Classroom Comedy: Kids ARE the darndest things! :)

After our initial class blog, I had the children write what they thought about blogging.  Honestly, I was hoping to get something funny to put here.  Alas, my children were dead serious in all their answers.  But, I am going to post some of the answers anyway because Drew might find a use for them in his data collection.

AA – I think the blogging is fun.  I think we should do blogging again.  I think it’s productive.  I think it helps with typing and computer skills.  That’s why I think we should do it again.

CO – It was fun to talk to each other with the computer because we had silly names!  Plus, some people like to use technology like me.  You learn to type with other kids.  You can write a comment or question about what they write.  You get to answer other people’s questions that they ask you.  YEAH!!!  That is my favorite part about blogging.

AR – Although some of us didn’t stay on the topic, we still did learn.  It was a bunch of fun.  We learn how to be polite on the internet.

AN – Today when we did blogging it was fun because I got to know other people’s opinions.

WI – It was so much fun!  It will really help me with my typing.

JA – I thought that this was a fun way to talk online and learn.

CH – It was a good experience.  I like blogging.  It is fun and exciting.  You can ask questions!

EL – I think blogging is a fun way to show your feelings.  Blogging can help fins answers and that made it fun.  Blogging is also fun because you don’t know who you are chatting with.  You can learn a lot by hearing what people have to say.  You can also write back to the person and that is fun too.

Be – Blogging was great.  I loved posting my opinion.

So, there you are.  Straight from the kids – their opinions on blogging.  I noticed that they really enjoyed the fact that they could ask questions.  Don’t we all want to ask a question and not feel dumb?

Sometimes something so horrible happens, people view it as funny.  But not when it happens to you.  So, this is for your enjoyment, not mine.

Background 1:  Today my children had earned a special day.  They discussed and voted and we ended up with MOVIE DAY.  All subjects were done as movies, meaning for reading, we watched a movie that had been a book (Remember Patience Whipple from the Dear America Series).  For math, we watched 2 short movies on graphing (which were excellent and is exactly what we are doing in math right now).  For science, I splurged a bit and we watched a Discovery Streaming video completed unrelated to our curriculum but of historical and high scientific interest (we watched a movie about all the Apollo Missions up to the moon landing).  They were highly interested.  For writing, we watched an interview with an author, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (author of Shiloh, etc.)  It was off to an excellent start. 

Background 2:  At about 10 minutes into the Ms. Naylor movie, the principal came in quietly, as he was just “making rounds.”  When he saw who and what we were watching he exclaimed, “MY FAVORITE AUTHOR!  I LOVE THIS AUTHOR!  I HAD MY PICTURE TAKEN WITH HER.  SHE’S GREAT!”

At that exact moment, we had to stop the movie and most of the kids left for violin class, all wondering why that was his favorite author.  He left and brought down a file folder.  (I knew why it was his favorite author)  Inside the folder, which I shared with the children the minute they returned from violin, were his pictures with her, a large brochure, and various newspaper clippings. 

Our prinicipal had actually BEEN IN THE MOVIE, as an extra.  (This isn’t a widely known fact because his “extra” part was a gruff, unshaved man standing at the local tavern, so I don’t think he wants that message portrayed widely )

So, the kids were all excited and interested and we continued to watch the interview.  Ms. Naylor told three stories from when she was a child, and then read a few pages from the Shiloh book that actually showed how she had woven her real life experiences into the Shiloh story.  Which is exactly what we are working on in writing workshop!

It couldn’t have been more perfect.

We continued to watch the interview.  She began talking about an “Alice” series that I had never heard of.  She explained how the next book (yes this is an old video) was going to be about Alice and her friend and their most embarrassing moments and secrets. 

The hackles went up on the back of my neck.  I thought “Hmm, I’m going to grab the remote, just in case.” 

The Laugh:  She proceeded to tell the interviewer (and my fourth graders) that the friend character’s most embarrassing secret was that her parents were getting a divorce.  At this point in time, I breathed a sigh of relief.  Some of my kids can relate to that – it’s okay.  But, I was too quick.  The next sentence she started talking about how Alice’s big embarassing secret was that she had never seen a boy naked. 

I just about died and clicked off the video and said, “Okay, we are done with this video,” as I walked to the front of the room.  But I didn’t want to send the wrong message to the children so I tried to cover and explain that authors write about things so they can connect with kids and help them feel like they aren’t alone or weird. 

At this point, none of my girls will even look at me and the boys are all red-faced and I just knew they were thinking, “Girls want to see naked boys??” 

I just wanted to die.  I’m freaking out, the kids are freaking out, and my sweetest most wonderful (boy)child in the room says, “I don’t think she should have been embarrassed by that.”  And I basically ignored him, wanting to be done and move on to some animal movie where my children will be distracted.

Laugh 2: All this catastrophe from the author that my principal had just been RAVING about!

