Teachers everywhere are honing in on the six word memoirs craze. I've written about my intentions to have my seniors include a six-word memoir in their "Senioritis" projects. The only problem with this fun, fresh assignment is that it will cease to be fun and exciting once students have all done it with all of their teachers. It's like the wordle craze that hit a couple of years ago. One teacher in our district sent out an email about the site and almost every teacher in my building had used it by the end of the week.
So, how's about a newer, fresher idea? While searching around Simon & Schuster's site, I found a section called MyLifeIn8Words. This section is linked to Twitter, and (as I'm writing this post) almost 200 twitterers are following this thread. Like the six-word memoir craze, this is not just for teens. Several tweets that I read where definitely written by adults. What I like about this collection is that there is instant collaboration through the twitter platform. Viewers and tweeters alike can instantly see others' tweets. So, it creates a bank of posts that will be added to for as long as this topic is a cool one.
What I'd like to see is a more daily, meditative sort of variation on this theme. Like, 7WordsWeekly. Hm. Maybe I'm on to something with that one. I like it because a memoir or a "My Life" in so many words seems like it needs to be super profound or telling. It also feels like you can't write a lot of memoirs. I'd like my students to develop a sort of picture of their life over the course of weeks and months. I can just imagine the variety of tweets they'd have! And the plethora of themes and moods. I like this better because it builds understanding of life and I can imagine using their collected tweets in a variety of ways. I guess that I'll just have to try this and get back to you!
Here are some of my favorites from a small section of tweets:
