Happy President's Day!

The downfalls of standardized testing...

Student: "Mrs. G, when we get inside from recess will we have more testes?"

Teacher: "It's 'tests', not 'testes'. Yes, we will have more tests."

Student: "Good! I love testes!"

Teacher-"TESTS! It's TESTS not TESTES!"

O.M.G.

Favorite Subject

What is your favorite subject in school? I like math. I hope some of you like math!

*random shouting out answers*--however, I heard this one plain and clear.

"My favorite subject is going home!"

You're Fired!

At the end of a particularly rough day, where many, if not all children were in trouble for one thing or another- I said to the students:

"You know kids, that your job here at school is to learn, do your classwork and behave yourself. You have not been doing your job to the best of your abilities lately. I'm sorry to say, but if you were a grown up, in a grown up job, and I was your boss, I'd have to fire you. Come to think of it, you have jobs in the classroom (cleaning, etc) and since my room looks a mess, it appears that none of you have been doing your jobs this week, so you are all fired."

A student raises his hand...

"Mrs. Gumm, when you get fired from a job, you don't have to come back anymore, right?"

I could not stop laughing. He didn't know what was so funny.

Bellyache Shenanigans

S: "Mrs. Gumm, I have a belly ache."

T: "Do you think you're going to throw up?"


*minor panic at the thought of a child who is not mine puking on my shoes/shirt/anything*


S: "No I just missed breakfast and I think I am hungry."


T: "Well, you're in luck, lunch starts in ten minutes."


S: "I don't think I can waaaaaaaiiiiittttt that long. Why don't you give me some of those M&M's you have in your desk to hold me over until lunch?"


T: "I don't think so."

You're not fooling me, buddy.

The best day ever...

We've been learning about place value, using the smart board. Apparently, place value has a fan.

Communities

In Social Science one of the vocabulary words that we have to learn for the first 9 weeks is "Communities"

While this seems like a word that should be easy to remember, but usually it's a challenge. We talk about how a community is anywhere that people live, work, play or go to school. Because there are so many types of communities, my early childhood students have difficulty understanding it.

So today I had them draw a picture of a community and describe it to me, I figured if they could explain their picture to me and it was at least a portion of the definition, then they were on the right track.

Here is a conversation that happened in front of my student teacher today and neither of us could keep a straight face. (and neither could the kids)

T: "Tell me about your picture." (the classic way to say 'I have no idea what this is' to a child)

S:"Its a picture of a community!"

T:"Describe it to me." (I still don't see the picture for all its artistic glory...)

S: "Mrs. G, I drew the ghetto! That's a neighborhood and a community! I don't live there though, but some people do. They don't have jobs."

T: "yes, it is a community." (check mark in the gradebook for her!)