They said it...

For some reason we were talking about the word revolution in our morning meeting and its meaning. I jokingly asked the class if we were going to have a revolution in our class and they all said no...then my Star Wars boy says, "But we will have revels." He means rebels...he just doesn't know it's with a b. Not sure when I'm going to burst his bubble.

I was walking by my Disliker...the only thing he likes is drawing monsters with three heads and creating puppets for writing workshop (future unit will probably be writing plays!). He said I looked like my hand was mad. I looked down and noticed my veins were popping a little from my hand...and as I was standing there near his desk, he reaches over and traces my bulging veins. I had to laugh (inside of course!).

When I give spelling tests, I always give a sentence with the word in it to help build context. Of course, students have to comment on my amazing sentences. The spelling word was "of". The sentence was...The pencil is made of wood. One of my students asked, "That's true, isn't it?" Another one popped in with, "She tells only absolutely true stories." (They got it from Gooney Bird...I just smiled.)

Knowing that I tell only absolutely true stories, I have somewhat warped my class. I teach, every year, the reason the trapezoid is the way it is, is because King Zoid was trapped in a pyramid where they cut off the top. Brilliant! Star Wars was cutting out pictures of Egyptian writing (because he likes Egypt) for his writer's notebook when I realized that maybe my stories are going too far. He showed me a picture of an Egyptian king and asked if it was King Zoid. Whoops!

I was meeting with students going over short vowel sounds when my pirate boy was trying to explain the word puch to me. It was supposed to be push and he had written a -ch instead. I asked him to give me a sentence with puch in it. Without hesitation, he said, "I caught a puch." I asked him what it meant and he then honestly said, "I don't know." At least he tried!

At the beginning of the year, I taped black paper over all of the baskets in the library to show what was open and what was not. One of my students talked about the baskets the other day and was very excited that a basket had been unlocked. I loved the choice of words they use.

One of my girls was given a different spelling list this week. One of her words was quaint. I asked her if she knew what it meant. She didn't. I told her that it meant pretty...in an old fashioned sort of way. Without a pause, she came back with, "Like in the 80's?" I just sat there for a minute dumbfounded wondering if she knew what she had just said. Oh sweetie!

And the reason why I am loving the class right now...when I was conferencing with one boy about after we learn new words, we remember them. He said, "Because it's in my lexical system." They get it. They use it. They do it. We created covers for our writer's notebooks on Thursday and Friday. I am blown away by how much they got it. They chose pictures that were meaningful to them. My Star Wars boy wanted a picture of an old video game, but couldn't find it. I grabbed it off Google Images and went on. Hummingbird found a picture of Johnny Depp for Pirate boy. Another boy cut out a picture of a crayon because he likes to color. I am truly impressed!!! Excited to see how they grow this year!