Blog Archives

Time To Reflect

3/31/2015

This morning I returned to my first post where I listed the pros and cons of joining the March SOL challenge, the one where everything in the con list revolved around fear and I realized I had so much more to gain by joining. Today I can think back to all the days in March and know I made the right decision. Since I always ask teachers and students to reflect on what they learned, I thought it appropriate that I do that today.

By participating in March SOL15 I learned

…that the Slice of Life writing community is respectful, caring, and supportive (but I
already knew that
…that others share the similar struggles in life, family, work
…that the more I read, commented, and wrote, the more confident I became as a writer
…that it didn’t matter if not every post was great. In fact, some of the slices where I really hesitated before hitting that “post” button brought the most heartfelt comments.
…that if you take the time to notice the ordinary things in life and contemplate on its wonders and happenings, you will always have something to write about.

I think it’s also important to create a personal writing identity by reflecting on what we know or learned about ourselves as a writer. We ask kids to do this all the time, and sometimes it’s not so easy.

By participating in March SOL15 I learned
…that I can find the time to write. Every. Day.
…that listing is my preferred way to brainstorm
…that sometimes I write very long sentences
…that I am most interested in the kinds of structures other writers try out - I like to think about how writing is organized.
…that I reread my writing…a lot. It helps me to keep the words and ideas flowing.

Thank you to everyone who organized and kept the challenge running so smoothy.
Thank you to everyone who read my posts, gave encouragement, and left thoughtful comments.
Thank you to everyone for the ideas you sparked, the thoughts you shared, and the community you created.

See you on Tuesdays!

10 Comments

Jump Rope and Jacks

3/30/2015

6 Comments

Here it is, the next to the last day of the challenge. When the challenge started, I began looking for ideas everywhere, jotting them down with perhaps a few lines. I needed something to fall back on when that inevitable day came and I just didn’t know what to write about. Today was kind of that day. A few ideas came to me, but nothing took hold. So I turned to my notebook and found a few lines about childhood games. I’m not sure where it came from, or where it was meant to go, but I used that beginning to continue today.

Do you have a favorite childhood game or activity? When I think back on my childhood days I remember mostly playing jump rope and jacks. I grew up in the city in a duplex house surrounded by large families. Within the walls of just four homes there were at least fifteen kids of various ages, so there was always someone to play with. I was never very good at organized team sports like baseball or dodgeball, but I could jump rope with the best of them. My favorite was double dutch. The neighborhood kids (mostly just the girls) would jump for hours after dinner on the sidewalk in front of our houses, long into the evening as the street lights would come on and our mothers made us stop and come inside.

My other favorite pastime was jacks. I don’t even think kids play this anymore. My next door neighbor and good friend, Ruthie, was the champion in the neighborhood, and mostly I learned from her. We would sit on the concrete steps and play so much that the sides of our hands would get all scraped up. Sometimes we used two sets of jacks at once just to make it harder. I remember once trying to teach this game to my daughter, but she never took an interest in it.

Back then we didn’t have video games with challenges and obstacles where we had to use quick thinking and dexterity to get to the next level, but we discovered ways to make our own challenges in levels we mastered. In some ways, things haven’t changed all that much.

6 Comments

Five Things I Never Thought I Would Do

3/29/2015

10 Comments

A few other slicers have tried this format, so I thought it might be a fun one to use today as we enter the last days of the challenge.

1. Eat Sushi
I think it was my daughter, Ann, who encouraged me to try this adventurous food. Now it’s one of our favorite meals to share.

2. Cross a rainforest on a zip line.
Ann lived in Costa Rica for two years. I did the zip line with her once while visiting. I was terrified and had to do many of the runs tandem with an instructor, but was determined to finish…and I did. (This is also something I will only do once in my life).

3. Write a professional book.
I have to give credit to my co-author, Lynne Dorfman, for persuading me to join her on the writing journey that produced the mentor texts books. I learned so much during the process, and I cherish the opportunities the books have given me to meet dedicated and outstanding teachers all over the country.

4. Plan a state reading conference.
I am currently chair of the Keystone State Reading Association 2015 Conference! I have been at it for almost two years now, learning so much along the way about contracts, negotiating, teamwork, budgets…and the list goes on. Some days I wonder what I was thinking when I took on this project, but I know in the end it will be worth it. I have lots of fantastic people on my committee who are a tremendous help. (Join us in Lancaster, PA Oct. 22-24 if you can!)

5. Participate in the March Slice of Life Challenge
Thanks to the encouragement of Stacey Shubitz, I occasionally posted as part of the Tuesday Slice of Life. She also encouraged me to join in March, but I always had a convenient excuse. Just before this year’s challenge I met a fellow slicer, LeAnn Carpenter (who slices under the name elsie), who also suggested I give it a try – the right words at the right time. I am so glad I decided to take the plunge. I learned so much about myself as a writer and experienced, once again, the power of a community of writers. More about that later.

