Snippets from the Party Room

Today was humorous. Funny. Laugh out loud at the end of the day funny. Trying to catch my breath funny.

Let me say, that not all of this might be funny to you. But pile it all together, and, by-golly, you have one heck of a day.

1. In math, we are talking about fractions. Students were building fractions using anything and everything in the classroom - clocks, pattern blocks, tangrams, fraction bars, money... you name it - we had it out. I was at one table, while my math co-teacher was W-A-Y on the other side of the room at another. The table I was working with happens to be a crammed table of seven boys (oy). They were building the fractions with no problem, in partners and independently. So, of course, they started to get distracted by their brains. "HEY!" their brains shouted. "Let's bust out in song in the middle of math!" And, of course, they obliged. (Tree - you should be channeling the bad idea bears)
I then stepped in and busted up the fun. Yeah, right. I told them that if they were going to sing, then they had to sing about the fractions they were building. Write a song, make up a song, sing it out... have at it! BUT it had to be about fractions. They said "I don't want to write a song." I said "What about a rap?" and they said "What's a rap?" SERIOUSLY? I thought I was so cool and hip on this stuff... but they don't know what a rap is? I couldn't help myself, I just started rapping about fractions. "Yo, Yo, Yo, fractions here..."

From across the room, the coteacher began laughing. I couldn't help myself.
Product? A song (rap) about fractions, created by two students in math today.

2. Not shortly after, a student, we'll call him Snail (because, as one teacher noticed, "If he walks any slower, he'd be going backwards), was bumped into by another student. Imagine a tap. Now divide that by 10 degrees of contact. This brush caused Snail to collapse to the floor in tears. Not because he was in pain, but because it disrupted him from his standing up. I know I know, poor Snail. I love this kid. But his collapse was award winning. The puddle (literally) of tears on the floor proved his dedication to the cause. No coaxing, pats on the back, encouragement, etc... were going to get Snail to get up. He laid there with our coteacher trying to convince him to get up for about 10 minutes. Puddle and all. Finally, with promises of kleenex, coteacher was able to get him to stand back up.

3. Nosepicker in the second row... go wash your hands.

4. Singing in the hall with an assistant leads to "dance party in the mod." It was part of my reading lesson, I swear. (Not the dance party part - but the reading the lyrics part).

5. This is from yesterday, but it is worthy of a two-day chuckle. We - another teacher and I - were lucky enough to have our school's tech guru come into the class to give an "Internet Safety" talk. Do not share personal information, great metaphors for safety they are familiar with, Stranger Danger online, etc... They should totally have connections with everything they were hearing. Here's one that will stay with me:

Yeah - that's like a movie I saw where a kid was setting his mom up on a date, but he found the date online, and gave the guy all this information and had his mom meet this stranger somewhere, and when she got there - it was a VAMPIRE!
All of the students either said "OH YEAH!" or their faces said "Vampires are online?"

I know there are more moments - but there's another day to blog :)