So, just in case there were any parent phone calls, I told him about it at the end of the day.  The first words out of his mouth were, “Why didn’t you preview it??”

Laugh 3:  I said, “This is in the teacher video library to show to classes.  It is from 1986.  Surely somebody has seen/watched it in 22 years and could have had it removed or at least left a note!”

Oy vey!  What a mess.  So on my way home, I call my teammate (who was out sick today) to tell her.  She is rolling on the floor laughing, because she knows how much I hate the fact that fourth grade is the year we show the puberty video and I always get all uptight and freaked out about.  I mentioned that they were probably all thinking about the video and she said, “No, that won’t come till later on this evening as they sit and wonder, hmm” as she is laughing hysterically.

Seems like the pubery video came 4 months early this year.  UGH.

So sometimes you just gotta go with the flow.  Let’s all be silly.  Evil crawdads, alien children, unlaughing teacher (see previous posts); let’s lump it all together and fix it.

So, I took the most evil, nastiest, meanest crawdad and made him pose.  (And I think the goofball liked it.)  We are working on making our writing come alive and be creative (especially after 22 projects titled “George Washington Carver”) (see previous post)  So for a mini lesson today, we all had to come up with titles for the following pictures and share what our top three were.  What can you come up with?

So, needless to say, we all had a great laugh because the kids’ answers where OUTSTANDING!  AND, many of them changed their writing workshop titles   Yeah

So, post your titles!  I won’t share the kids’ so you can be creative all on your own.

I guess I have been on a word/phrase kick here of late.  I do enjoy puns and I am currently reading the book “Punished” to my kids for read aloud.  Maybe that’s why.  Maybe just most of the things they say and do are related to words and plays on words and word misunderstandings.  So anyway, here’s a short but funny word laugh.

The Background:  One of my third graders a couple years ago wrote the words “overly acted” in her story.

The Laugh:  She meant “overreacted.”  Kinda the same thing

  So I wore this sweater today.  Who knew clothing was so funny?

The First Laugh about THE Sweater:  First thing this morning, one of my students yells across the room, “Mrs. AnonymousFlower, you have stuff on your sweater.”  I blurted right back, “Where?  I haven’t eaten anything yet.  How did I get food on myself?”  So I made him explain, with much more descriptive words, what he meant. 

The Second Laugh about THE Sweater: In the comp lab this afternoon, I was having some trouble with the teacher computer and had to wait while it rebooted and came back up so I could explain the next step of our project on the projector screen.  While waiting, I announced, “Okay, we are going to do a quick vocabulary lesson.  My sweater has dangles on it.  What else could you say to describe these things?”  I got “My sweater has decorations,” and, “My sweater has decoration” (which was a whole mini lesson in itself as to how we could use both words and be accurate) and ”My sweater has ornaments.”  They did really well coming up with different ways to describe it.  Then someone came up with, “My sweater is silly.”  Of course the whole class giggled.

Well, maybe the sweater is silly, but wow, did it bring out some great lessons!

Being new to this website and blogging, I have been exploring and finding other places and links that are just phenomenal.  One such blog is on here and you should really check it out

http://amyboehman.edublogs.org/

She has a wealth of information and it is my new favorite place!  (and I hope I cited this properly and correctly  – if not someone please tell me since this is my first time doing this)

On her blog she has a link where you can make an animated dog and then type some words and the dog will talk! NO KIDDING!  You can even use a photo of your own dog and then send it in an email.  You really need to visit her blog.

So, all that said, here is another funny story from yesterday that ties in to my recent internet treasure finds.

The Background:  I have a little guy in my room that just hates school.  Fortunately, he DOESN’T hate me and we are working on building a relationship that I hope will eventually change his attitude about school.  He hates reading (which he is good at), hates math (which he is good at), hates social studies and WRITING is the worst chore in the world for him.  BUT, I found out he LOVES dogs.  (You can probably see the tie in now.)  So, I showed him the website in the morning before school, and even had the animated dog say hi to him.  Smiles!!!!  Then I told him he could write a story about dogs, type it in, and I would let the class “hear” his story as the dog talked to them on the Smartboard.  During self selected reading, he diligently read an article about Huskies.  During writing, I was pleased to see the amount of writing he did and he eagerly typed in a short non-fiction piece about Siberian Huskies.  He explained they had short stub noses, long thick fur, prick ears, and usually had blue eyes.  He also went on to explain they loved children and people so they didn’t make good watchdogs.

The Laugh:  He got it typed in and I asked him if he wanted to listen to it before his classmates saw it.  Well, of course he did!  We hit the “listen” button and a giant message appeared that read, “You may not use the word prick on this website.”  OMG!!!!  I explained to him that they probably thought it was a typo or the dictionary on the website just didn’t know that word and quickly typed in the word “pointy” instead.  Once again, thank goodness, they are young.