A Teacher's Ruminations

Slicing with my students this month has been an eye opener. They have a lot of stories to tell and they need a lot of support telling them. We often run out of time in class for students to complete their slices and they rarely finish them at home. I do a lot of revising and editing in the evenings so that I can publish their slices before the end of the day. As I read my students slices, I am taking notes as to the mini lessons I plan to teach in small groups or whole class. Next year, I think that it might be a good idea for my students to start slicing on Google Docs a week or so before the challenge starts. I think about how I write a blog post and most of the time I don't write directly on my blog, except during the March SOL Challenge; it's faster to write directly on my blog during March. Today my students' slices were better than on other days when their final pieces seemed to have been written on the run. I think what helped them is that I shared an examp...