It's March, and March means the Slice of Life Story Challenge. All are welcome to join the challenge of noticing and writing about the moments of daily life that are stories.
One of my favorite parts of my job is working with teachers, and today, one of the hot topics was conventions.
"Six word stories is a great way to teach the power of conventions," I said.
Within seconds the teachers were hot on the google trail for six-word stories.
"These are super sad," one teacher said.
"They can be," I agreed.
"Or pretty risqué," another teacher commented.
"They can be," I laughed. "But there are also some great ones for kids, any you'll be amazed at what kids can come up with."
After some more laughs, revelations, and attempts at six-word stories, I moved them along to talk about the power of punctuation in the middle of a sentence.
We had fun doing it together, I wrote on the chart paper.
"It's a six-word story," one teacher pointed out.
Truth: that was totally unintentional, as was the fairly R-rated version of it then emerged once I started playing around with the punctuation...
We...had fun doing it together!
We had fun...doing it together!
We had fun? Doing it together!
I was on a roll, until...
We had fun! Doing it! Together!
My eyes got wide, I'm sure, and we all burst out laughing!
"I did not mean that," I said, which was the total truth.
Nothing like a good laugh, and they will remember the power of conventions and six-word stories!
Oh, what a fun and engaging time for the teachers to enjoy. Those are the kinds of bonding experiences that improve morale - times where people can laugh and interpret all the different meanings of a six word memoir. I always think of "Let's eat, Grandma!" versus "Let's eat grandma." As they say, commas save lives.
ReplyDeletePunctuation tells a story in so many different ways!
ReplyDeleteI don't know what it says about me, but that is where my head went immediately! Always great to laugh in PD!
ReplyDeleteme too!
Deletelol! I could see where this was going and I loved it!
ReplyDeleteWe did a quick shared writing exercise for St. Patrick's Day; to brainstorm, we talked about what we knew about it. I posted our brainstorms on regular 8 X11 paper around our chart and we wrote a narrative paragraph. All fun.
I stacked our notes up and later walked to the counter with different eyes and see the top piece that just says: "Getting Lucky"
Oops!
I love this!! Six word stories are the best, and I love using them. Never considered using them for punctuation, so thank you!!!
ReplyDeleteYep...I went there right away! I am sure my colleagues would have too!
ReplyDeleteAt this time of the year I'm sure this kind of laugh is exactly what the teachers needed!
ReplyDeleteI love this idea! I was thinking about punctuation with 6 word slices this week as my students were struggling to capture their ideas in just 6 words. They only needed some creative punctuation with semi-colons and colons. I'll be rolling out that lesson after break!
ReplyDelete