Let Evening Come

It wasn't long after the car was unpacked and our rooms chosen that we hit the beach. This year we decided to kick our Oscar Party up a notch and rent a place on the Chesapeake Bay just a couple of hours from home. The day had been sunny, but by the time we arrived it was growing late, and the light on the beach was almost as blue as the water.

This area is known for sea glass and fossils, and as much as I wanted to stretch my legs and walk briskly enough into the wind to warm away its chill, the long stretches of pristine sand and the piles of polished pebbles, broken shells, and other treasures were too tempting for me to simply stroll past. The dogs ran up and back at least ten times while I walked slowly, head bent, eyes scouring those caches deposited by the bay. 

I know better. Such a walk is never relaxing;  I can't shake the certainty that I'm missing something, and the truth is, I am missing something, something that sharpest eyes in the world wouldn't help me find.

Wood Anniversary

I'd love to stay and celebrate my 5 full years of daily blogging, but I have 55 slices of life to read and comment on! Year six starts tomorrow-- see you then!

Worthy

Today was the day when I introduced the annual 100 Day Writing Challenge to my students. This activity originated 3 years ago when I introduced the March madness we in the know fondly call the SOLSC or Slice of Life Writing Challenge.

Back then, at the end of the month, my students didn't want to stop posting a short daily anecdote about their lives. Even more, they didn't want to lose the feedback and comments they received every day from their peers and me. That year we figured out that a hundred days from March 1 is June 8, and they adopted that as their goal. We dubbed the kids who finished "Centurions," and a new tradition was born in my class.

Over the last couple of years the challenge has evolved. It is broken down into three month-long mini-challenges with three different levels of participation: required, optional, and challenge. There are small prizes to celebrate each month's successes, and the number of Centurions has grown.

Today, as part of my intro, I shared with my students that I'm a daily writer, too, and I assured them that there's no shortage of topics if only you look at your day with writer eyes. "So you're saying that anything can be "blog-worthy"?" one of my students asked.

I smiled at his invented word. "Pretty much," I answered, "the trick is finding something you have a reaction to. Maybe you think it's interesting, funny, infuriating, confusing, whatever."

"What about this conversation?" he asked with eyebrows raised. "Is this blog-worthy?"

"Could be," I shrugged. "I'll let you know tomorrow."

As it Should Be

If a quadrilateral is a four-sided polygon, why isn't it called a quadrigon?" one of my students asked the other day.

I liked how he was thinking! The whole purpose of word study, in my mind at least, is for the students to understand how many a word's parts fit together to build meaning.

"It's because quad comes from Latin, and polygon comes from Greek. Poly means 'many' and gon means 'angle'."

"But I thought multi meant 'many'," he said.

"It does," I answered, "in Latin."

"But if poly means 'many', how come Polyphemos was a cyclops with only one eye?"

"Well," I said, "remember cycl means 'round or circle' and ops means 'see or vision', so the word cyclops sort of describes that single eye."

"What about Polyphemos then? What did his name mean?"

"Good question," I said, "Let's look it up."

It turns out that phemos means 'spoken or sung of'; it's where the English word famous comes from. So Polyphemos?

He was one verrrrry famous cyclops!

Overheard in the Sixth Grade

"Dude! I have BO, too!"

Before you suggest deodorant, here's the reply:

"PS3 or X-Box?"

Now, here's the translation:

Student 1: My friend, I have the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 2!

Student 2: Which game platform do you own, Sony's PlayStation 3 or Microsoft's X-Box?

But keep in mind, they're 12-year-old boys. I wouldn't rule out deodorant just yet.

After Hours

Our friend Amari stopped by my classroom today after school. She's in third grade and her grandmother works in the building. Heidi helps her with her homework a few afternoons a week, but today, it was my turn.

I don't remember sitting down after school to do homework as being such a hardship when I was eight. I think I liked it, probably because it was easy for me, and I also wanted to do the right thing. I was not prepared for any trouble over something as simple as homework.

Today, I know the same is not true for every kid-- hell, as a teacher, I know the same is not true for many kids at all.

Amari is included in that larger group, but I have to admire the strategies she has put in place for herself. Rather than mope around the table, she says things like, "Math! If I get this right I'll do a slam dunk! If not, I'll do two more problems before I get up."

It helps that I have a backboard and hoop in my room, but that's not always necessary. Word sort? How about if we do charades of the words before we write them in the proper column, or maybe we can play hangman on the whiteboard? She knows how to make homework tolerable, if not fun, for herself, and that is a golden skill.

It's Chemistry

When a friend of ours, who is a science teacher, had a baby last year, we gave her a set of blocks. Rather than the usual alphabet, these had the elements from the periodic table. Not long ago, our friend sent us a picture of her little girl playing with our gift.

Such a genius! I wrote back. She already knows the formula for fluoro-uranium carbotassium!

Yep, her mom replied. She's ready for kindergarten!