What Letter Do You Need to Send?
Plus: a free, Six-Word Memoir plan for teachers (and a perfect book for $13.99 to give them)
SixContest: Unsent Letters in Just Six Words
We all have times when we struggle to speak our truths or confess our feelings. Writing things down, as we learned as kids and hopefully haven’t forgotten, is a great way to make sense of emotions. And still: we all have literal and proverbial letters that remain unsent. For SixContest #143, we’re asking Sixers to share these letters.
So far, Sixers have penned letters to mythical figures ("Dear Cupid, You have terrible aim." — NatJC) and unreachable family members "("To the father I've never known." — canadafreeze). Some apologized for past mistakes ("I lied. It wasn't an accident." — vaibhav) while others remembered wistfully ("Loved you; told you; weathered us." — gnp). And there are a few Sixers who are sticking with blank pages and undelivered mail ("Some letters meant to stay stationary." — CanadaGoose).
The contest ends March 31st. Make sure to submit your memoir on the contest page on Six-Word Memoirs for a chance to win a Six-Word Memoir book of your choice.
Six Words in the Classroom: From Bell Work to Backstories
One of the most wonderful things I’ve heard from educators, and seen myself, is how kids who have trouble speaking up, often feel a new comfort, safety, and success when all they have to share is six words. And Six-Word Memoirs — whether taught as a one-time lesson, daily “bell work,” or a jumping off point to longer backstories — is a way to spark creativity and collaboration with writing prompts that invite and inspire everyone in the classroom. Want to introduce students to Six-Word Memoirs? We have free lesson plans and even a process for any classroom to make their own Six-Word Memoir book.
Download or share a link to our free lesson plan.
Classroom of the Month: Concision and Capability at Maplewood Elementary, MO
While thinking about ways to incorporate memoir into her English lesson plans, Lexi Sinnett, a 5th grade teacher at Maplewood Elementary, Kansas City, MO introduced her students to Six-Word Memoirs. Sinnett encouraged her class to focus on what mattered most to them by thinking about their personal values and character traits. “I wanted to reflect them as kids,” she says, citing the importance of expressing yourself without adult influence. She also asked students to illustrate their memoirs, blending visual arts with literature to fully embrace their creativity. Says Sinnett: “It was one of those days when I went home and was reminded, ‘Okay, this is why I wanted to be a teacher!’”
Read more about Lexi Sinnett and her inspired classroom on our Six in Schools blog, and see how other teachers across the world are bringing Six-Word Memoirs into their classrooms as a tool for self-expression, writing confidence, and overall social emotional learning.
The tenth book of Six-Word Memoirs, A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year, features hundreds of inspirational, playful, and profound takes by teachers, students, and parents on life during the pandemic. Below is the last illustration in the book, the inspired work of 11-year-old Simone Elias. If you're looking for a small but meaningful gift for a teacher in your life, you can purchase the book here.
Short Cuts: Six-Word Reviews
From Substack: Inspired by the 1959 essay The Two Cultures, which theorized how society was split into the two cultures of science and humanities, novelist and neuroscientist Erik Hoel bridges the gap with his weekly insightful essays in The Intrinsic Perspective. The newsletter discusses the cultural impact of subjects such as artificial intelligence, space exploration, media cycles, and the publishing industry. Hoel favors heavily saturated, psychedelic art to capture the essence of his subjects.
Six-Word Memoirs' Danielle Shum's Six-Word Review: "Sensational fusion of science and humanities.”
From the World: Sometimes in our Marvel-ized, Disney-fied world, it’s easy to forget about the heroic struggles of everyday humans, but stories come from everyone, everywhere. Somebody Somewhere is an HBO series that lovingly unfurls the fictionalized story of the very real and raw Bridget Everett, a comedian/singer/singular cabaret performer who unexpectedly return homes to Manhattan, Kansas, a town filled with cornfields and mid-life angst as far as the eye can see. Somebody Somewhere is a revelation about the power of the human spirit. And it’s funny as hell.
Six-Word Memoirs' Larry Smith’s Six-Word Review: “Bridget’s story: bold, big, and beautiful.”