Tell me about your family...

"One day I was in Mexico and I was eating when my dad came and I was surprised and my dad take me to his mom home and we go to a pool and I do not know that my dad mom was my grandma and one day my dad told me this is my grandma and I said wow it is cool and we went to my uncle and there are my cousins and we go fishing at a pool and my cousin said I got a big fish and my dad said we are going to america and i said what about my grandma and my dad said it is okay for grandma it is going to be good and I went to my grandma and my dad said I am going to take your grandson and my grandma came to see me and she started crying and i said we are going to america and my dad said go at the car and we left and I cry but there was my mom she buy me a lot of toys and I was happy and the other day I went to school and I make two more friends and I was very happy one day my mom tell me going to talk to your grandma at the phone and I was excited and I didn't know that my uncle was there and we made a new family altogether one day we went to the zoo then I went again to school and one day send a paper and it was about after school and the morning I went to school then to after school we do snack and we do homework and we go out to play soccer and we do journal i was so excited."

- 4th Grade Boy

Sharks

After reading a book on sharks:

Me: "What makes up the outside of a shark?"
2nd Grade Boy: "SKIN....and GILLS!"
Me: "Yep! What is inside a shark?"
2nd Grade Boy: "BABIES!!!!!"

The answer I was looking for was a skeleton...

The rules of kickball

Today we played kickball. Here are my kid's rules:

1. If the ball is kicked to you, your main goal is to kick it back rather than catch it
2. It's perfectly acceptable to leave the field and climb trees
3. When you are up as kicker, and the ball is rolled to you, you kick it ... then you proceed to keep kicking it...all the way to first place (and ultimately getting yourself out in the process)
4. Sometimes standing on a base can get boring and it's more fun to sit down and stare at the grass instead
5. If the ball hasn't come to you, it's also fun to roll your head in the grass
6. If you'd rather kick then be in the outfield, you can switch teams at any time
7. Three-ringed binders work well as bases
8. If you're pitching, it's okay to kick the ball to the kicker, rather than roll it

 My students love soccer. In their minds it outweighs most every sport, and as result  they (unknowingly) included soccer rules in our kickball game

How was your week...

I have a dream...

"I have a dream that I could be old."

                      -First Grade Girl

I want to change...

We discussed Martin Luther King Jr. today. The students shared how they want to change the world. I thought this entry from a second grade girl was especially creative:

I want to change.
I want to make the sky purple
and the clouds orange.
I will change the trees red.
The sun will be green.
The moon will be pink.
The dog will be brown.
The ground will be blue.
The flowers will be black.

Two laps and no homework...

The first week at after school one of my third graders refused to her homework. It was difficult for her, and she simply did not want to do it. I finally got her to get started, reassuring her that I would help her with her assignment. After a bit of time I had to leave to lead the rest of the students in a group activity, so I asked a volunteer to help her finish. I later found out she told him she wasn’t going to do anymore. When my volunteer told her she had to do her work, she responded, “Really? You’re actually going to make me do my homework here in after school? You can’t do that.” My volunteer quickly responded, “Yes I can. That’s how we do it here.”

The next day, she didn’t run laps

To all my teachers, or future teachers, out there. I think running laps as a punishment for not completing homework is a horrible reprimand. In college I would of run a mile if it got me out of writing a paper, and kids have more energy than me

Little sneaksters at it again…

At the end of the day we always do journals. For the most part, the students really like this activity. However, a few always try to write as few amount of sentences as possible. Today, one of my third graders came over to me with his journal. He had his hand covering half of his journal. He told me he had completed his assignment. The students were supposed to be writing their personal, “I have a dream” speeches. I looked down at his journal, and his writing was on what he enjoyed about his day. This was day eight of the program, he should of been on page eight…he was showing me page one. I looked at him and said, “Child, that’s your journal entry from the first day…and this here that your hand is covering up are my own personal comments back to you. Go do your work.” And he did.

Changing dates don’t fool me…

One of my students came in to the program yesterday and told me had done his homework at school, so i told him to go get it so i can could check it. As i began to look his work over, I realized he had done his work very quickly, and it was not corrected. I asked him to do it again. He left and came back three minutes later. He told me he had fixed his work. I told him he needed to do the entire thing, and I sent him back again. The third time he came back he tried to tell me he was accidentally showing me the wrong homework page…that he had gotten confused. He pulled out another math sheet that he had (very obviously) changed the date on. It originally said jan. 7. It had already been turned in and graded. Instead of fighting him on the issue, I sat there and went over that whole thing and made him rework problems (even tho he had the right answers, since it was old homework they had already corrected). Once he thought he was finally done, i told him to give me the other original homework page. I told him we were gonna do both. After we had completed both sheets I told him this is what happens when he tries to fool the teacher.