highly recommend this book to every writing teacher. You’ll love it!

In honor of Robert Frost’s birthday (March 26, 1874)  I thought I’d ride the wave of words from one of his most famous poems.  Here’s my 3 minute quick write:

I knew which words I wanted to lift and lean on, and how I’d start my idea, but it was fascinating to see which words raced ahead of my pen in my mind and then made it to the paper. Images, memories, emotions all came flooding over me, just by leaning in and leaning on a few words of Robert Frost’s. I stopped after 3 minutes, knowing right where I can pick up and go if I choose to return to this piece.  (Yet knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back”!)

Try a line from a poem or a page from the book you are reading. Lift a tiny  bit onto your paper and ride the wave! It will be magical!

For the month of March I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I will be sharing a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I’ve been curating a collection of Sparks and will share some with you all month. It’s a great way to ignite your writing life.

Jargonese Spark!

As educators, we often forget we speak fluent Jargonese. We throw around acronyms like candy at a parade and can often forget that novice teachers, parents, or community members might be confused by or left out of the conversations that are punctuated by letter strings.  Just this last week I heard:

RTI            IEP          NBPT         PBIS         F&P         MEA     ADD    ADHD

Not only do we speak in these abbreviated terms, but we often don’t stop and think what they might mean to someone who doesn’t live them everyday until we are sitting across from a parent at an Individualized Education Program meeting or a parent/teacher conference and we are met with glassy-eyed stares.

So here’s a quick write that could be “FUN” at staff meetings or PD (that’s professional development, you know). Pop an acronym up on the board and give yourself (and other teachers) 5 minutes to quick write a parent-friendly definition/explanation that does not include any Jargonese. Imagine you are having a conversation. What would you say?

Then share some of your responses. How similar or different are the quick writes? How easy is it to put complex ideas into kid-friendly, parent-friendly, or community-friendly language? What are you thinking about?

Here’s my quick write. (don’t judge!)

RTI

RTI stands for Response to Intervention. We are always looking for ways to support learning and when we find that our regular classroom instruction is not meeting a student’s needs in order to make solid progress, we often look for ways to help-we call this an  INTERVENTION. So we may reteach, give individual support, provide more modeling, give extra practice, or break down a task into smaller skills. Then we observe how the student does (or RESPONDS to that INTERVENTION). We try to assess if that intervention was helpful, or see if we need to try something else. We usually give it a few weeks to look for growth. We sometimes ask others to help us brainstorm ideas and problem-solve issues so that we are giving your child the best support.

Ok, that was 5 minutes and I found myself having to choose alternatives for “one-on-one”  and “adequate” and even wondered if the words “task” and “modeling” might have been obscure for some parents.

Even if you don’t do this with others, it might be helpful to quick write what you might say in a conversation with parents, kids, school boards, or community members BEFORE you are trying to define and explain these jargony concepts. It’s not as easy as you might think, especially when emotions are running high with concerned or stressed parents.You’ll be glad you did!

For the month of March I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I will be sharing a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I’ve been curating a collection of Sparks and will share some with you all month. It’s a great way to ignite your writing life.

EKPHRASIS

This form of prose or poetry is inspired or stimulated by a work of art; the goal is to make the reader envision the art described as if it were physically present. The word ekphrastic is derived from the Ancient Greeks to mean “description”. I love how the art of writing and the art of painting can become symbiotic in this form.  See some examples HERE or check out the book World Make Way: New Poems Inspired by Art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins (2018)

This is a fun quick write to try with kids when you offer them several examples of art work to choose from and invite them to quick write a description or a poem-ish piece as they look carefully at the paintings. Then if they choose to share, their classmates can try to guess which artwork they are writing about by attending to the description used.

Some pieces of art lend themselves to story, while others may create some dissonance or confusion for our budding art ‘aficionados’. Build up an eclectic collection of art work that spans multiple genres of art. We can build in a few minutes of art appreciation alongside writing and thinking-and that could make our students lives all the richer. Remember-they are quick so they don’t have to be polished or published, they just have to exist as evidence of thinking.

Here’s my quick write:

Can you guess the art work?

CLICK HERE to see what I see.

For the month of March I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I will be sharing a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I’ve been curating a collection of Sparks and will share some with you all month. It’s a great way to ignite your writing life.

Gratitude Journal Spark!

What if someone told you that spending 5 minutes a day of this writing could have  profound affect on your physical and mental health, would you think it worth the time and effort? There is a lot of research on the benefits of gratitude journals and letters to raise our mental health and well-being (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/24/678232331/if-you-feel-thankful-write-it-down-its-good-for-your-health) So besides extra skills practice, we can nurture our whole selves with quick writes of gratitude.

Though I’ve talked about this before, my one little word for this year is GRATITUDE and we can never have too much of it.  I am keeping a Gratitude Journal that I got for New Years called 100 Days of Gratitude. I can’t claim they are 100 consecutive days, but I don’t really think that’s what is most important.  I think this is great for our students, but it is equally important for us (teachers) as well. I want to practice what I preach.

Yesterday I participated in an EdCamp in Maine, #EdCamp207 (we have one area code for the whole state!) and I feel such intense gratitude for the teachers who worked for many hours, days, and weeks to host this, as well as to those teachers who gave up a Saturday to collaboratively lift the learning of others. Being thankful for them was worth 5 minutes of my time, even if I didn’t derive health benefits from this simple act.

Photos from our EdCamp207 this weekend. Teachers supporting teachers!

Here’s my quick write:

What sparks your gratitude? Taking a few minutes each day to jot it down can have a powerful impact on your mental and physical well-being.

