Slice of Life Challenge FTW

Today (despite having a snow day) one of my students posted the following slice:

Yesterday, I went sledding after playing Madden 25 ultimate team. We went to Thomas Jefferson to go sledding. I had to push my dad down the hill, then I had to jump on to my dad's back. That did not work so well. Then we left early, because it was too cold! Then we went to Z-Burger. Yummy bacon cheeseburger with barbecue sauce. The burger tasted like someone sliced up heaven and let me eat it. I got lots of cold allegires on my back, arms, and legs. I couldn't sleep at all last night. By the way, I'm First!

To which I replied:

First again! My favorite line:
The burger tasted like someone sliced up heaven and let me eat it.
Nice writing!

To which he replied:

Figurative language FTW

Look at that! This little writing challenge is already working its magic.

(FTW? It means For The Win!)

Test of Time

"Was this nominated for any Oscars?" Josh asked.

We were spending a snowy afternoon watching The Sixth Sense. After spending three hours driving home from our awesome Oscar-party-at-the-beach through winter storm "Titan," and some more significant time on the phone trying to figure out if Josh's bus was running (those Greyhound folks are cagey when the weather turns... a crackling fire hot enough to pop corn and a movie seemed like a great idea.

Josh chose the flick. Years ago, when he and Treat were 8 or 9, and Riley was only a few years older, we spent a rainy August afternoon on Lake Erie baking cookies and watching movies. We had The Sixth Sense with us, along with some Star Wars and Pixar classics. "How about this one?" I asked.

I guess I was thinking about what a good movie it is and, of course, the epic twist, and perhaps my mouth was ahead of my brain. I back-pedaled. "It's kind of scary, though, we could watch something else."

"I saw part of it once," Josh chimed in. "It will make your eyes bleed!"

We ended up watching it, and although no one was scarred for life, I'm not sure any of us really enjoyed it, at least not fully. Today was a different story, though.

"I think it was nominated for a bunch," I said, skimming back across all those Oscar parties, then diving as deep as I could into the one 14 years ago. "Let's look it up."

It turns out that The Sixth Sense was shut out that year, despite nods for best supporting actor and actress, directing, original screenplay, and best picture. In many of the categories, including the top honors, it came up short to American Beauty. "What were they thinking?" I sighed.

A little while later, I wiped a tear as the credits rolled, and flipped to the onscreen guide for a suitable follow up. Believe it or not? American Beauty was playing. "Let's watch that," said Josh. 

"Really?" I shot him a skeptical look.

"Yeah!" he answered. "I heard it's better than The Sixth Sense!"

AND that lasted for maybe 10 minutes.

Quandary.com

So that big storm that's on its way? Sleet, ice, snow, stay off the roads and all that? Well it has hit at what some might say is an inconvenient time for us. We're supposed to pack up and go home tomorrow, but if the forecast holds, that might be impossible.

All day we've wrestled individually and collectively with this dilemma. Of course the responsible thing would have been to head home this afternoon to ensure that we would be safely there before the weather hits, but that plan would have made us miss the very thing we came down here for-- our Oscar party!

So, we've decided to hunker down here, bay side, and deal with the conditions that greet us when we rise in the morning. If we need stay an extra day? So be it. If we can get home? We will. School has already been canceled and we have plenty of firewood and food-- let the ceremony begin!

Let Evening Come

It wasn't long after the car was unpacked and our rooms chosen that we hit the beach. This year we decided to kick our Oscar Party up a notch and rent a place on the Chesapeake Bay just a couple of hours from home. The day had been sunny, but by the time we arrived it was growing late, and the light on the beach was almost as blue as the water.

This area is known for sea glass and fossils, and as much as I wanted to stretch my legs and walk briskly enough into the wind to warm away its chill, the long stretches of pristine sand and the piles of polished pebbles, broken shells, and other treasures were too tempting for me to simply stroll past. The dogs ran up and back at least ten times while I walked slowly, head bent, eyes scouring those caches deposited by the bay. 

I know better. Such a walk is never relaxing;  I can't shake the certainty that I'm missing something, and the truth is, I am missing something, something that sharpest eyes in the world wouldn't help me find.

Wood Anniversary

I'd love to stay and celebrate my 5 full years of daily blogging, but I have 55 slices of life to read and comment on! Year six starts tomorrow-- see you then!

Worthy

Today was the day when I introduced the annual 100 Day Writing Challenge to my students. This activity originated 3 years ago when I introduced the March madness we in the know fondly call the SOLSC or Slice of Life Writing Challenge.

Back then, at the end of the month, my students didn't want to stop posting a short daily anecdote about their lives. Even more, they didn't want to lose the feedback and comments they received every day from their peers and me. That year we figured out that a hundred days from March 1 is June 8, and they adopted that as their goal. We dubbed the kids who finished "Centurions," and a new tradition was born in my class.

Over the last couple of years the challenge has evolved. It is broken down into three month-long mini-challenges with three different levels of participation: required, optional, and challenge. There are small prizes to celebrate each month's successes, and the number of Centurions has grown.

Today, as part of my intro, I shared with my students that I'm a daily writer, too, and I assured them that there's no shortage of topics if only you look at your day with writer eyes. "So you're saying that anything can be "blog-worthy"?" one of my students asked.

I smiled at his invented word. "Pretty much," I answered, "the trick is finding something you have a reaction to. Maybe you think it's interesting, funny, infuriating, confusing, whatever."

"What about this conversation?" he asked with eyebrows raised. "Is this blog-worthy?"

"Could be," I shrugged. "I'll let you know tomorrow."

As it Should Be

If a quadrilateral is a four-sided polygon, why isn't it called a quadrigon?" one of my students asked the other day.

I liked how he was thinking! The whole purpose of word study, in my mind at least, is for the students to understand how many a word's parts fit together to build meaning.

"It's because quad comes from Latin, and polygon comes from Greek. Poly means 'many' and gon means 'angle'."

"But I thought multi meant 'many'," he said.

"It does," I answered, "in Latin."

"But if poly means 'many', how come Polyphemos was a cyclops with only one eye?"

"Well," I said, "remember cycl means 'round or circle' and ops means 'see or vision', so the word cyclops sort of describes that single eye."

"What about Polyphemos then? What did his name mean?"

"Good question," I said, "Let's look it up."

It turns out that phemos means 'spoken or sung of'; it's where the English word famous comes from. So Polyphemos?

He was one verrrrry famous cyclops!