Tag: Slice of Life

Slice of Life: In the Beginning…

Catherine Flynn9 Comments

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I have started this slice three times throughout the day. After my first two failed attempts, I asked myself what exactly I was hoping to accomplish by participating in this challenge. It’s more than writing every day because I already do that, but I know I have lots of room to grow as a writer. So is there something specific I want to work on?

As I reread my last few posts, I noticed that I begin my slices in very predictable ways. I either dive right in with “I…” or by telling when something happened: “Yesterday…” or “Last week…” You get the idea.

I thought about one of the most famous opening lines in children’s literature: “‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.” We are immediately pulled into the story and are just as curious as Fern about that ax. E.B White deftly weaves in other important details of time and setting into this sentence, and we do notice them. But it’s that ax that has our attention.

Glancing through a random issue of the New Yorker, I noticed many articles began by establishing the time or the setting. This opening line, though, from “Forced Out” by Matthew Desmond, got my attention: “Arleen Beale’s latest eviction began with a snowball fight.” Aren’t you curious? You can read about it here. 

In The Revision Toolbox: Teaching Techniques that Work (2nd edition, Heinemann, 2014), Georgia Heard writes that “The lead or introduction to a piece of writing is the ‘front door.’ You want your guests or readers to feel compelled to stay and linger.” Ted Kooser tells readers of The Poetry Home Repair Manual (University of Nebraska Press, 2005) that “the titles and the first few lines of your poem represent the hand you extend in friendship toward your reader.” I love this idea. Both Heard and Kooser go on to share specific techniques for compelling, friendly openings.

Over the next few days I’ll be playing with different types of openings, hoping to invite you into a piece of writing that you’ll want to linger over. But it’s unlikely that they will have anything to do with an ax.

Brondum's Annex by Anna Ancher
Brondum’s Annex by Anna Ancher

Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday throughout the year and every day during the month of March. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Currently

Catherine Flynn13 Comments

11454297503_e27946e4ff_hCURRENTLY, I’m…

LISTENING to keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, performed by Mikhail Pletnev. I can’t write or do school work while listening to music with lyrics because I’ll start singing along!

WONDERING if I have everything I need for a PD session with K-2 teachers this afternoon.

THINKING about a couple of ideas I have for poems.

FEELING relieved that my son Michael is getting settled in his new apartment.

TEXTING with my son Brian and his wife about their new puppy, Louie.

READING Silver People: Voices from the Panama Canal, by Margarita Engle. The Firefly Letters is the only book I’ve read by Engle. I think I’ll have to do something about that this year. What an amazing writer!

REFLECTING on how to best help two of our neediest students, both of whom are making very slow progress.

DRINKING a cup of tea, Bigelow Lemon Lift.

WATCHING nothing. We never turn the TV on in the morning.

WISHING I had gotten more housework done over the weekend. We’re having company this weekend, and I’m not sure how I’m going to get everything done before they arrive on Friday.

WORKING ON getting our taxes together.

KNITTING a hat for a baby shower I’m going to in a few weeks.

Louie is only 11 weeks old. Look at the size of those paws!
Louie is only 11 weeks old. Look at the size of those paws!

Thank you to Elisabeth Ellington of The Dirigible Plum for the “Currently” format of this slice, and thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday throughout the year and every day during the month of March. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: 1997

Catherine Flynn7 Comments

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It seems early in the game to be stuck for an idea of what to write about, and I’m not really stuck. I have a couple of topics I want to write about. Just not tonight. I remembered reading a “Currently” post earlier today and thought that would be an easy option. There was just one problem. I couldn’t find the post. Okay, I’ll just google “currently blog post.” Of course I didn’t find what I was looking for. I found something better.

WordPress has a .pdf document called 365 Days of Writing Prompts. I scrolled to the prompt for March 7th, but didn’t love it. So I went back into February and found this:

Buffalo nickel

Dig through your couch cushions, your purse, or the floor of your car and look at the year printed on
the first coin you find. What were you doing that year?

This appealed to me. I grabbed by wallet and pulled out a penny. 1997. What was I doing in 1997?

