My plan is to start writing workshop with oral storytelling, which will lead into slice of life writing. Then later on in the fall we will have a memoir genre study. Author Mia King wrote an article about memoirs (linked from a blog post about the same topic) that I will probably share with my students during our memoir study. I love her definition of memoirs and tips to get started that are helpful for a wide span of ages. As I was mapping out my genre studies for the year, I thought that it seemed like slice of life stories can be springboards into memoirs. Reading King's suggestions appeared to go along with this idea as well.
When mapping out a tentative read aloud plan for the year I was trying to match up read-alouds that would go well with the type of writing genre that we will be studying. I also try to find books that are available both in English and Spanish so that we can continue reading the same book regardless of the language week. One of the books that would fit is House on Mango Street. I recently commented over at Two Writing Teachers to get feedback on reading it at the beginning of the year since I am not sure if there are any novels out there that would be characterized as slice of life. I thought the short vignettes woven together to form the novel could be considered slice of life writing when looked at as individual chapters. Stacey's response gave me a lot to consider:
I only used The House on Mango Street during my memoir unit of study when I wanted to teach my kids how to dive really deep. I’m not sure how it’d work with SOLS. I’m inclined to say, especially since it’s the beginning of the school year, that you use your own writing as mentor texts.
My initial reaction was that I would just switch it over to my memoir genre study, but then I thought about how it may still work as a read aloud loosely related to the concept. I can still use my own writing as mentor texts during writer's workshop as Stacey suggests. That thought made perfect sense to me. Then I can also refer back to the book as a common text when we are in our genre study since it is a good model of digging deep, as Stacey commented.
There is still so much to consider, and a lot of my decisions during the school year will be trying out and reflecting on what works and what needs to be adjusted for the next time I teach the unit.
I happen to like Wikipedia's definition of Slice of Life Writing, which you can find by Googling "slice of life." It's the first thing that comes up.
ReplyDeleteI think slices of life can often be developed into memoirs, with a lot of work and finessing, but I often tend to thing of them as quick vignettes.
I appreciate your feedback. Little by little I am getting a clearer idea of the type of writing. It will be fun to share some examples of my own writing with my students and see what they decide to write about. I thought that introducing SOLS at the beginning of the year would help for them to always have ideas that they can write about during writer's workshop when they finish up with required writing based on the current genre study. It is also perfect for students who choose to have their own blogs since they can do the SOLC challenge on Tuesdays.
ReplyDeleteThanks again!