Should we?

Overheard: "Should we make a shelter for homeless people? ...no, that'd be too big to carry!"

"Man up, ma'am!"

-said one first grade girl to another, over breakfast. Don't know why, but I think it involved a discussion of heads "gettin' cracked open". "I had to go to the hospital, and they could see my brain!"

Also, totally unrelated, there are three boys on the rug, ensconced in pillows, all reading the same space exploration book and sharing in an imaginary rocket trip. TOTALLY cute.

"I made a mail!"

We were working on making designs, using only rectangles, squares and triangles. Here's what came my way:

"Mr. Graham! Mr. Graham! I made a mail!"

Absolutely.

Classic!

Picking up the kids from PE today, one girl complained that another had thrown a tissue at her while waiting in line. Once I got the students back to the classroom and tucked into choosing, I brought both girls over to talk it out. The exchange rapidly degenerated into a "Yes, you did!", "No, I didn't!" back and forth (which was actually hilarious in its own right).

And then the accused child looked plaintively up at me. "Well, Mr. Graham, at least there wasn't anything on it!"

"On what?" I replied glibly.

"On the tissue!" she said indignantly.

"Ha HA!" I exulted. "The tissue that you didn't throw? You're busted, child!"

The look on her face was phenomenal.

Speaking of hilarious looks, the look on a student's face just as they accidentally tip over in their chair (leaning too far back or sideways) is adorable. Clearly, they don't get hurt, but the transition from "I'm rebellious and leaning in my chair" to "OOOHHHH WHAAAGRLARBLE" *thud* is FANTASTIC.

Existential Pumpkin Questions

At some point, haven't we all wondered, "Wie am I karvd?"

Rib-bon! Rib-bon!

We were writing birthday letters today, and I was previewing a pictorial dictionary of birthday words. One of the words was "ribbon" (because, hey, you might want to write something about ribbon). Alita, my spunky Russian student, looks at me and goes, "Like a frog, Mr. Graham? Ribbb-bon? Ribbb-bon?"

So I gave her an overexaggerated stinkeye and she waved her hand breezily. "I just kidding, Mr. Graham. I know it not the frog."

Cute.

"Birth-day socks, birth-day socks"

During reading group today, one child starts grooving to himself, "Birth-day socks, birth-day socks". Then he leans over his neighbor, "except, you know, they sing it with the other words."

Oy.

Pop culture reference, for those who don't get it right away: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYMxOzxKYYo

Ohhhhhhh, yeah

I was trying something new today, and rather than writing birthday cards for students, we were trying out birthday letters. Or, really, letters that say nice things. One of them got a little bit more Barry White than I expected.

Smooth AND gentle. Oooohhhhh, yeah.

Things that on which first graders are experts:

October 11, 2010 edition

Today, first graders are experts on:

-how to kill vampires (sunlight, not light bulbs. Or a stake. But not a steak.)

-the existence of, and how to kill, werewolves (yes, they're real)

Things they are not experts on:

-spelling "kickball". ("Mr. Graham, what comes after the 'w' and 'm' in 'kickball'?")

-high fiving (seriously, 60% of the time, it's like 2 ships passing in the night. Thank goodness my hand is a big target)

"Yeeeeeah, seee?"

We had baby carrots for snack today, and I was tucked in at a table, working with a first grader on writing his numbers. I looked across the table, and another kiddo was totally focused on his work, mumbling to himself with a carrot hanging out of his mouth like a mobster with a cigar. In my head, I added his dialogue as the carrot flipped from side to side. "Yeah, see, that's a mistake you don't wanna make, see?"

Second story: a bright BRIGHT student was so excited because her mom would be helping in the library this afternoon. (She'd thought Mom was coming last week, but Mom had to cancel at the last minute)

Her: "Mr. Graham! My mom is ACTUALLY going to be in the library today, probably!"

Me: "Actually?"

Her: "Actually probably!"

Me: "So your mom is probably going to actually be in the library today?"

Her: "Um, yeah! What you said!"

Hips?

We were working on short i sounds, and one of the words that came up was "hip". One student had some musings about that:

"Mr. Graham, what do girls have that boys don't? Is it that? Hips? Or is it thighs?"

Wow.

"But what ARE bleachers?"

The classroom is coming together at the beginning of the year, and they're starting to remember how to work independently. During writing time, I was working with a student at one table, and I heard this interchange at the table behind me:

Two girls, singing softly under their breaths: "She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts, she's cheer captain, and I'm on the bleachers!"

And then one asks,

"Wait, do you know what bleachers are?"

"Yeah, of course!"

"... well, what ARE they?"

It then turned into an involved discussion of various different sporting arenas.

[Pop culture note: this is a Taylor Swift song called "You Belong With Me". Lyrics here]

True words

In reference to a character from Avatar:

"I don't know who that is! If I don't know her, I don't love her."

