Here is the next installment of Grimm(way) Fairytales.
Edition 6
October 5, 2017
I know this is coming out a day earlier than usual, but tomorrow is a no student day, so I figured with most of the cute and funny happenings coming from students, there would probably not be a lot of entries from tomorrow.
Things have been relatively slow this week, until yesterday and today. I have been filling in for Mr. Cervantes this week as the IA for Miss Salazar in her 2nd grade class. Mr. C got married last Saturday and he felt like he needed to take the week off to go on a honeymoon or something...go figure.
Second graders are professionals when it comes to speaking right out and saying what is on their minds. From some of their answers to questions I asked them and just free input to discussions we had, it is apparent that instruction in Miss Salazar's class is different. They are fiercely devoted to her and what she teaches them as illustrated in the following conversations.
"Did you know." one scholar asked excitedly, "The earth actually goes around the sun!"
"You don't say." I answered.
"Yes! And guess what?"
(Oh no, not the 'guess what' dialogue again) "I don't know, what?"
"If you put a frying pan on the sun it would cook an egg in a second!"
And another...I was sitting at a small table working with 4-5 students practicing the recognition of odd versus even numbers. (Yet, another process that I just thought everyone is just born knowing.) We came across the number 19 and I asked them if it was an odd number or an even number. With a moment of intense thought one girl announced that it was even. I asked her if she was sure. And, quite emphatically she said that it was definitely even.
"Well, actually, it's odd." I explained.
Without any hesitation at all she declared, "Well, in Ms. Salazar's class it's even!"
"OK, then. Let's practice our counting by 5's."
For clarification. I should probably explain for all my friends that are not sure just how the Grimmway Academy operates, scholars rotate quite extensively. One such section is called the Literacy Block. Small groups of scholars are separated into ability levels and taught reading. Because I have been filling in for Mr. Cervantes, I took his group that consists of 9 students. Some of those students are 2nd graders, some are 3rd graders and some are 1st graders. It has been a real challenge for me, basically because I do not know what I am doing. Today, Thursday, was a particularly difficult day. I was frustrated because I felt I had no control over them whatsoever.
However, as the day progressed, it was those little tykes that pulled me out of my doldrums.
We have one little guy that has a very difficult time staying focused for more than about 4 seconds. As the rest of the students were writing a story of their own choosing, and they could choose anything they wanted to write about, it just had to include detail. We spent a fair amount of time going over what detail is and how you include it in the story. Immediately, Joshua (not his real name, of course) was bored with it all. He started running around the class stomping on some ants that had made their way to the food crumbs left after snack time. Miss Salazar finally asked me to take Joshua next door to an empty classroom and try to get him to write something...anything. With much persuasion and probably a few threats, we plopped down in a couple of chairs in the adjoining classroom.
"So, Joshua, what are you writing about?" I asked. He just shrugged his shoulders. "Did you go on vacation this summer?" Again, he shrugged. This kind of dialogue went on for a couple of minutes when I finally concluded that we were not going to accomplish anything at this rate. I finally asked him what his favorite animal was. He immediately sat up straight, looked right at me and announced that it was the shark.
I asked him if he had ever seen a shark in real life? And he nodded that he had. "Was it at the ocean?" He shrugged. "Was it at the zoo?"
"Yea! It was at the zoo." We talked about his experience with the shark for the next few minutes and then I told him that that is what he should write about. This is what he wrote...
"I went to the zoo and saw a shark. It was big and scary. And it was gray. I touched it. His skin was hard. (He stopped at that point to draw some pictures of the shark.) He had big teeth and he started eating me. Then we went home."
When we came back to the regular classroom, he made a b-line to Miss Salazar so she could read his story.
As crazy as it sounds, he made my day.
There was also the girl who ran up to me and said, "How do you spell...ah wait...ah wait...I forgot." And then scampered back to her seat. Moments later, she was back. "How do you spell...ah wait...ah wait...I forgot." This same back and forth game continued 4 or 5 times. Finally, on her last request, she asked, "How do you spell 'wait'?"
"Wait?" I questioned.
"Yea, how do you spell wait?"
Another girl wrote her story about her cat, who had kittens. She wrote..."The mother had her first 4000 babbys and it was hard for her to pop her babbys out."
I was also reminded that 2nd graders do not understand sarcasm. This was evident when another little girl came up to me and in a voice that suggested that she was totally frustrated said, "I need some help."
"You can say that again." I threw out at her. She looked at me, totally confused, and said, "I need some help."
And finally, I was pretty excited toward the end of the day. I had a lovely lady come up to me and told me that she loved me...too bad she was a second grader.
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