Are you looking for a fun icebreaker activity for a staff meeting, or a way to mix it up in writing workshop with students during the winter doldrums? How about one-sentence life stories?

Smith Magazine online asked readers to send in memoirs. The challenge? Your memoir could only be six words long. The editors were inspired by the story of Ernest Hemingway, who when asked to write a novel in six words, came up with this:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Tami Maus submitted this memoir, which describes much of my own muddling through life:

Little bit Lucy, tempered by Ethel. Tami Maus

There are now over 15,000 six-word memoirs at the Smith Magazine website. Reading through the entries got me thinking - if literacy leaders wrote six-word memoirs of their professional lives, what would they come up with? Mine (so far) might be:

Not perfect, glad I wrote anyway.

I asked our contributors to send along their six-word memoirs, and here is what they submitted:

Foot in mouth, but still talking. Jennifer Allen

Insomnia again: from writing or teaching? Ruth Shagoury

It's on my to-do list. Mary Lee Hahn

Too busy for to-do list. Aimee Buckner

Smart teacher listens to smarter student. Andie Cunningham

Poster child for reading/writing workshop. Jennifer Jones

Bibliophile, trying to draw others in. Shari Frost

Trying to do it all. Failing. Franki Sibberson

Listen closely, reflect often, look forward. Katie Doherty

Got started. Learned how to finish. Suzy Kaback

Six-word memoirs bring together two crazes sweeping through literacy education - a love of memoir and a passion for short text. There are many possibilities for using the task as a professional development icebreaker, a class activity with students, or you could just pull a few from the Smith Magazine website as a read aloud to start a discussion during a memoir unit of study. And who couldn't use a little diversion during the late winter slog toward spring?

This week, we've got some tips for defining your role in classrooms when you observe colleagues, as well as different options for observation notes on talk. Plus more as always. Enjoy!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

www.choiceliteracy.com

Free for All

Interested in more six-word memoirs? You can browse through thousands of samples at the Smith Magazine website:

http://smithmag.net/sixwords/

From the Choice Literacy Archives, if you are looking for some strategies for giving fresh insight after observing colleagues, "Under, Over, and Beyond Words" has some quick tips for looking at classroom behaviors and learning environments beyond noting what is said:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/548.cfm

One of the biggest dilemmas many literacy coaches face is distinguishing the coaching and evaluative components of their work. From the Teacher Leaders Network, Cathy Toll presents "Separating Coaching from Supervising" in this three-page article, with four brief scenarios of different coaching/supervision mixes. Warning to dial-up users - this is a pdf file:

http://www.teacherleaders.org/old_site/misc/CoachNotSupvr.pdf

Choice Literacy Summer Workshops are now open for registration. Topics include The Literacy Principal, Helping Struggling Readers, Content Literacy, Leading Study Groups and Meetings, Mentor Texts, and Literacy Coaching. Workshop descriptions and registration forms are available at this link:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department22.cfm

For Members Only

We all know that spelling instruction works best when it happens in authentic learning contexts. Katie DiCesare took on the challenge of developing a one-page assessment tool to analyze the spelling needs and abilities of each of her 1st graders. In the last installment of her three-part series, Katie shows how she translates the findings from individual students into instructional plans:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/551.cfm

Aimee Buckner finds a world in a word - a keyword, that is. "Using Keywords to Teach Themes" is a simple strategy linking big ideas from texts with the words that define them. It's a terrific lesson for building reading comprehension and vocabulary at the same time:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/539.cfm

What no one ever tells us about conferring is that there are often many false starts and open-ended questions before we find a way into a conversation with lots of students. This is especially true with English language learners. In this week's video, Ruth Shagoury confers with Emily, a six-year-old Hmong student, showing how questioning and patience can lead to better conferring in this week's video:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/552.cfm

Finally, from the Choice Literacy Archives, some quick tips for conferring with English language learners:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/95.cfm

That's all for this week!