Time to Celebrate!

SOLSC  #31 - Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Stacey and Ruth from Two Writing Teachers.  For the month of March, I've joined the challenge to post a slice of life daily.  

Yesterday was our last day of school before spring break.  We had candy orange slices to celebrate that we were only one day short of finishing the challenge. I asked my students to complete a reflection about our month of writing together.  I'm including some of my reflections about the process as well some of my teacher reflections on the process as it unfolded in my classroom.

            I learned that I could come up with topics to write about each day.  I had been afraid that I would run out of ideas for 31 days of slicing, but I found the month coming to an end with the realization that there were many unfinished slices.  Early in the month, I found myself waking in the middle of the night to jot down ideas for writing.  Unfortunately, I lost my ideas pages that I compiled in the middle of the night during the first days of the challenge.  Fortunately, I found them a few days ago so I can use them for future Tuesday entries for Slice of Life.  

            I learned that I rely heavily on the encouragement of others. My students encouraged me to leap into this challenge.  I needed the encouragement of others in order to keep going, so I was always excited to see that someone was reading my posts and actually commenting on them.  I was inspired by reading the slices of other bloggers and used many of their ideas as mentor texts for myself.  I know that I need to provide more time for student sharing in the classroom so that my students can be inspired by their classmates' writing just as I was inspired by other bloggers.  My students posted to the class blog twice during the month and commented on the entries of at least three classmates.  Now we're busy planning our celebration to honor our bronze, silver, and gold levels of participation in our Slice of Life Story Challenge.  My students have many ideas!

            I'm looking forward to joining the year long community of slicers for Tuesday Slice of Life.  For now it's time for a big WOO HOO!  We did it!  See you on Tuesday!