No idea of the context:

"If I'm not alive, then you're not alive because I'm older than you!"

They're back!

Overheard while passing out bananas for snack today-

"Mr. Graham, can I have that extra banana?"

Me: "Nope, I don't have enough for everyone to have seconds."

I turn away, and behind me, I hear this:

"Well, who gets the other one?"

"His wife!"

"Nuh uh! He ain't got one!"

"Is it 'cos he's not grown-up?"

"Yeah, he has a mom and a dad."

"You can have a mom and dad and be grown up!"

"He doesn't have a wife?"

Hoo, boy, back in the saddle.

Last Day of School

We were working on a memory book today, for the last day of school, and one of questions is about your favorite book. I'm wandering around, helping kids spell their favorite books, when Jarod comes up to me.

"Mr. Graham, how do you spell Twilight?"

"Reeeeeeealllly?" I'm thinking to myself. "I mean, reeeeeaaaaallllly?"

"Okay, Jarod," I reply. "It starts with that /tw/ sound. What letters do you hear?"

"Oh, never mind, Mr. Graham," he says. "I'll just get the book and copy the title."

He walks over to grab Magic Tree House #19, called Tigers at Twilight.

"Oooohhhhhhhhh, right."

Classic.

hic! hic!

Today, the penultimate day of school, there is a child in my classroom with the hiccups. Unfortunately, he sounds EXACTLY like the snake in Disney's Robin Hood, after he gets stuffed into the barrel of beer (wine?). The juxtaposition is pretty hilarious for me.

In which I discover why my hands are sticky

Before lunch the other day, I washed my hands before taking the students down to the cafeteria. We got through the lunch line and settled down at the table. I was circulating around the table, monitoring the class, and halfway through lunch, I noticed that my hands were really sticky. It seemed odd to me, since I wasn't eating anything sticky. Hmm...

I washed my hands and went back to lunch. From across the cafeteria, I observed Sandy relaxedly drawing a line of jelly taken from her sandwich, onto my Snapple bottle (she's a very tactile child). Ohhhhhkay. Right-o. "Hey, Sandy...."

Houses are expensive!

Overheard during choosing:

"Man, that girl Sylvie is lucky. She just moved into a house that has a pool in the backyard!"

"Oh, she's lucky!"

"I know! Those houses are expensive! Like a hundred bucks!"

"Like three thousand!"

"Whoa!"

Do you know how they make cookies and cream?

"Mr. Graham, do you know how they make cookies and cream ice cream?"

"um?"

"They make the ice cream, then put the cookies in, then put the cream in."

"Did you know that ice cream is, well, made out of cream?"

"Wait, what? That true? (sic) Really?"

So then we had to go on and watch a video about how to make ice cream.

I love my job.

"What do you mean, go home?"

"Alright, guys, go ahead and clean up, please." Seemed to me like a simple request at the end of a Friday before a three day weekend.

A student stalks up to me. "What you mean, 'home'?" he said. "I don't go home!"

(knowing that this student's family is intermittently homeless and living with relatives, I was prepared for some sort of worried discussion. Oh, no.)

"I go to the zoo!" he continued. "For dinner!" He rubbed his stomach. "I eat the animals!"

Oh, Tom.

Boom-de-ada, boom-de-ada, boom-de-ada

My students have been working on illustrating a songbook of "I love the mountains", etc. Here's one of the pages that a student came up with. Her interpretation of "the lights are low" cracked me up!

Those lights aren't just low... they're dead!

Mr. Patron comes to school

One of my kids showed up today with a postcard flyer, advertising a series of performances, featuring artists such as "Mr. Patron", and "Mr. Criminal". For reference, here is a picture of Mr. Patron.

Irvin was sharing his flyer around, telling everyone that Mr. Patron is his uncle. "But Mr. Patron is only his name when he's singing", he said (or it might have been "sinning"). "Oh?" I replied. "Yeah", he said. "At our house? We call him George."

Peering over Irvin's shoulder, Tom chimed in. "Mr. Cri-mi-nal. Ooooh, he steals stuff!"

Best.

The perils of reading instruction

I was working with a first grader today, doing a reading assessment. The sentence in the middle of the book was, "A girl asked Kate to sit with her at lunch." She's doing fine at the start, but then trips over "sit" and goes back to sound it out. She starts decoding with a "sh", and my heart drops a little bit. And indeed, she confidently reads through the sentence, "A girl asked Kate to sh** with her at lunch". Phenomenal. Had to keep the giggle inside, though.

"What's the deal with bookstores?"

Overheard observational humor from a 7 year old:

"Barnes and Noble? Seriously? They're a book store. Why are they selling toys?"

