Brevity Soul Wit

Wednesday is the first day of school with students (EEE!), and Viola asked me to come up with some fun ice breakers/opening activities/tell-us-about-yourself-and-all-your-wildest-dreams activities. I'd just read an article in Time about this new literary fad called "Mini lit," which sounded like a good Language-Arts themed opener.

The basic mini lit gist is this: you write a memoir, book review, short story, novel, essay, etc.-- but you do it in six words or less. Apparently the idea began when Ernest Hemingway was dared to create a short story with only six words. He came up with, "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn." With the exponential growth of blogging, twittering, and increasingly short attention spans, mini lit has taken off.

So the activity tomorrow (today, if you're reading this on Wednesday) is for the students to write their usual, "What I did this summer," essays-- but in only six words.

This is me trying to do my own assignment:

Europe? Take me now. Home, agh!

Je suis francaise!... Until I wasn't.

Bohemian traveler? ...Diligent student? Yes, duh.

Grad school, tigers, and bears ohmy!

Patisseries? ALSO cheese and wine? Yessss...

Hearts are tricky and elusive, methinks.

This is the problem: hostel boys.

This is the best: Cordier brothers.

Good things bad things crazy things.

Barefoot walking and pink cloud climbing.


Anyway. It's sort of fun. How about you try. How was your summer?? Also, do you love my shameless solicitation for comments lately? I just want to know about you all. :) I tell lots about me, and it's fun to know you all a little more too. Plus, six-word summer vacation essays are fun.

I'll hopefully post a blog about the first day tomorrow evening-- including some of the six-word-phrases the students came up with, if they're funny. :) I'M A REAL LIVE STUDENT TEACHER NOW! Wish me luck!!!