10 Comments

Lost...and Found

3/28/2015

7 Comments

Last week I was getting ready to go away on a short trip. The last thing I had to do before I left was to get some cash. The bank is about a mile from my home, but part of the road is closed for construction, so I had to go a slightly different way to get there and back. Not a big deal, but when you have traveled a certain route hundreds and hundreds of times, the automatic pilot is hard to disengage. For some reason, after I made the transaction I didn’t put the cash and debit card securely away, just put everything on the console. With automatic pilot engaged, I started down the road that is now closed, quickly realized my mistake, and made a hard turn around in the shopping center.

When I got home I realized I was missing a $20 bill. I searched the floor and the space beside the seat with no luck, but I knew it had to be there somewhere and I would eventually find it. I needed to get going and didn’t want to spend any more time looking. As I was just about to get started, for some reason, I checked my wallet and realized I didn’t have my debit card. Oh no! Did I leave it in the machine? I panicked, checked the car again, and then quickly returned to the bank with my tale of woe. They were very accommodating, but by the time the machine was checked, the card was blocked, and I was issued a temporary card, I was really late.

I think what bothered me the most is that I am usually meticulous about things like this. I don’t ordinarily misplace things or forget where I put things, but this was the second recent incident of this sort. So on top of everything, I began to worry about my mental state. Was it just aging forgetfulness or something more serious?

A few days later as I was retrieving some packages from the backseat of my car I noticed the edge of a $20 bill peeking out from under the floor mat. I lifted the mat and there were the missing objects – the $20 and my debit card. Mystery solved. The items must have slipped under the mat when I made that hard turn.

Now if I could just find that scissors I misplaced!

7 Comments

Total Participation

3/27/2015

4 Comments

Have you ever participated in a Twitter Chat? I’ll admit, it can be a bit bizarre at first. If a lot of people are participating, the comments can roll up very quickly and you might feel almost dizzy. But it can also be a very rewarding experience where you get to build understanding and share your thinking with teachers all over the country.

Last night I participated in a Twitter Chat with Pérsida and Bill Himmele, authors of Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner. We all know how essential student engagement is to learning, and one of the suggestions the Himmeles make is to make use of rippling for total participation. This means that we give students a chance to process a question with a quick-draw or quick-write, then ask them to break into small groups to share their thinking, and finally move into whole-group responses.

It struck me that this strategy is exactly what was used to maximize participation in last night’s chat. Earlier in the week, the Himmeles posted an article about total participation techniques to get us thinking before the discussion. During the chat we shared thoughts and responded to the thinking of others (like small group), and finally we posted final understandings. These authors didn’t just talk the talk, they walked the walk.

I am constantly amazed by the power of technology to put me in touch with teachers far and wide, to get to know others and know you are not alone in life’s struggles (like participating in this challenge has done), and to grow both personally and professionally.

4 Comments

The Best Thing

3/26/2015

5 Comments

Thanks to a fellow slicer, I decided to write about the best thing I did in the last twenty-four hours. It didn’t take me long to conclude that participating in an after school book talk with some teachers in my former school district was absolutely the best thing that happened yesterday. I was a part of these after school talks last year and again this year, and I have always been inspired by the dedication, support, and sharing these teachers exhibit.

This winter they were discussing Poetry Mentor Texts, so I was invited to be a member of the discussion group. It was so gratifying not only to see that the ideas in the book were successful with the students, especially the reluctant writers, but to witness how the teachers went beyond the lessons to make them their own. During the course of the discussion they shared personification poems that could be used as formative assessments across content areas. There were scaffolds applied to writing about reading (“I hope my ____ remembers…” after reading Holes), and poems for two voices that students constructed after reading two articles with different viewpoints on a single topic. The most poignant poems came from a fifth grade class who constructed acrostic poems about the characters in Wonder. These were not single word poems as many acrostics are, but acrostics that expressed continuous thoughts and deep thinking about the feelings and actions of the character. Needless to say, I was impressed.

One recurring comment I heard was that sometimes the teachers took time from their test prep work to sneak in these lessons. I hope they come to realize that lessons such as these that allow students to think deeply about their reading, get excited about writing because they are trying something different, and practice point of view and figurative language are exactly the types of test prep lessons students need. I hope they come to realize that reflecting with their students on what they learned and how they can apply it to “the test” is exactly what will ensure their success.

Thank you, teachers from Glen Acres Elementary, for sharing your passion and inspiration.

5 Comments

A Close Encounter

3/25/2015

7 Comments

I’ve been looking for an opportunity to use a writing exercise I learned from Linda Reif called “borrow a line.” This morning, the opening line of All the Things We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr provided a vivid memory. Thank you, Mr. Doerr.

At dusk they pour from the sky. My sister and I watch as what seems like hundreds of bats emerge from their daytime abodes, streak through the sky, and land on rooftops in our uptown neighborhood. Our parents have orchestra rehearsal, so we will be home alone tonight, but at 13 and 10 we are trustworthy. We will prove ourselves to be resourceful as well.

