Catchy

"Can we write a song to go along with our quiz?" a student asked me this morning.

I raised my eyebrows in confusion. Was this some kind of DST hallucination?

"You know, like a jingle," he explained.

The class was working on activity where they have a set of question starters organized in Bloom's taxonomy, from lower to higher order thinking skill. Their task is to compose a five question quiz based on the memoir we are reading. Each question must be from a different category and they also have to provide an answer key. Then they give the quiz to another student (and take one that someone else has composed), grade the quiz that they created using the key, and have a conference with the other student about the results. 

It's a waaaay better assessment than most any I might create, mostly because they are very engaged in the activity, which brings us back to the student this morning.

"Sure," I told him, and when he handed his draft in for me to check, this was scrawled across the top of the page:

Yeah, yeah, take the quiz baby, yeah!

Redistribution of Time

There's one day a year when I barely need think about what my topic will be when I sit down to compose my thoughts to write, and that day is this– the dreaded dawn of despicable daylight savings time. The challenge has become how to freshly frame my rant.

Fortunately, an Internet meme making the rounds today perfectly expresses my opinion of this outlandish construct:

Only a fool would think that cutting a foot off the top of a blanket and sewing it to the bottom would make the blanket longer.

Well said, World Wide Web, well said.

Minor Detail

Heidi's old friend Tom is in town this weekend. The two of them went to grade school in Buffalo together, and then in one of those small-world twists, he and my brother-in-law worked together for a time in NYC. Back then, whenever we drove up to the city to see Courtney, my sister, Heidi would give Tom  a call, and the five of us would meet up for an afternoon or evening. The food was always good and the conversation fast and funny, and we passed many fun hours together that way. 

That's why my brother-in-law was a little surprised when he and Tom were talking about Thanksgiving. "Courtney's mom will be there, and her brother and his family, and Tracey and Heidi," he told Tom.

"Why are Tracey and Heidi spending the holiday with Courtney's family?" Tom asked.

"You know Courtney and Tracey are sisters, right?"

Turns out, that was a surprise to Tom, one that we still tease him about all these years later. "Well," he laughed tonight when it came up for the umpteenth time, "that did clear things up for me!

I Can Dig That

The air was crackling clear and the sky the sharpest blue when I headed out this morning to pay the price for our four day weekend. Six inches of snow cloaked my car and even deeper drifts cupped the tires to their hubs. Fortunately the snow was light and powdery and easy to shovel, but even in mittens my fingers stung from the cold as I bent, scraped, lifted, trudged, and dumped. Oh, I could have had help– there were willing hands inside– but once I started I kept at it. The sun on my face and cold air in my lungs was exhilarating, and my fingers warmed as my heartbeat rose. From the woods I heard the chitter and trill of a bird and turned to find a single robin perched on an icy branch, waiting, perhaps, for winter itself to be brushed away like so much snow.

Tele-teaching

The fact that school was canceled today has not kept me from my appointed rounds. No, my students have been posting their slices of life all day, sending news of igloos, sleds, and snow ball fights, and I have been right here, in my pajamas, even, replying to each of them, in between baking bread, making soup, watching The Sopranos, and reading by the fire.

According to CNN, virtual school days in place of snow days will likely be a reality in the near future, and as a teacher I have mixed feelings about it. There's no denying the magic of waking up to a world of white and finding that school is canceled and spending the day outside playing in the snow and inside playing in the warm with your friends and siblings, but some of my students today wrote about being bored at home with nothing to do. For them? It's pretty much a waste of a day.

Certainly, there is middle ground; with a little thought and planning, any online activities can be flexible enough to offer learning but also to leave time for play and relaxation. 

The Company You Keep

I've been teaching sixth grade so long that I am often accused of acting like one of my students. And that's why you teach middle school, friends and family will say in response to, for instance, my pointing out that they said, "do do" (as in, what we do do in that situation is...)

I don't mind though; heck! I consider it a compliment. If you're only as good as the company you keep, well, my company is energetic, creative, open-minded, spontaneous and funny. I could do so much worse.

Bonus: With a little extra time at the end of class today, a student leaned on my desk. "So," he started, "why can't you hear pterodactyls when they use the bathroom?"

I was stumped for a moment, but then I began to laugh. "Does it have anything to do with silent P?"

"Yep," he answered as the bell rang.

Winning!

I try to provide a wide assortment of books in my classroom library so that every student can find something good to read. Recently I added Meanwhile, by Jason Higa, a graphic novel in choose-your-own-adventure format. It was immediately a big hit, but how could it not be, with thousands of options, all stemming from the simplest of questions, Chocolate or Vanilla? From there, the main character, Jimmy, heads off on an amazing adventure featuring a mad scientist, mind control, and a time machine, all controlled by the reader's choices on every page.

Just today several students in one of my classes were excitedly talking about it.

"What book is it?" another boy asked.

"Meanwhile," they told him.

"Oh yeah," he nodded. "I beat that book last year."

"Wait, what?" someone said, "How did you beat it?"

"Easy," he shrugged, "I got the happy ending."