Gotta Start Somewhere

Teaching children to write can feel incredibly overwhelming at times. We painstakingly explore ways to generate workable ideas, create characters, craft a clever lead, and a satisfying conclusion, inject natural-sounding dialogue, and follow a sensible plot line. Sometimes students' views of the process and mine don't quite match.

Today a student brought me her story:

ONCE THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL AND HER DAD THAT LIVED IN A HOUSE BUT THE LITTLE GIRLS MOM DIED SO THEN THE LITTLE GIRL AND HER DAD WERE SAD TO LIVE IN THE HOUSE WHERE THE LITTLE GIRLS MOM AND THE DADS WIFE HAD DIED.

"Ok," I replied after she read it aloud. "You've got a good idea to start with there. Why don't we--" I started to consider how best to guide her.

"Oh, don't worry," she replied. "I'm only half done!"

Somehow this explanation is not inspiring a lot of confidence...

An eager student brought in a DVD from home and asked if we could watch it in class. I told him that I would need to preview it first. Initially he seemed to accept this, but a short time later, he returned to my desk, more insistent, and said,

"I just came to 'ensure' you that there's only two parts with kissing, nothing else... so it's fine! One part that's a cartoon, and one part with a guy and his wife in a video they made."

Rules of Nature

In a recent presentation about electrical safety, the students learned that electricity will always take the easiest route to the ground... even if that means traveling through a person's body. This information was troubling to one of my students. In the days following the presentation, he asked me several times why electricity would always find the easiest route to the ground. Lacking a better explanation, I said, well, I guess you could say it's a rule of nature. I could see this little boy was clearly not satisfied with that answer. When I asked him what was troubling him, he replied, "Well that 'rule of nature' has SERIOUSLY HURT a lot of people!!"

Don't Look! I'm Gonna Read Your Mind!

Today's math lesson introduced "ordered pairs" and locating coordinates on a grid. For practice, students joined with partners to play a game similar in principle to Battleship. Players secretly place a "queen" and several "knights" onto a paper grid, and then take guesses as to their opponent's pieces. I was partnered with one of my boys. After several misses, he suddenly and confidently nailed my queen and won the game. I had a sneaking suspicion that he may have "peeked" at my paper when I wasn't looking; however, I became that much more convinced after the following telling exchange:

"Do you want to know how I won?"

"Sure, how did you know?"

"I read your mind!"

"Oh, my goodness, you did?!"

"Yup, and I'm gonna play this tonight with my mom! And I'm gonna read her mind... when she's not looking! I only read people's minds when they're not looking!"

Got a Minute? Or Twenty??

"Mrs. S, how many Facebook friends do you have?"

"Oh, I don't know, about three hundred."

[pause]

"What are their names?"

High Five!

It's our first day back from Christmas vacation. My students rumble in, a rag-tag tribe, clomping and swishing in their new and old snowsuits and boots. They are a little out-of-step, shaking off two weeks of glorious un-structure, like sleepy bear cubs awakening from winter. Academic diligence may not come easily in these first hours back, but silliness does. I expect a hefty dose of it, along with two-weeks worth of breathless story-sharing and plentiful hugs in celebration of our reunion.

I've just gotten the group settled, making lists in their writers' notebooks of “memorable moments” from vacation. Clearly not ready to sit still, a boy scurries toward my desk.

“High 5!” he exclaims, thrusting a hand toward me. It doesn't feel right to meet his enthusiasm with a bland redirection to his seat. I tag his hand.

“To the side!” he extends the hand laterally. I tag it again.

“Up High!” he reaches upward. I tag him a third time.

“Down Low!” He offers his hand at knee-level, and then almost too quickly, claims his punchline by swiping it away and letting mine swat the air.

“TOO SLOW!” he shrieks.

“Haha, good one, Derek!” I congratulate his delivery, smile, and then direct him—still giggling--back to his seat, adding “hey, maybe you can add your new joke to your list of memorable moments!”

Shortly after lunch, another High-5-ing petitioner approaches me, clearly convinced that all memory of my earlier experience had been miraculously erased. “High-5!” he exclaims, pushing his little hand into the air near my face. He's moving swiftly, but not so swiftly that I cannot see the remains of taco sauce and recess on his hand. I am immune to all manner of kid-contagion, and I agreeably return my half of the 5.

“To the side!” I play my part.

“Down low!” He lets me tag him.

“Up high!” he snatches it away. “Too slow!”

The 'down-low, too slow' rhyme has gotten lost in his rendering of this most-hilarious-of-all-jokes.

“Oh, heavens to Betsy!” I exclaim, as if all at once to congratulate the child on his masterful trickery AND to say, I-just-don't-have-it-in-me-to-seize-upon-this-as-a-teachable-moment.”

The child savors the moment proudly, and then, with no discernible process of change, appears suddenly confused.

“Who's Betsy?” he asks.

Just Gotta Smile...

Preliminary question on an oral reading test: "What are sheep used for?"

The child's answer: "For making cotton balls."