At bedtime we open the back door to let the cat in and make our way upstairs, my sister to her bedroom at the back of the house and me to the middle room with the cat. I sit in bed, reading, when I notice the cat staring at the ceiling, his eyes wide and calculating. Suddenly, something is flying overhead. A bird? No. A bat. I grab the cat and dash, screaming, to my sister’s room. We sit on her bed and ponder what to do. There is a telephone in our parent’s bedroom, but that is at the other end of the hall and we are too terrified to leave. We hear the creature knock against the wall several times and then, slowly, it emerges from under the door - two beady eyes, large pointed ears flattened against a fur covered head, long black wings. We scream. We run. We shut ourselves in our parent’s room and stuff a blanket under the door.

We quickly call our neighbor, who arrives with a broom. We hear him walking through the rooms downstairs, then upstairs to my sister’s room. After some commotion he comes to get us, assuring us that our world is safe once again.

It is a close encounter I have never forgotten.

7 Comments

Flowers

3/24/2015

8 Comments

I love flowers and have many favorites. In fact, the only flower I can think of that I don’t care much for is the waxy begonia (but I’m not sure why). About this time of year I long to see flowers in my garden. During the spring, most of the grocery stores start selling cut tulips, and I always buy them. Right now I have a vase of pink tulips on my kitchen table. On this gray and chilly day, their delicate white-tipped petals remind me that spring will soon be here. Yesterday I noticed the green of daffodil and tulip shoots just beginning to break through the softening ground, so I am hopeful.

Tulips are pretty to look at, but they don’t have a strong fragrance. For that you have to turn to other spring flowers like lilacs, or one of my other favorites, peonies. When I was growing up our small backyard was lined with peony bushes that would produce fragrant white, pink, and deep rose blossoms in late May. My mother always complained about the ants that usually accompany them, but she would nevertheless fill bowls with peonies for the table in the spring. I remember taking bunches into school for the May altar. Even now, the sweet scent of a peony transports me to my grade school years and I can see my younger self walking in the May procession in church with my offering of peonies. I have a row of peony bushes – three white, three pink in one of my gardens and anxiously await their arrival each year.

One of my favorite quotes about flowers comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “The earth laughs in flowers.” I hope to hear lots of laughter this spring and summer!

8 Comments

The Woodworker

3/23/2015

6 Comments

Allan, my husband, has always been interested in wood working. He built many pieces of furniture in our house, remodeled most of the rooms, and added on the garage and enclosed back porch. For several years, the table saw and various other tools in the garage lay dormant as life events took different paths. But last spring, with retirement looming in the near future, his interest in wood was revitalized and reinvented.

Slowly, new tools began to appear in the garage/woodshop – a lathe, a circular saw, a tool box on wheels. A woodworking magazine became part of our regular mail delivery. A new hobby had caught Allan’s interest – pen making. He researched on the internet and visited various suppliers in the area. Soon boxes of small blocks of zebrawood, olivewood, and blackwood arrived. There were acrylics, too. He was proud of each new accomplishment as he experimented and learned from his successful and unsuccessful attempts.

As summer turned into fall and became winter, our house was filled with an excess of sixty pens, wine bottle stoppers, even an ice cream scoop. Before he retired at the end of December, he presented each of his co-worker with a hand-turned pen, and just about everyone we know received a pen or bottle stop for Christmas. Several of our friends suggested Allan start a new business, but he isn’t interested in selling his creations. His joy comes in the giving.

6 Comments

Currently

3/22/2015

11 Comments

It’s just after 6:00 this Sunday morning and the creative juices are not quite flowing yet. I think today I’ll try a structure that a few other slicers have used.

Currently I am…
Sitting at my desk in my office
Awakening to the dawn of a new day
Listening to the quiet sounds of a house at rest
Watching Cyrus wait patiently until I am ready to go downstairs
Wondering what adventures the day will bring
Wishing the outcome of last night’s Villanova game were different
Anticipating a visit to a favorite breakfast spot with Allan
Thinking about how hard it can be sometimes to write
Celebrating the community of writers I have come to know during this challenge
Hoping that spring will soon arrive
Looking forward to visiting a craft fair this afternoon

I look over at Cyrus as I try to think of some more verbs to use. He is staring at me with hungry eyes. I think I’ll write from his point of view as we make our way to the kitchen.

Currently I am…
Rushing down the stairs and into the kitchen
Following Rosie to that special place that holds my food (I think it’s called a closet)
Watching her fill my bowl with delicious morsels of chicken and rice
Gobbling up breakfast as fast as possible
Settling down, my belly full

I can see lots of possibilities for this type of writing!

11 Comments

<<Previous

Time To Reflect

Jump Rope and Jacks

Five Things I Never Thought I Would Do

Lost...and Found

Total Participation

The Best Thing

A Close Encounter

Flowers

The Woodworker

Currently

Author

Archives

Archives

Categories