My slice of life moment happened last Wednesday. After my Tuesday night class I was so excited to have a writing assignment with my students that I didn’t want to wait. After showing students my post and setting them up with the expectations I saw my kiddos really getting into it. Of course there was one or two who wasn’t really feeling the assignment but for the most part everyone enjoyed writing. No one was required to share...only if they wanted to. One young lady shared that she has always loved rainbows even before it became a symbol that everyone proudly displays now. When she read it, I felt her words and some sadness that her interpretation of rainbows is now gone. Another wrote of the first time she went to Mexico to meet her fathers’ parents. One girl told me that a commercial on the radio makes her smile every morning. It was awesome. Students wrote their words in a spiraling circle… in a box. One even drew box letters of the word life and wrote inside of that. By the end of each class students were excited about the option to write every week. I wish I'd started this sooner.

My slice of life moment happened last week. I was able to enjoy time with my babies. No grading papers, working on upcoming lessons,no multi-tasking homework (theirs and mine) while we have conversations and I prepare dinner. I was able to be … their mom, goofy, not-stressed ... happy.

I realized that I spend so much time trying to be everything they need (a role model, provider, educator) that I miss out on being what they want… just mom being goofy and hanging out watching TV.

When we read we lose sight of the fact that our mind is constantly moving processing the words to gain understanding. As fluent readers, we don’t think of reading as a process of thinking unless we’re reading in an official learning capacity. Yet comprehension, on some level, happens no matter what we’re reading.

Whenever we read we are in the process of thinking. For some of us we can picture scenes as we read. Although this doesn’t happen each time we read due to the nature of the text it is important to know that this is our brains way of thinking and processing the information we read. Comprehension happens because of our minds continuously processing the information we read.