Icebreakers and community building activities can be fun… so fun, in fact, that it can be easy to get carried away. If you’re like me, there’s been more than a few years you’ve made it to week 3 only to realize your way behind on your pacing guide.
One of my favorite ways to build community without getting behind in content is to teach the Six-Word Memoir.
What is the Six-Word Memoir?
Simply put, Six-Word Memoir is telling your life story (or more realistically, part of it) in just six words.
According to Larry Smith, the founder of the Six-Word Memoir project, the idea was inspired by an old legend about Earnest Hemingway: According to legend, Hemingway was challenged to write a complete story in just six words. He wrote “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn” and won the bet.
In 2006, writer Larry Smith posted a challenge on his website and with a simple tweet: “Can you describe your life in six words?” Thousands responded and the Six-Word Memoir project was born. Since then, millions of people have shared their story in six words and Larry has published ten books of Six Word Memoirs, including Six Words Fresh off the Boat (immigration stories), I Can’t Keep My Own Secrets (teen stories), and A Terrible Horrible, No Good Year: Stories of the Pandemic by Teachers, Students, and Parents.
For teachers, the Six-Word Memoir has become a favorite back-to-school activity, allowing classes to build community, teachers to dive into content sooner, students to express themselves and get to know each other better, and parents to see a really cool sample of student work on Back to School Night.
Why Six Word Memoir is Helpful for Teachers
Community Building
Unlike typical icebreakers like name games and speed dating (which, by the way, I absolutely love), the Six-Word Memoir is a getting-to-know-you activity that invites community building and sharing on a much deeper level without forcing students to get too personal, since students choose the story they want to tell.
Teaching Content
Nearly every grade-level has a Common Core State Standard asking students to analyze an author’s word choice and structure, making Six-Word Memoirs a perfect way to introduce diction and syntax.
I love to talk about the author’s choice of that word versus all the others he or she could have used. We also discuss how authors structure sentences in order to fit into the constraints of having just six words. For example, what kind of message is communicated when the subject is moved to the end of the sentence? Or in some cases, left entirely out of the sentence?
Strengthening Analysis Skills
Throughout the activity, you’ll be showing and discussing examples of other Six-Word Memoirs, inviting the opportunity to set norms and practice appropriate discussion etiquette.
Students can identify larger themes behind the memoir and identify literary devices, voice, tone, and other literary elements at play in the memoir.
Building Writing Skills
Students get to move from the sidelines to the court as they put their analysis into practice and begin writing their own Six-Word Memoir.
Students think through themes and larger, complex stories, and wrestle with how to curate that story into just six words.
Because students have just six words to use, they have the space, time, and incentive to put an exceptional amount of care into their writing. Introduce the Six-Word Memoir and watch your students pour over those 6 words for an amazingly long time.
Introducing the Writing Process
Six-Word Memoir is a perfect writing assignment for the beginning of the year because it’s short enough to teach or review the entire writing process without stealing days and weeks of instructional minutes.
Collecting Writing Samples
Many teachers experience pressure to collect data on students or give feedback to parents or other teachers within the first few weeks of school. This can be next to impossible for us English teachers with our 200 plus students and the nature of reading, evaluating, and giving feedback on writing.
With Six-Word Memoirs, teachers can quickly gain a basic sense of student writing ability. I recommend asking students to end with a reflection or a single paragraph analyzing their own memoir. This gives you more to work with should you need it and allows you to see two types of writing: narrative and analytical.
Why Students Love Six-Word Memoir
Students love Six-Word Memoir activity because it’s highly engaging and a little addictive. Six-Word Memoir are so short and simple that it can actually be quite hard to stop reading them once you get going.
Writing Six-Word Memoirs is also oddly addictive. They’re just easy enough that you feel satisfied easily, yet we all have such multifaceted lives that we find we have more stories we want to tell or other ways we want to tell them.
Six-Word Memoirs allow us to give just enough detail that they can be incredibly personal, but they also prevent us from getting too much in the details. Plus, students love the level of choice involved: they can tell a surface-level story about going to Disneyland with their dad or a more personal story about losing their dog, their parents’ divorce, or being bullied in 3rd grade. It’s their choice.