I was teaching third grade. If I remember correctly, I had a pretty challenging class that year, and I was taking classes for my master’s degree. Brian turned 16 in November and was chomping at the bit to get his driver’s license. Michael was 13 and our days were filled with soccer practice, swim meets and kayaking on the weekend. Life was a blur.

But what truly stands out for me about 1997 is that my dear Aunt Polly lost her battle with cervical cancer that October. Aunt Polly was only 9 years older than me and I idolized her like an older sister. When I spent the night at my grandparents house, I slept in the twin bed across from hers in her room under the eaves. I loved being there with her.

She loved the Beatles and had turned a room above the garage into her Beatle shrine. Posters and clippings from magazines covered the walls, and she taught me to do the twist in that room.

All too soon, Aunt Polly was a busy teenager with no time for her little niece. Then she went off to college and I didn’t see her for months at a time. But as we both got older, we grew closer again. She was an accomplished photographer and took all the pictures at my wedding as her gift to me and my husband. Sadly, because she was so busy behind the camera, I don’t have any photos of us together that day.

It’s unbelievable to me that almost nineteen years have passed since I said goodbye to Aunt Polly. I think of her often and wish she could have grown old with her husband and their dogs, been at my sister’s wedding, and seen my boys grow up into men. She was one of the most loving, caring people I have ever known, and I’m lucky she was part of my life. Thank you, Aunt Polly, for everything.

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  Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday throughout the year and every day during the month of March. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Thinking About Word Choice and Mood with Sixth Graders

Catherine Flynn14 Comments

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When you walk into a yarn shop, you are faced with a dizzying array of colors and textures. There are yarns almost as fine as thread to yarns as thick as a pencil and everything in between. When I decide to knit something, a lot of decisions have to be made. Which weight yarn is right for my project? What color and texture should I use? All of these choices affect the “mood” of the finished hat or scarf or sweater.

On Friday, I brought an assortment of different yarns into the sixth grade ELA classes. As I shared the yarn with the kids, we talked about how different each skein was from the other. I asked the students which yarn they thought would be the best choice for a hat for Dad or a blanket for a new baby. They intuitively understood that the function of the finished product influenced the yarn choice.

I pointed out that, just like knitters make choices about yarn, authors choose particular words to achieve an intended effect, and these choices influence how a reader reacts to a piece of writing. To illustrate this, I shared the first stanza of William Blake’s “The Echoing Green.”

The sun does arise,
And make happy the skies.
The merry bells ring
To welcome the spring.
The skylark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around,
To the bells’ cheerful sound,
While our sports shall be seen
On the echoing green.

(You can read the rest of the poem here.)

As soon as we finished reading I asked them to write down a word describing their mood. Then I sent them back into the poem to find which specific words Blake used that evoked that mood. They shared their ideas with their partners, then with the whole group. I was impressed with the variety of words they chose to describe their mood, but even more impressed with how they were able to cite specific words and phrases to support their ideas. We repeated this process with the other two stanzas to see if the mood was consistent throughout the poem.

Analyzing “the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone,” as the CCSS calls for sixth grade students to do, can be tricky. These students have just started reading Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt’s profound and thought-provoking novel. Babbitt is a master of evoking mood, but her word choice can be subtle, so my sixth grade colleague and I have been working on ways to develop this challenging skill.

The kids did a great job with the work we began on Friday. I’ll be visiting them several times over the next few weeks to continue this work, including looking at several poems that have many words in common but evoke very different moods.

 Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday throughout the year and every day during the month of March. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Forgotten Treasures

Catherine Flynn15 Comments

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When my grandmother went to live in a nursing home, we were faced with the daunting task of emptying the house she’d lived in for over sixty years. Our work was rewarded, though, with countless forgotten treasures, including this:

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The back of this box is stamped with the logo to the Kibbe Bros. Co., Springfield, Mass. and is inscribed to my grandmother, from Pat J. Lillis, Christmas, 1919. I wasn’t surprised to find an old candy box among my grandmother’s things. She saved everything. But I wasn’t prepared for the treasure that lay inside the box. Inside were hundreds of paper dolls and women modeling dress patterns cut from magazines. Because they’d been hidden away from both my mother and her sister and my cousins and me, they were in perfect condition. 