"Fifth best? FIFTH best? Oh, okay"

At lunch today, I was informed by a first grader that I was the fifth best kicker at kickball. In my head, I'm getting all riled up. "Fifth best? FIFTH best? I will kick that ball so hard tomorrow, they won't find it until September!"

However, since I am a consummate professional (most of the time), I didn't say that out loud. Instead, I questioned. "Oh, Jaydeen?" I nonchalantly replied. "Fifth?"

"Yes! Well, God is first. And then Mary, Joseph and Jesus."

"And Buddha!" chimed in Tom.

"Right, Buddha! See, Mr. Graham?"

I didn't want to point out that the inclusion of Buddha pushed me down to sixth. Ouch, my pride.

"Hey, everybody! Take five."

I've been reading "Elmer and the Dragon" during read-aloud, and one of the characters in that book is a canary, King Can XI. At one point, he lists all the former kings (King Can I, King Can II, etc, etc) Jaydeen was intensely curious as to why he was called X I, so I told her to talk to me at choosing.

I explained Roman Numerals to her at choosing, and then showed her this video. At the end of it, she exclaimed, "Take five! I get it! Because V is five!"

Yessssssssss.

"Mr. Graham, am I a loser?"

A quote from math time today:

"Mr. Graham, am I a loser...?"

I didn't respond, but just gave him a disparaging look.

"That's right, I'm not!" *flex* "I'm a winner! I'm buff and I'm strong!"

At lunch today:

"Mr. Graham, he called me fat!"

"No, I didn't!" the accused retorted, and then continued very matter-of-factly, "I called you fat the polite way - I called you chubby."

Fair doesn't mean that everyone gets the same thing...

I have a kindergartner in my class who is pretty overweight (like Augustus Gloop-style overweight). He's a sweet kid, but sitting on the rug is a bit of a burden for him, and he gets fidgety and distracting pretty quick. Having him sit by himself, having him sit in a chair, sit someplace that he can lean on a bookshelf/wall - tried all of these things, but there wasn't a long term fix.

Then Rose (genius next-door teacher extraordinaire) ((and also this student's math teacher)) got a couple of camping chairs (like this one, but without the hibiscus pattern)
for our friend to try out. SUCCESS! So, he tried one in math, and I hadn't had a chance to try it out or explain it in the classroom, but I took one along when we went out to the portable for music class. I set it down, and he settled right in to it. Another student (didn't notice which one) started some sort of whine a la, "Mr. Graaaaham, I waant" and that's about as far as they got before Cheyenne landed on them like a ton of bricks. "Fair doesn't mean that everyone gets the same thing, it means that everyone gets what they need!" BOOM!

THAT was an awesome moment, and a proud one, too. That's definitely the classroom culture I've been working towards. Booyah.

Geoboard shapes

We were making shapes on the pegboards with rubber bands (Geoboards and Geobands, respectively) and recording our creations on recording sheets - the point of the exercise was accurately representing the boards on the dot paper.

For the last part of the lesson, I had the students use seven geobands and try to make a picture. Here's what one of them made:

"Mr. Graham! Mr. Graham! It's a man who REALLY has to go to the bathroom!"

AMAZING.

"Down by the baaaaaay..."

I was singing "Down by the bay" with the kids at the end of the day, waiting for the bell to ring. It's tricky to rhyme some of my kids' names, but we were giving it our best. "Did you ever see Rosanna... eating a banana? Down by the bay?" seemed to work, but when it came to Leyna, that was a bit trickier. "Did you ever see Leyna... turning a key-na? ...being mean-a?" Then My, SO proud of herself, interrupts. "No! Mr. Graham! Mr. Graham! Did you ever see Leyna... eating a bean-a?" My then proceeds to laugh hysterically and almost tips over into the wall, she's laughing so hard. And in the back of my head, I'm thinking, "She can rhyme! YES!"

A Full Life

At lunch today, one of the students asked me if I owned a TV. "Well, no", I replied, thinking that the TV I actually watch is on a computer or other device, but not really wanting to explain that. An absolutely shocked look came over his face. "You don't?" he stammered. "But! But! Oh, Mr. Graham," a woeful look came over his face. "That means you don't have a full life."
"A full life?" I questioned.
"Yeah, a full life. You hafta get a house and a wife and a car and stuff like a TV. Oh, and tapes."
"Tapes?" I thought.
Shaking his head, Jerrod bestowed his final judgment on me. "Mr. Graham, you have, like, a half life."

Fortunately, my "half life" still included a turkey sandwich, so I ate that while trying not to chuckle.

"But, Mr. Graham!"

I was working at my table with a reading group today, listening with half of an ear to the kids on the rug, when I heard one student say to another (somewhat snidely, I thought), "Hey, Jaydeen, how's the dummy book?"
"Luke!" I said, turning away from the table. "Please make sure that you are using polite language and being a good friend!"
"But, Mr. Graham!" he replied. "It's the title of the book!"
"Yeah," said Jaydeen. "See? It's called Night of the Living Dummies."

