Just a typical day

A typical day in the life of a third grade teacher might include some or all of the following:

• Untying a girl's shoelaces which she knotted together and couldn't unknot, because her fingernails were just trimmed

• Telling one of the boys that he should not take his snack with him to the bathroom

• Listening in amusement when the boys think one girl's birthday treat is a fishing rod... and listening to the girls explain that it is actually a shoe

• Having one of your students tell you she is saving her birthday money in her piggy bank for a car... She already knows the one she wants. 

• Marking answers wrong on a language test, even though they make sense. (The plural of wife could be women.)

• Deciphering answers written as doodles. 

(Okay, I admit... not all of these events happened in one day. But they did all happen in the last two weeks.)

Taken literally

Today I had a laugh out loud moment, and I couldn't wipe the grin off my face for a good five minutes afterwards. My poor, sweet, innocent girl. We were walking out to recess and this student suddenly asks, "Was he in a cage?"

Me: Was who in a cage?
Student: The ant eater.
Me: What ant eater? I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Student: She said “Thanks for bringing the ant eater.”

This is the point where I laughed out loud. Poor girl.
Well, actually what the second grade teacher said to me was, “Thanks for bringing them in earlier.” She had passed us in the hallway and was thanking me for bringing her students in from recess. Second grade already has a pet rat. I don’t think they need an ant eater too. But I guess it makes sense to check to see if they did have an ant eater, if it was in a cage.

That wasn't the only amusing part of my day. Sometimes students take directions so literally, and then you think, Yeah, that should have been worded differently.

For instance, the directions said: Write the plural form for each noun in a sentence. The word penny was listed with a line after it, and underneath was the word wolf with a line after it. Most students understood this meant to write a sentence for each word. One student, however, wrote a sentence.

The wolves found two pennies.

Or take the math worksheet today.  What is the difference between the rounded number of miles and the exact answer?

One is exact. One is not. 

The round number has a zero at the end and the exact does not.

In reading, I think they came up with some pretty good answers to these questions: What do you dream of doing? What would you have to learn before you could do this?

astronaut; how to run a rocket 

going on a trip into the woods for a month and getting lost; how to know how to survive (I knew before I looked that this was written by the boy whose favorite birthday gift was a knife and a set of utensils!) 

being a mom; get married 

mom; how to clean all the time 

I bet you moms appreciate the last one! 

Making cents

I've been kindly reminded that I haven't written in a while... It's not for a lack of interesting students. Unfortunately, in the midst of keeping track of 30 of them (or trying to), I sometimes forget to jot down a note when one of them does something cute or funny. But these are some of the stories I've managed to remember.

I gave the class a journal writing assignment to write down the best birthday gift they'd ever gotten. There were the typical responses one would expect from third graders: Legos, dolls, toy pets, and dolls and toy pets that talk and walk and meow and bark. One student's favorite gift was a Holy Bible, and a couple girls received baby brothers! Perhaps the most interesting favorite gift was a knife and a set of utensils. I love the variety! 

I continue to receive lots of notes and drawings from my sweet girls. But I was pleasantly surprised to find this in my mailbox from one of my rough-and-tumble boys:

I think I mentioned before that this class laughs at my jokes. They even laugh when I don't realize I made a joke. We were going over the answer to a math problem, and I asked "Does that make sense?" After a pause, I heard giggles throughout the room. I thought I was missing something that someone was doing. "What's so funny?" I asked. Finally, one of the boys piped up, "The answer was seven cents, and you asked, 'Does that make sense?'" Haha, clever class I have!