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.