Spell Checker

Yesterday I was working with my students, preparing for our state assessment in reading next week. We were reviewing a practice reading packet, and I had typed up student responses that had gotten different scores. This is always good for the kids to see what is a full-point answer, what is a partial point answer, and what is a 0-point answer. I had typed up the student answers earlier this week.

I had just put up on the document camera a response for the class to read. Before I could get to it, an assisstant came into the room to pull some kids. There was a bit of commotion as I talked a bit with the assisstant, and as we were talking, I hear giggling break out in the room.

I sternly glance over at the class. "What's going on?" I asked. No one said anything, but continued to laugh. Something had happened.

I warned them to be quiet while I dealt with the assisstant, but they continued to laugh. I was getting angry at their behavior. I looked back up, and told them that I was taking minutes off their recess for this rude behavior. The assisstant then left, taking a few students with her to work with. I turned my attention back to the student response that was up on the Smartboard in front of the class, bigger than life, and began to read the response.

It was a response to a little story about a girl who was going to go to summer camp. She was excited and had just received the information packet with a list of all the activities. I began to read the student response aloud: "...she was excited to do all of the activities like swimming and arts and craps..."

The class burst out laughing. "Oh," I said. "This is what you were laughing about!" They nodded. "Well," I continued, "that is pretty funny!" I took back my minutes off recess. I'm not unreasonable.

April Fools!

I played an April Fool's Day joke on my class. I don't usually do this, but a perfect one just came to me this morning.

All this week, part of their homework was to complete paragraphs 2-4 of a five paragraph essay that we are working on. The due date all week has been Friday. But yesterday, Thursday, the kids got so involved in this little science project, that we just didn't get to writing. And since that night was the science fair, and most of my kids were coming to it, I just didn't think it would be good to assign the writing due the next day. I knew the kids would be busy. So at the end of the day Thursday I told the kids not to worry about finishing paragraphs 2-4 as homework, that we'd finish it the next day.

So this morning I decided that I'd pretend I had changed my mind and made it homework. After school started, and my kids were at music, I added it to my homework page for yesterday, as if it had been there all along. Then I also scrolled down on my homework page and wrote "April Fools!"

The kids worked all morning long on a math chapter test. Five minutes before recess, with all kids done with the test, I got up. I stood at my desk, but pretended to be looking at a check off sheet for homework. "Ok," I said. "When I call your name, answer yes if you turned in your final essay, and answer no if you didn't get it done."

There was a bit of stunned silence, and a few whispers. "Amy?" I called out. Now, Amy does all her work, and does it spectacularly. But she timidly said no. I continued to go down the list, with kids saying no...no...no. When I finally got to the last kid, and all had said no, I looked up at them.

"Don't any of you ever go to my homework page?" I asked. A few hands went up. "Well," I continued. "I decided last night to add this homework assignment. You should have checked."

I had my website showing on the smart board, and opened my homework page. "See? There it is. I made it bold so that you all would notice it." Josh raised his hand. I called on him. "But I checked the website at 9 pm," he said. "It wasn't there."

"Well, I guess I added it after 9 pm, then. You must have missed it. Let's see what else you might have missed."

I scrolled down until the words "April Fools!" appeared. The class was greatly relieved, and thought I had pulled off a great joke. They applauded me. All but Izzy. She came up to me and said, "You know, that was a mean joke. I was worried because I hadn't done the essay and turned it in."

"But Izzy," I replied. "You never turn things in. What did it matter this time?"

Well, she didn't know, but it just did!