Just think what it can do for our students!

For the month of March I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I will be sharing a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I’ve been curating a collection of Sparks and will share some with you all month. It’s a great way to ignite your writing life.

SPOILER ALERT: This spark is filtered through some significant political news that broke yesterday so if you are super-saturated with politics, feel free to click away.

Flash Fiction Sparks

Flash fiction refers to extremely brief stories that offer some context of character and plot development but leave a lot to be inferred by the imagination. There are a variety of Flash Fiction approaches. I’ll take a story out of this weekends headlines and try out some quick writes that challenge me to compose with an economy of words. In 3-5 minutes students may only come up with one idea they like, but some may try several versions with an improvisational style.

Six Word Stories– Legend has it Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a compelling story using only six words and came up with: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It’s fun to play with the limitations on word count yet the freedom of word choice. It’s almost like solving a jumble as stories coalesce when you let your mind go free.

My quick writes:

Two Sentence Stories– These often spring up around Halloween as people are challenged to create a spooky story in two sentences.  Invite students to draft several if they can within five minutes or just play around with one idea in a variety of ways. Staying with this timely theme I’ll move from six words to two sentences.

My quick writes:

Five Sentence Challenge– I originally saw this at https://fivesc.net/ where a picture was posted every two weeks and students from all over the world were invited to write five-sentence stories inspired by it. You can set any number of sentences as the parameter, the idea is to challenge ourselves to be creative problem solvers to compose a coherent story. Don’t expect kids to be successful if they only get one crack at this. Playful practice makes perfectly clever approximations and progress.

My quick write:

Each of these took less than 5 minutes. With practice, our brains can compose like improv; given a spark we take what we know and free-lance ideas with a “yes, and” attitude.

For the month of March I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I will be sharing a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I’ve been curating a collection of Sparks and will share some with you all month. It’s a great way to ignite your writing life.

A variation on my Headlines Spark (March 13 Blog) is to quick write a poem-ish response to something currently  going on in your world (at a macro or micro level).  Writers can highlight words and phrases from newspapers, magazines, or primary sources and respond with their own thoughts and reflections as they process the events. 

Classrooms can create a time capsule of docu-poetry to document events in their school year the way the characters in Laura Shovan’s book The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary do, or these could be personal collections to document their year in your classroom. These are not polished pieces, but quick writes. Students are always welcome to go back and revise if they choose, or they could keep them raw and in-the-moment responses. 

Think about what a gift this could be to their future selves. What was happening when I was in 4th grade? I wish I had something like docu-poetry to get a primary source window into those past events.

Why poetry or poem-ish form? I love this quote from Robert Frost that was used in my Daily Calm meditation from yesterday that sums up the value of poetry in our lives:

Here’s my quick write:

Time Cover April 1

Time artwork by Ruby Jones of New Zealand

Clearly this isn’t polished poetry and there are a lot of revisions I would like to make before sharing it with you all, but this is what poured out in about 5 minutes. Kids won’t be able to write this fluently unless they have copious amounts of practice doing it. Anticipating that  they will do a docu-poem a week can help them to notice and process events with a different lens, a more purposeful and compassionate lens. It is important not to critique or make suggestions, just accept all quick writes for what they are-a way to process our world with our own personal and human responses. It’s the PROCESS, not the PRODUCT that we need to honor. 

Remember, “history” is made up of local and large events. You may want to stay away from controversy and focus on school or classroom news. Maybe your students can document personal and significant events in their own lives. You know your kids and what works.

For the month of March I will be participating in the Slice of Life Challenge sponsored by The Two Writing Teachers Blog. Each day I will be sharing a Quick Write as my way of slicing. The idea is to offer a SPARK that will kindle thinking and then write as quickly as you can for 5-10 minutes. No filters, no revisions. I’ve been curating a collection of Sparks and will share some with you all month. It’s a great way to ignite your writing life.

Video Comprehension Spark!

More and more students are learning information through online videos. But are we teaching our students HOW to comprehend this format for information or just assuming they know how to determine importance, analyze information critically, build on their schema, and synthesize ideas? From my experience I find many students to be passive consumers of video information. They process it as entertainment more than informational content.

Our students need some guided practice with comprehending visual information and digital formats, because increasingly that is the preferred choice of information consumption. Frequent quick writes that engage students in actively viewing and processing informational videos might be one approach that could support that goal.

BEFORE and AFTER

One way is to invite students to jot what they know about a topic, an event, or a concept on which  they are about to view a video. Give them 3-5 minutes to activate their schema and prior knowledge and collect some thoughts on paper.

Then tell them they are going to watch a video about that topic and will be asked to quick write what they want to remember or what they learned after they view it. This sets a purpose, invites students to expand on current thinking, clear up any misconceptions they may have had, and engage more intentionally.

After the video give them another 3-5 minutes to quick write. Then invite students to look at their before and after and see what they notice? Ask them how their comprehension might have changed knowing they would have to write about it afterwards.

You could also try this activity by showing a video without any introduction or purpose setting and then ask them to quick write what they learned AFTER they’ve already watched it, and then try this frontloading process BEFORE  viewing and ask them what they notice about their quick writes. Were they able to remember/recall more information? Was their thinking different in any way? Did they take any notes (mental or physical?)

In honor of our SUPER MOON this week, here is a video that you could try with your kids and an example of my quick write.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/science/there-will-be-a-super-worm-moon-on-the-spring-equinox-heres-how-to-see-it/vi-BBUZrVk?ocid=spartandhp

Let me know how it goes if you try it, or if you have some other approaches that could support student comprehension with visual and video information.