My grandmother wrote "Loretta Lane, age 14" on the back of this doll.
My grandmother wrote “Loretta Lane, age 14” on the back of this doll.

Everything was cut precisely, including characters from nursery rhymes and Alice in Wonderland. There was even small brown envelope filled with just hats. Most of the dolls, which included girls, women, and boys, were given names and ages and are all part of a large family.

All that remains of "The Three Bears"
All that remains of “The Three Bears.” Don’t you love the look on the bear’s face?

When we asked my grandmother about them, she said she and her younger sister had cut them out and played with them for hours. This is how I imagine them:

Dust motes dance in light
streaming through windows
so old the glass
ripples and flows.

Bathed in this golden sunshine,
a nook beneath the stairs
becomes a refuge from collecting eggs,
fetching cows from the far pasture.

Two heads lean together,
brown hair woven into tight braids,
bowed in concentration,
imaginations running wild.

Four hands snip and cut,
a family of paper dolls grows.
Names bestowed,
adventures dreamed,
lives created out of thin air.

© Catherine Flynn, 2016

 Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday throughout the year and every day during the month of March. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Comfort Food

Catherine Flynn13 Comments

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It’s been a long week. I wasn’t feeling well yesterday, so when I got home I crawled into bed and slept for over an hour. When I woke up I felt refreshed and hungry, but didn’t have any idea what to make for supper. Searching through my cabinets, I realized I had all the ingredients for corn chowder. The recipe I use was my grandmother’s and it’s always been one of my family’s favorite soups.

As I began chopping the onions, I felt some of my stress begin to fade. There’s something about the rhythmic motion of the knife that calms me. Stirring in the corn and milk, my shoulders began to drop. By the time I had the potatoes peeled and diced, the kitchen was filled with a delicious aroma, and I was much more at peace with the issues that have been on my mind.

Cooking isn’t always so soothing, but last night, creating this nourishing, homemade meal was the epitome of comfort food.

 Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday throughout the year and every day during the month of March. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Evolution of a Writer

Catherine Flynn12 Comments

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“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.”
Larry L. King

A year and a half ago, I started writing a middle grade novel, or maybe it’s an early chapter book. It hasn’t let me know which it wants to be yet. But I really started writing it more than ten years ago, when I wrote a picture book manuscript about a girl and her grandmother. That manuscript was much too long to be a picture book, so I rewrote it. I rewrote it so many times and cut so many details that I no longer recognized my story.

Or maybe I started writing that novel ten years before that when I began teaching third grade. Working with those young writers and reading books about writing inspired me pick up my own pen after too many years of not writing.

During those years of not writing I was reading. I was reading Shakespeare and Faulkner, poets and playwrights, E.B. White and Gary Paulsen, Barbara Kingsolver and Louise Erdrich. I soaked  up their words and the rhythms of their sentences like dry earth soaks up the spring rain.

Then again, that book might have started ten years before that when, after reading stack after stack of picture books to my children, I remembered an idea I’d had in high school about writing children’s books. Toddlers are very entertaining. To a young mother every silly thing they did was the stuff of the next Caldecott winner.

Maybe that story began when I was in fifth grade and wrote a story about aliens landing in a pond near my house. I remember this story only because my father liked it and told me it was good. High praise from a man of few words.

Who knows when that story really began. One of my earliest memories is of sitting at a little formica-topped table in my bedroom scribbling across a drawing pad, pretending I was writing. I knew then that I had a story to tell. I’ve been writing it ever since.

Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Sick Day

Catherine Flynn10 Comments

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A sinus infection has laid me low. Here are the highlights of the last five days:

Sick Day

Sinuses clogged,
Head throbbed.

Soup simmered,
Tea steeped.

Pillows propped,
Cat curled.

Books stacked,
left unread.

Dozed all day.
Will this bug ever go away?

 Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Coloring, Anyone?

