In Which Something Weird Happens in Reading Class

Sometimes getting kids to read is simply a matter of finding the right book.  I usually have one or two students who make miraculous strides in this area each year, but there are a lot more than normal this year.  A LOT.  Like, ten so far.  And we're only one-third of the way through the year.

The point of this is not to make myself sound like some amazing teacher.  I really didn't DO anything other than read a bunch of books and then pass them on to kids.  Sometimes I get lucky and something clicks.

But what happened today was unprecedented in all of human history.  Or at least in seventh grade history.  Some background...

I teach an elective class called Battle of the Books.  Students in the class read books that I have selected for them, take the Accelerated Reader tests over them, and earn points for their team.  Winning team gets a fabulous prize at the end of the trimester.  Trimester One just finished, and the class was split between kids who wanted to read every day all the time and kids who would rather eat bees than read a book.  Kinda challenging. 

One of the latter type of students barely read anything throughout the whole last trimester.  Today during first block, my partner-in-crime teaching colleague extraordinaire told me that she had to take away a book from him during math because he wouldn't stop reading.

"What?  No you didn't!" was my immediate response.

"Oh yes I did!"

"SHUUUUT. UUUUP."

DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER!  WHAT IS HAPPENING?

So the students comes to my class before lunch.  With his book.  He wants to know if it is an AR book because he couldn't find it when he looked it up.  So I of course literally dropped everything to look it up.  Turned out it WAS an AR book (books with subtitles are often difficult to find in the system).  When I told him that it was worth 5 AR points, his eyes lit up.  "What?!"  he exclaimed.  "I have two more of these books!  And I love them!  That's gonna be, like, fifteen points!"

So third block rolls around at the end of the day and of course he's reading his book.  Almost done with it, by the way.  And then I notice something EVEN WEIRDER...two OTHER boys who would never have been caught dead reading a book last week WERE READING BOOKS!  I had to stop class to ask them what alien had switched their brains--but I wasn't mad at the alien because it was SO FREAKING AMAZING. 

And, I'm not gonna lie, it was QUIET.  Instead of causing chaos, kids wanted nothing more than to sit down with their respective noses in their respective books.  Even some of the other students noticed how different it was.  One of them said to me at the end of class, "It's like books are the new fidget spinners or something....look how focused they are!"

Ah friend...I hope with every fibre of my being that your words are true.  Because then my work here will be done.  At least for an hour or so.

On Top of Spagheeeeeetttttiiii...

In seventh grade, we have ten vocabulary words each week.  I start off the unit by going through the words to make sure everyone understands the definitions and pronunciations.  One of the words this week was "exploit", as in to take advantage of.  Seventh graders are reeeeeaaaalllyyyy good at exploiting things, if you didn't know.  As we discussed the definition, I mentioned that some of them had "exploited" the substitute teacher who had been in the classroom the day before.  We talked about how "exploitation" is deliberate--you are going out of your way to do it, and you are aware that what you are doing is probably ethically questionable.  One student referred back to a story I had shared earlier in the year about how I as a young child "exploited" my even-younger brother by telling him swear words to repeat to my mom, thereby earning him a spanking.  I agreed that indeed, I had definitely "exploited" my brother's youth and naiveté--I knew that he would get into trouble, and I wanted it to happen because I was jealous of him.

I also reminded the students that I had been known to "exploit" seventh-graders as well.  For example, a few of the teachers at a different school I used to work at teamed up once to convince the students that we were at war with Canada.  We also told them that spaghetti grew on trees.  Classic example of "exploiting" gullibility based on the classic 1957 April Fools joke concocted by the BBC:

My current students laughed and laughed....no way would THEY be so stupid as to allow me to "exploit" them in such a fashion!

Then a student asked how noodles were ACTUALLY made.  Another student immediately piped up that he made noodles at home with his family and that they were made from flour.  I confirmed this detail.  The first student looked puzzled, so I clarified that noodles were made from eggs and flour and water.  He said, "OH!  I thought you meant that they were made from FLOWERS!  This makes MUCH more sense!"

Homophones FTW.

Immature? Moi?

Did I not promise more posts?

Technically I did not actually overhear this, but it's too funny to not relate.

Today in math class, students were working in groups to come up with ideas that will be included on our 7th grade social contract.  For those of you not in the know, the social contract is a document that details how we will treat each other.  Once all ideas are discussed and voted upon, everyone (including the teachers) will sign it.  This helps us all to be held accountable for our words and actions.

Usually we encourage the students to include words with broad implications in a variety of situations, such as "respect."  Then we talk about what respect looks like and sounds like, to ensure that everyone understands how we define it.

Apparently a group of students were discussing the word "maturely."  This is a word that commonly comes up on the social contract.  One of the students complained, and I am paraphrasing, "Why do we have to act maturely?  Ms. Whiston doesn't."

Frankly, I am somewhat surprised that no one has brought up this point before.

Technically, He's Not Wrong...

It's only the second day of the school year, but I am already getting the feeling that I might be posting more often this year!

As a get-to-know-you/following directions activity, the students have to create a vanity plate that represents themselves.  You know, they look like this:

But because I am a MASTER TEACHER (ha ha ha ha hahahahahaha), I don't just say create a personalized license plate.  I try to get them to figure out what a vanity plate is by using some logical deduction.  They can usually figure out that I am talking about license plates rather than dinner plates, but it's more difficult to get to the definition of vanity.  One student pointed out that a vanity is a piece of furniture.  I agreed with them and asked them to describe a vanity.  The class was able to put together that a vanity is a low dresser with a spot where you can pull up a chair.  And there's a big mirror.

"So why do we call this furniture a 'vanity?'" I asked.  

Blank stares.

"What does 'vanity' mean?"

More blank stares.

"Okay... let's think.  It's called a 'vanity' because of the activity that occurs at it.  Would men or women be more likely to sit down at a vanity?"

Everyone was in instant agreement that women would be more likely to sit there.

"Why?  What might women be doing at the vanity?  Remember, there's a huge mirror on it," I prompted.

A boy in the middle of the room raises his hand and answers, "Taking selfies?"

HEY YOU GUUUUUUUUYS!

Probably to no one's surprise, I have a large collection of random magnets stuck to various metal surfaces in my classroom.  One of them looks like this:

This movie represents my entire childhood.  I must have seen it five times in the theatre.  But the youth of today have not necessarily been educated in Goonie.  Which is a sad state of affairs.

A kid was looking at the magnets the other day and asked if this was something famous.  I replied in the affirmative.  He then said, "Oh, I thought that kid was you when you were younger."

Um, thanks?

At least they didn't ask me to do the Truffle Shuffle.