Students also have a ton of choice when it comes to tone. Some Six-Word Memoirs will make you cry; some will make you laugh; and others will inspire you to close the laptop and get out there to make the world a better place.
Finally, students love seeing memoirs from their favorite celebrities, their teachers, and their classmates as a wonderful way to get to know each other in ways they never have before – even if they’ve been in school together since first grade.
How to Teach Six-Word Memoir
1. Introduce Memoir
Start by introducing the genre of memoir. I like to describe it as “fictionalized autobiography” – meaning that the essence is true, but every tiny detail may not be factual the way it needs to be in a biography.
This description also invites the conversation about the role characterization and literary devices play in writing memoir.
2. Analyze Examples of Six-Word Memoirs
Next, you’ll want to gather a few really great examples of memoirs for students to look at and discuss. If you plan to use the Six-Word Memoir activity to teach diction and syntax, choose examples that align with that goal.
Some questions you might pose to the class are: What story does the memoir tell? HOW does it tell the story effectively? …Or ineffectively, of course?
I also like to include 1 or 2 Six-Word Memoirs that I feel demonstrate weaker writing or that don’t meet my expectations.
3. Introduce the Writing Process: Brainstorm Topics & Invite Revision
Encourage students to brainstorm several ideas for topics before committing to just one. It might also be useful to have some prompts and suggestions in mind for students who feel stuck. Many times, students get the idea that memoir is for writing about traumatic, heroic, or otherwise exceptional experiences, and therefore, they can’t possibly fit in.
Help them break this assumption by encouraging them to write about common topics like first love, simple everyday moments with pets, special days with family, birthdays, moving, moments of confusion or fear like being lost as a child, etc.
As students write, encourage them to ask themselves how hard each word is “working” in the memoir – is it earning its keep?
Another suggestion is to ask them to write the memoir in 3 different ways before committing to one. Again, the Six-Word Memoir is wonderful for teaching the writing process because it’s so short – we’d never ask students to write an essay in 3 different ways, yet a Six-Word Memoir is short enough to help students see the myriad ways an idea can be expressed.
4. Give Space and Time
Six-Word Memoirs are so short that it can be tempting to rush it along, but this is an activity worth spending the time on – after all, you’re killing two birds with one stone by building community and teaching content, right?
Allow students the time they need to get their Six-Word Memoir exactly as they’d like. This activity is an awesome one for introducing after you’ve set up your independent reading routine so that those students who finish early have something to do while others are still working.
5. Provide Opportunities for Sharing
When it comes to building community with Six-Word Memoir, the magic really happens in the sharing.
There are lots of ways to invite sharing.
Teachers can go traditional or old school with quick presentations: Students can share their memoir with the class and share anything else they’d like about the story or their writing process. I like to have students sit in a large circle for this one in order to make it feel less intimidating at the start of the year.
Alternatively, teachers can invite sharing through a silent gallery walk: Students set their memoir on their desk and then move around the room as they read each memoir. I love to give students post-it notes as they walk around, so they can leave compliments or questions for the author.
I always wrap up with an overall discussion – takeaways about shared experiences in the classroom, what they learned about each other, a reflection on the writing process or their experience with writing a Six-Word Memoir.
Join the Conversation
Have you tried Six-Word Memoir yet? Tell us all about it in the comments!
Looking for ready-made materials for teaching Six-Word Memoir?
Check out Jen’s Six-Word Memoir activity, which has ready-to-go materials for teaching Six-Word Memoir, including defining the memoir genre, introducing diction and syntax, sample Six-Word Memoirs for discussion (with sample analysis!), prompts to get students going, and materials for guiding students through the writing process.
Note: Six-Word Memoir is a registered Trademark. The Six-Word Memoir format is used with permission of Larry Smith, founder of The Six-Word Memoir Project. For more information about Six-Word Memoirs and how to create your own classroom book, see www.sixinschools.com.