Catherine Flynn17 Comments

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When I taught 3rd grade, I had an assortment of activities available for children who finished their work early. I always had a worksheet (the shame, I know!) that had math fact practice in a hidden picture. The picture would be revealed when the facts were solved and the spaces were colored in according to a code. If, for example, the sum or difference was between 3 and 6, the space was colored green. Kids loved these sheets. They took them home if they didn’t have time to finish them during the day.

Then at some point I realized these really weren’t much of  a challenge. What kind of thinking was going on? Was the fact practice enough of a reason to continue using these sheets? I know that if I had still been in the classroom over the past five years I would have stopped using them. And that would have been my students’ loss.

The explosion in popularity of coloring books for adults seems to justify what I knew instinctively 20 years ago. After working on new math concepts, some of it beyond their still-concrete thinking brains, my students needed these coloring sheets to relax and give their brains time to get ready for the next challenging learning task. A plethora of recent articles extolling the benefits of coloring tend to focus on adults, but there are plenty of reasons to bring coloring back into the classroom, relaxation and improving focus among them. In fact, many studies have found that coloring actually increases creativity. Here’s a link to just one of the many articles I found supporting this practice.

If you feel like you’ve read a post like this recently, you probably have. Elisabeth Ellington wrote recently about how her college students reacted to being assigned coloring for homework. Their responses underscore the benefits of finding time in our busy lives for a little time to play. But I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. In fact, the last save on my page of notes for this post was on January 14th, and this list has been on my desk for at least two weeks:

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But you know how these things go. Then yesterday I came across this in my Twitter feed:

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Read this post here.

I immediately thought of this passage from Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Riverhead Books, 2015):

“I believe that inspiration will always try its best to work with you–but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator…This is how it comes to pass that one morning you open up the newspaper and discover that somebody else has written your book [or blog post!]…or in any way whatsoever manifested some spark of inspiration that you’d had…but had never entirely cultivated…Therefore, the idea went hunting for a new partner.”

So this idea has had more that one partner. Oh well. It’s an idea worth writing about. I hope more teachers decide to let their students color on a regular basis. Everyone will be happier if they do.

Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.

Slice of Life: Being a Witness to the World

Catherine Flynn15 Comments

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There is a pond in the woods behind our house where we spent many hours exploring when my boys were growing up. They fished there in the summer and we skated in winter, but I hardly ever go back there anymore.

Sunday was a beautiful winter day here in Connecticut. There wasn’t any wind and the sky was a clear, brilliant blue, so I decided to walk down the hill to say hello to the pond. I quickly discovered that my plan wouldn’t be an easy one to carry out. The path was quite overgrown with pricker bushes that kept catching on my coat and hat. I forged ahead, but came around a bend and saw that a tree had fallen across the trail. Vines had grown up over it, making it look like a trellis or bower guarding a secret garden, a garden that I wasn’t going to be able to enter.

As I trudged back up the hill, I realized the overgrown path was like my writing brain. It’s been mostly ignored and untended for the past six months. Every time I sit down to write I feel like I have to fight my way through an overgrown thicket of brambles.

Over the past couple of weeks, though, I’ve been writing more and more and I’ve noticed that I can actually feel my brain become more flexible and limber when I sit down to write. I’m definitely more responsive to the world around me.

This got me thinking about our students, and what happens when they don’t have opportunities to write every day, or chances to sit and contemplate an idea or an image. In her book Writing Toward Home: Tales and Lessons to Find Your Way (Heinemann, 1995), Georgia Heard recommends writing “ten observational sketches” every day for a week, writing everything you notice and hear. “The more accurately you can observe your world and capture it in words,” Heard writes, “the more concrete your writing will become.” It might be a challenge to get kids to write ten sketches each day, but three or four seems reasonable. Think of the writing stamina they would build!

I’m looking forward to spring and getting that path cleared so I can go check on the pond. After all, as Georgia Heard also so wisely points out, “It is a writer’s job to act as witness to the world, to remind us all to stay awake.”

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Brian and Michael at the edge of the pond.

Thank you to Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, Beth, Kathleen, and Deb for this space for teachers and others to share their stories each Tuesday. Be sure to visit Two Writing Teachers to read more Slice of Life posts.