Oh, well, hmm. There is that, I suppose.

Who says that chivalry is dead?

My mom and my for-all-intents-and-purposes-cousin Ellen came in to the classroom yesterday, because Ellen was just passing through town and wouldn't be around long enough to meet up after school. Some of the kids were asking questions, and one student asked, "How old are you?" Ellen answered, "Well, I'm 26", just as Marcus, with this incredibly shocked and worried look on his face, leans over to the other student and says in a loud whisper, "You can't do that! You're never supposed to ask a girl how old she is!"

"Mr. Graham! Mr. Graham!"

So, I was digging through some piles in my classroom, and found a Scholastic magazine about St. Patrick's Day. Insomuch as it was already April, I decided that we should read it before it got even less topical. I passed it out to the kids, and they were looking through it before we read the text together. I was circulating in the classroom, and saw Irvin looking at this section pictured above. With a very worried look on his face, he looks up at me, and exclaims, "Mr. Graham! Mr. Graham! Why is that man killing that leprechaun?"

"It's Robin Hood's girlfriend..."

Going through "Each Peach Pear Plum" with a reading group today, just looking at the pictures, one of the kids exclaims, "Look! It's Robin Hood's girlfriend, Robin Girl!" And indeed, in the picture of Robin Hood, there's a small framed photo of Robin Hood's girlfriend. Observant children...

I know what's coming next....

So, I'd just dropped my class off at library today, and I was walking back down to my classroom, when I passed a student walking with his SMART reader (SMART=Start Making A Reader Today). Now, the readers are very nice, well-meaning people, usually either college kids or retirees, but they haven't necessarily been teachers with classrooms. The reader is chatting at this first grader, and she's trying to engage him with questions about what he did at recess, or how his weekend was. He's having none of it. He is carrying a book, and is totally focused on swinging it back and forth. As I pass them, he turns to her intently and says, "I bet that I could hit the ceiling with this book." Without really thinking about it, the reader gently replies, "Oh, I'm sure that you could, but..."
And in my head, I know EXACTLY what is going to happen. Sure enough, she says, "Oh, I'm sure that you could, but..." sshhTHWAP - I hear the sound as the book hits the ceiling and flutters down to the ground, pages rustling from the fall. I didn't turn around to watch, but I laughed all the way back to my classroom.

Well, not quite

At lunch today, the students were informing me that their parents were SOO much older than me. "My mom is older than you! She's 26!"
When I told them that my grandmother was 85, the Vietnamese student across the table from me visibly blanched, and then asked tentatively, "She almost dead?"

SCIENCE!

The joys of having a small Van der Graaf generator in my classroom to use at the end of the day!

Starting the day off right

Heard over breakfast:
1st grader: "Knock, knock"
Kindergartner: "Who's there?"
1st grader: "Ya"
Kindergartner: "Ya who?"
1st grader: "Are you so excited to go on the internet??"

Well, yeah, that makes sense

So, I had a kiddo out sick today, and when his mom emailed me, she made sure to include this tidbit: "[He| is in bed reading "The Orange Outlaw" with all of his A-Z mysteries around him! I think that he's reading TO them!"
I have this picture in my mind of this kid, sick in bed, with his books arranged around him, keeping a vigil and listening to him read. It make total sense for this kid.

"Um, hellooooo"

Walking down the hall to recess with the class, I pass a postal worker heading towards the office.

About 7 seconds later, I hear
Irvin: "Hi, mailman!"
Mailman: "Um, helllloooo."

Made me smile.

Cheater? Not me!

"Mr. Graham, we are horse and you are cheetah!"

This is after running on the track outside - I originally thought that she was calling me a "cheater", but that's the impact of a Vietnamese accent...

Well, THAT shouldn't happen in a classroom

"Mr. Graham! Eric is buggering me! He keeps touching my erasers!"

("buggering" = combo of "bothering" and "bugging")

Sound advice

First grader: "Mr. Graham, you shouldn't twist my hand like that!"
Me: "I didn't twist your hand. But if you didn't like how it felt, maybe you shouldn't twist your arm like that when I'm holding your hand."
First grader: "Well, but, um, Mr. Graham, you shouldn't fart in your sandwich!"
Me: "Whaaaaat?"

is so hung MY GOD

A kindergartner finished writing a story today. It read "I have a god. my god is name Anna. my god is so hung is so hung my god."

Slightly less funny when she reveals that she's writing about a hungry dog, but still, I laughed.

Lessons on symmetry

A first grader pulls her braid up over her head and down the middle of her face - "Mr. Graham! Look! I'm symmetrical!"