2, 4, 6, 8!

Okay, not a story about my class, but funny nonetheless...

Two teachers at school each coach a basketball team, a fifth grade boys' team and a fifth grade girls' team. At the end of the season, the two teams were having a joint party and had a scrimmage as part of that. I was walking down the hall to head out the door, and I heard the tail end of the scrimmage wrapping up, and then the cheers:

"2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate?!? BOYS!"

followed by

"2, 4,6, 8, who do we appreciate?!? GIRLS!"

Just made me chuckle.

Excellent word choice

I was teaching a lesson on using words other than said, and I was demonstrating how choosing a different word can effect a story. I sternly remonstrated (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) a student for sitting impolitely, and the rest of the class suggested words like "yelled", "scolded", and "snapped".

One of the words on our previously-generated list was "admitted". On the spur of the moment, I grabbed a pencil and snapped it in half, so that I could have something to admit to. The students were shocked.

"Mr. Graham! Why did you do that to a perfectly good pencil?!?" Allyanne demanded.

"Oooh, excellent," I thought. "My class, what is Allyanne doing right now?" I said, expecting an answer like yelling, or shouting. "Isabella?"

She thought for a moment, then smiled up at me. "Overreacting?"

I had a severe case of the giggles at Allyanne's indignant expression, and Isabella's markedly innocent one. Awesome.

And if you can spell "cape"...

I was teaching a reading RTI group, and we were working on long A with a silent E at the end

So my banter went something like this: "Oh, cape! What are the sounds in cape? That's right, /c/ /A/ /p/. And if you can spell "cape", you can spell "tape"! And if you can spell "tape"...

(I'm scanning the alphabet chart at this point)

And then one of the girls pipes up (totally innocently, I think...?) - "You can spell RAPE!!!"

I ignored her completely, and just moved right along.